You’ve seen them on top of police cruisers across Virginia, license plate readers — constantly tracking your whereabouts and feeding your local police department with information about where you have been and when you were there. Now a lawsuit is challenging that.
Massive surveillance of the public. That’s what the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia calls license plate readers, those cameras attached to the top of police vehicles that can collect hundreds of pieces of information a second, all with a date stamp and location marker. Leslie Mehta is one of the ACLU lawyers taking a case out of Fairfax County to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
“If an individual always goes by this particular location, a police officer could gather that information and determine, you know, next Tuesday this person will be at this particular location.”
That’s all without a warrant or even an active investigation. Virginia legal expert Rich Kelsey says this case is a classic example of the tension between freedom and order.
“Somewhere along the line, some car is going to go missing and instead of being able to check thousands of license plate readers it’s very possible that this change in law — if the ACLU wins — could result in the inability to do so.”
The court will hear oral arguments in the case later this year.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
