In an effort to gain access to "nationwide data" and license plate recognition technology, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies allegedly tapped Vigilant Solutions, a license plate-tracking company, for hire.

The government agencies including the IRS, Forest Service and the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command paid the Livermore, Calif. based company $415,000 in contracts. The contracts were awarded before the Department of Homeland Security scrapped similar plans following concerns of privacy, Bloomberg reported.

The company, which had been hired to do conduct such work since 2009, was going to be used by an immigration agency for access into national license plate data but Jeh Johnson, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, cancelled the order in February.

Vigilant Solutions Vice President of Marketing Brian Shockley told Bloomberg in an email that the company's technology provides the data to federal and state law enforcement for free and is used to "solve crimes and save lives."

The American Civil Liberties Union and similar civil and privacy rights organizations such as Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that the license-plate tracking technology is an infringement of citizen's privacy laws and rights.

Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the use of this technology violates the idea that citizens are innocent until proven guilty and argues that the IRS and the other federal agencies shouldn't be allowed access to this information.

"Especially with the IRS, I don't know why these agencies are getting access to this kind of information," Lynch said. "These systems treat every single person in an area as if they're under investigation for a crime -- that is not the way our criminal justice system was set up or the way things work in a democratic society."

The majority of the federal contracts to Vigilant came years before Edward Snowden exposed several U.S. surveillance programs last year regarding spying and wire-tapping American citizens through phone records.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than dozen states have limited access to license-plate tracking as a result of last year's leaked information.