Rutherford Institute Challenges Police Use of License Plate Readers As Warrantless Mass Surveillance Tool
RICHMOND, Va. — Denouncing the
fact that Americans cannot even drive their cars without being enmeshed in the
government’s web of surveillance, The Rutherford Institute has asked the
Virginia Supreme Court to prohibit Virginia police from using license plate
readers as warrantless surveillance tools to track drivers’ movements.
Mounted next to traffic lights or
on police cars, Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), which 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 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 surveilled are entirely innocent. In
challenging the use of license plate readers by Fairfax police, Rutherford
Institute attorneys argue that Fairfax County’s practice of collecting and
storing license plate reader data violates a Virginia law prohibiting the
government from amassing personal information about individuals, including
their driving habits and location.
“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 and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.
“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.’”
Since 2010, the Fairfax County
Police Department (FCPD) has used ALPRs to record the time, place, and driving
direction of thousands of drivers who use Fairfax County roads daily. License
plate readers capture over 1,800 images of license tag numbers per minute and
convert the images to a computer format that can be searched by tag number.
This information, stored in a police database for a year, allows the police to
determine the driving habits of persons as well as where they have been. 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 (Data Act), a law enacted 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.
Despite a 2013 Virginia Attorney
General opinion that its ALPR practices violate the Data Act, FCPD continued to
collect and store ALPR data in order to track the movements of vehicles and
drivers. 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.
After the trial court found the Data Act did apply and barred FCPD’s
passive use of ALPRs, the case was again appealed to the Supreme Court of
Virginia. In weighing in on the case, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that
the history of the Data Act affirms it prohibits the collection and maintenance
of ALPR data by the government, which along with other surveillance
technologies, creates vast dossiers about the lives and activities of citizens.
The amicus brief in Fairfax
County Police Department v Neal is available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a
nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge
to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and
educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
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