The Rutherford Institute is calling a decision by the Virginia Supreme Court to give police departments unrestricted use of Automated License Plate Readers to gather data statewide about residents a “blow to privacy.”
The legal team had asked the court to decide in its Fairfax County Police Department v. Neal case that the use of the computerized spy programs violated a state law restricting government collection of personal information.
But the court ruled that Americans “cannot even drive their cars without being tracked by the government,” according to the institute.
“We’re on the losing end of a technological revolution that has already taken hostage our computers, our phones, our finances, our entertainment, our shopping, our appliances, and now, it’s focused its sights on our cars,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute.
“By subjecting Americans to surveillance without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the data for later use, the government has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, there is no such thing as ‘innocent until proven guilty.'”
“Mounted next to traffic lights or on police cars, ALPRs photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database,” the organization reported. “The data is then shared with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies and used to track the movements of persons in their cars. There are reportedly tens of thousands of these license plate readers now in operation throughout the country. It is estimated that over 99% of the people being unnecessarily surveiled are entirely innocent.”
In Fairfax County, police have used the cameras and datasets to keep track of the time, place and driving direction of thousands of drivers.
In 2014, Fairfax County resident Harrison Neal filed a complaint against FCPD asserting its collection and storage of license plate data without an active investigation violates Virginia’s Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act. The law was adopted because of the fear that advanced technologies would be used by the government to collect and analyze massive amounts of personal information about citizens, thereby invading their privacy and liberty,” the institute said.
In 2018, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of Neal but sent the case back to the trial court to determine whether the case involved an “information system” covered by the Data Act. On a second appeal, the court upheld the use of ALPR data collection because the data is not stored within the ALPR system and so was not part of a “record keeping” system covered by the Data Act.
