California residents may be surprised to learn that police and private companies are scanning automobile license plates and building huge databases of information about you, where you are going, and the places you stop.

These companies say it is a valuable tool for finding criminals, people who are late on their car payments, and those who don’t pay parking tickets, but privacy advocates warn that this information has the potential for misuse.

The information is gathered through cameras mounted on cars passing vehicles on the highway, city streets or in a parking lot. They can record up to 3,500 plates a minute tagging the plate picture with the date, time, and location of where the vehicle was seen. Companies like MV TRAC, founded in 1990, utilizes a centralized database that receives license plate information through partnerships with government agencies and third-party camera owners at traffic lights, tollbooths, airports, major transportation hubs, security centers, and retail/commercial parking lots. MV TRAC says the information gathered is kept indefinitely, and only police and car repossession companies who have passed an in-depth background check can access its database.

According to Mary Ellen Callahan, former Chief Privacy Officer of the Dept. of Homeland Security, while it is perfectly legal to shoot and store publicly shot video, the potential for misuse is high because of the lack of laws that would govern how the different states would use the gathered information.