License plate reader bill clears the House, but privacy concerns persist
Virginia lawmakers are moving to regulate automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) for the first time, but privacy advocates warn that the legislation could expand surveillance rather than rein it in.
The House of Delegates passed a proposal Tuesday that would impose rules on the use of ALPRs, a technology that has become widely adopted by law enforcement, private businesses, and homeowner associations but has largely operated in a grey legal area.
House Bill 2724, sponsored by Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, seeks to limit how police can use the data collected by the cameras and restrict how long it can be stored. It also authorizes the Virginia Department of Transportation to issue permits for ALPR installation along the state's highways.
The legislation follows growing concerns over the potential misuse of the technology. In Norfolk, residents have filed a federal lawsuit arguing that ALPR cameras violate their Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against unreasonable searches and seizures. In another troubling case, a mother and children were held at gunpoint after being mistakenly identified as driving a stolen car based on an ALPR alert.
While Herring's bill is meant to create safeguards around ALPR use, critics argue it actually paves the way for a major expansion of surveillance across Virginia.
Justice Forward Virginia founder Brad Haywood took to social media this week to accuse Herring of pushing legislation that benefits private companies selling ALPR systems rather than protecting civil liberties.
Haywood said Herring was 'passing it off as 'regulation' when she knows full well that it gives Flock Safety 60,000 more miles of highways on which to install its Big Brother cameras.'
Flock Safety, one of the leading manufacturers of ALPRs, has aggressively marketed its cameras nationwide, partnering with police departments and private entities to expand their use.
With Herring's bill now headed to the Senate, it is likely to face continued scrutiny and pushback.
When lawmakers examined ALPR regulations last year, Sen. Danny Diggs, R-Yorktown, defended the technology and its use to law enforcement from his perspective as a former sheriff.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, raised concerns about potential misuse, warning that ALPRs could disproportionately impact people of color.
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Fox News
5 hours ago
- Fox News
Kohberger prosecutor reveals crucial moment: ‘Everything hinged on that argument'
Failure wasn't an option. With the entire case against Bryan Kohberger on the line, an Idaho prosecutor held steady and helped convince a judge to allow controversial DNA evidence to stand – despite the FBI violating its own policy to obtain it. Jeff Nye, chief of the criminal division at the Idaho Attorney General's Office, was the legal big gun brought in to back up Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson as Kohberger's defense threw a "kitchen sink" strategy at the court – challenging everything and hoping something would stick. "Just pure evil is the way that I would describe him," Nye said of Kohberger. "I think it was surreal, especially going up to Latah County, you know, small courtroom, small town. When I kind of get into my groove, everything else kind of melts away. I forget kind of the external details, but then I go to sit down for my argument and I see him sitting there, and I immediately think about what he did that night and the horrible, horrible acts that he committed against these totally innocent people." One of Nye's key contributions was overcoming the defense's challenges to investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) evidence – which the FBI used to tip investigators off to Kohberger for the first time in what was revealed to be a controversial move that the defense tried to have precluded from trial. "It was critical," Nye told Fox News Digital. "I mean, the stakes could not have been higher in this case on that issue." State police and the independent lab Othram had been working on IGG leads until Dec. 10, 2022, when the FBI stepped in and submitted the crime scene DNA sample to a commercial genetics database designed to help people track their family history. While technically a violation of the bureau's own internal policies and the service's terms of use, the court said the evidence could stand and knocked down Kohberger's arguments that the IGG technique had violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Nye had argued that the policy in question "does not impose any legal limitations on otherwise lawful investigative or prosecutorial activities." The judge on the case ultimately agreed that it had been a valid investigatory tactic. "I struggle with the idea that DNA left at a crime scene, that there's any expectation of privacy," Idaho Judge Steven Hippler told Kohberger's lawyers in January. The FBI previously declined to comment on the issue and instead pointed Fox News Digital to Hippler's Feb. 17 order, which found investigators had not violated Kohberger's constitutional rights and allowed the IGG evidence to remain in play. Nye, who argued in favor of the evidence for the prosecution, revealed to Fox News Digital that it would have been "devastating" if Hippler ruled in favor of the defense. "It would be devastating, because it wouldn't just be the DNA that goes out, the match at least, to Mr. Kohberger. It would be all of the fruit that came from that match. And that's a lot of things," he told Fox News Digital. "That's all the Cellebrite stuff, because they don't have his devices to review if they never made the identification. That's, all of his cellphone records, you know, those warrants were issued based on the identification that was made from the DNA. So all of that's gone. It would have put the state in a very bad position to move forward in this case." The IGG argument ended up being the biggest of his career, he said – and that's coming from a Georgetown-educated prosecutor who has argued homicide cases in front of the Idaho Supreme Court. "The other thing that made me a little bit nervous is when you're arguing Fourth Amendment issues, even if the state loses and the court finds that there was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, there are some exceptions to the exclusionary rule that the state can sometimes argue..." he said. "In my brief and an oral argument, we didn't even assert an exception to the exclusionary rule, because there just wasn't one that could apply, and so everything hinged on that argument that this did not violate the Fourth Amendment." If he failed, prosecutors could have lost access to the IGG and any evidence derived from it or from search warrants based on it, he said. He also had out-of-state decisions that went in the prosecution's favor, but it was the first time the controversy had come up in Idaho. He was nervous – at least before he stepped in front of the judge. "Once you get into a back and forth with the court, or at least once I do, that kind of melts away, and I can focus on the argument," he told Fox News Digital. Detectives said during a news briefing after Kohberger's sentencing that they believed they would still have identified the suspect if he hadn't left DNA at the scene. They had his car, and they said they would have found him eventually. On Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger entered an off-campus house at the University of Idaho and killed Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. He dropped a Ka-Bar knife sheath at the crime scene, near Mogen's hip. And his DNA on the snap generated the lead that brought police to the killer in December 2022. Officially called a "tip" in IGG terms, the DNA match was confirmed when police swabbed Kohberger's cheek upon his arrest at his parents' house in Pennsylvania. After years of denying the allegations, Kohberger's defense took a major turn in July. Having failed to have the IGG thrown out or to have the potential death penalty removed ahead of trial, in large part to Nye's work on the case, Kohberger pleaded guilty. "I wanted to hear him say that, and he finally did," Nye said. "By the time of the sentencing, I had decided myself, I'm done with him. I want nothing else to do with him. I don't care what he's thinking, I do not care what he's doing, and so I made a very conscious effort at the sentencing to not ever look at him, to not pay him any attention, and instead to focus on the victims as they gave their impact statements." The now-convicted murderer received four consecutive sentences of life in prison with no parole – one for each of the first-degree murder charges he faced – plus another 10 years for burglary. As part of the plea deal, he waived his rights to appeal and to seek a sentence reduction. After Idaho AG Raul Labrador took office in 2023, he promoted Nye to run the criminal division in part because of his plan to revamp how the department works with county prosecutors, offering them assistance on major cases in an about-face from policy under the prior administration, which would either take full control over cases or avoid getting involved at all. Before the promotion, he said he led the special prosecutions unit and had a ground-level view of what smaller jurisdictions were asking for when they came to the state for help. It made sense, he said, to want to have control over a case, but he also believes that a community's ability to bring killers to justice should not be based on its population and budget. "I personally feel pretty strongly that the state should step in in these bigger cases and offer to assist," he said. "And so that's what happened in this case." Nye, deputy AG Madison Gourley and former deputy AG Ingrid Batey, who is now a member of the Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, all assisted on behalf of the attorney general's office. Thompson, the Latah County prosecuting attorney, led the case. His senior deputy, Ashley Jennings, also played a major role, handling a massive discovery process and battling more of Kohberger's pretrial motions. And former U.S. Attorney Joshua D. Hurwit was commissioned as a special deputy prosecutor to assist if the case had gone to trial.
NBC News
19 hours ago
- NBC News
Eric André lawsuit over drug search at Atlanta airport revived by appeals court
A federal appeals court decided to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by comedians Eric André and Clayton English in 2022 in which they claim their Forth Amendment rights were violated. André and English alleged in their lawsuit that Clayton County officers stopped them in two separate incidents at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport while inside the jet bridge as they were about to board flights. The Black celebrities say they were told to hand over their boarding passes and IDs, and asked if they were carrying illegal drugs. The pair allege the officers violated their Fourth Amendment rights "to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," according to the federal appellant court opinion published on Friday. They also claimed that the officers stopped them based on their race. Their lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 2023 by the district court, citing the plaintiff's "failure to plausibly allege any constitutional violations," and all defendants, including Clayton County and the police department's chief, were protected by immunity. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit said in its opinion that it found that André and English "plausibly alleged that Clayton County subjected them to unreasonable searches and seizures" and reversed the dismissal "after careful review." The court affirmed the remainder of the district court's dismissal, which includes the celebrities' claim that they were stopped by the officers based on their race. The Clayton County Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NBC News has reached out to representatives for André and English for comment. Two separate incidents, one year apart English was traveling from Atlanta to Los Angeles for work in 2020 when he says Clayton County officers stopped him on the jet bridge after he had cleared TSA security and a boarding pass check by a gate agent, according to his and André's 2022 lawsuit. "The officers flashed their badges and asked English whether he was carrying any illegal drugs," the lawsuit said. "English denied carrying illegal drugs. English 'understood that he was not free to leave and continue his travel while the officers were questioning him.'" Officers stood on either side of English, blocking his path to the plane, and asked him for his boarding pass and ID, which he handed over because he felt he had no choice but to comply, according to the lawsuit. An officer also asked to search English's carry-on, which he allowed them to do, "believing he had no choice." The officers let English go after checking his bag, per the lawsuit. "Throughout the encounter, Mr. English was worried that if he said anything the officers perceived as 'out of line,' he would not be allowed to board the plane or reach his destination," the lawsuit stated. In 2021, André was traveling from Charleston, South Carolina, to Atlanta before heading home to Los Angeles. He was stopped on the jet bridge while trying to board his flight in Atlanta. André was also stopped on the jet bridge after clearing multiple security points, according to the lawsuit. Officers also asked the comedian if he was carrying any illegal drugs, like cocaine or methamphetamine, which he denied, the lawsuit said. He was also allegedly asked to hand over his ID and boarding pass and complied, believing he could not refuse. "After approximately five minutes of standing in the narrow jet bridge and being questioned, Mr. André was told by the officers that he was free to leave and board the plane," according to the lawsuit. The stops were part of the Clayton County Police Department's "drug interdiction program," which aims to selectively stop passengers on the jet bridge before they board flights to ask them if they are carrying drugs and request to search their luggage. The department claims the stops are random and consensual. André and English claim that the stops are not random or consensual, and that the Clayton County police program specifically targets Black passengers and other passengers of color, according to the court opinion. There were 402 jet bridge stops from Aug. 30, 2020, to April 30, 2021, according to police records, and passengers' races were listed for 378 of those stops. Of those 378 passengers, 211, or 56%, were Black, and people of color accounted for 258 total stops, or 68%, the celebrities' lawsuit states, The Associated Press reported. André called the experience "dehumanizing and demoralizing." "People were gawking at me, and I looked suspicious when I had done nothing wrong," André said in an interview at the time of the lawsuit filing. The court's decision In its decision, the federal appeals court held that the complaint sufficiently alleged that the coercive nature of the defendants' actions during their stops of André and English made them feel that they were not free to leave, or that they were "seized" by the officers, meaning they plausibly alleged that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated. English "plausibly alleged that the officers stopped him and began asking questions without telling him he could leave until after they finished questioning him," the court said, adding that they came to the same conclusion with André. However, the court did not find that the comedians were able to plausibly allege that the officers were acting with discriminatory purpose when they stopped them, citing that André and English "do not allege that the individual defendants knew of any racially discriminatory complaint or saw the County's logs or that the County directed the individual defendants to single out Black passengers for interdictions." "For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that plaintiffs plausibly alleged that defendants violated their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," the court said. "The individual defendants are entitled to qualified immunity, but Clayton County is not. Accordingly, we reverse the dismissal of plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims against Clayton County. We affirm the dismissal of plaintiffs' remaining claims."
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rylan Clark calls for more stories about transgender people amid ‘wave of hate'
TV and radio presenter Rylan Clark has called for there to be more stories about transgender people amid a 'mass wave of hate'. In an appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Clark, 36, who has presented on This Morning and Big Brother's Bit On The Side, spoke about the adversity LGBT+ people can face, as well as his own experience growing up gay. He said: 'I feel that there is a mass wave of hate just sweeping the community, especially trans people at the moment. 'There's a lot of people that are talking about bathrooms and spaces and things like this and people are just being tarnished with the same brush.' The presenter explained there is a mindset that because one transgender person does something bad 'that means all trans people are awful people'. He said: 'Trans people … they're going through a wave of hate at the minute, and I think there is space to show real stories, real trans people. 'A lot of people out there think trans people are the enemy, f*** me. 'I'd like you to walk a mile in their shoes and see who the real enemy is out there to people, because the stories that I know of friends of mine and people that I've grown up with, transitions are awful, absolutely awful.' Over the Easter period, the Supreme Court declared that the words 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The Equality And Human Rights Commission's interim update on the implications of the judgment said transgender people should not use toilets and other services of the gender they identify as. Trans rights protests took place across the country following the ruling and celebrities showed their support by signing an open letter in solidarity with transgender people. At the end of July, the London Trans Pride saw a record-breaking turnout of about 100,000 people, making it 'the largest Trans Pride event in history', according to organisers. Clark said he does not want or need Pride but added that the annual celebratory event is needed because of the way LGBT+ people are treated. At the Scottish TV event, the BBC Radio 2 presenter spoke to actor Russell Tovey and the two reflected on their respective experiences growing up gay in Essex. Speaking about a nightclub he would go to as a young man, Tovey said: 'It was a really important safe space, which I didn't realise at the time how important that was. 'And now you hear about so many safe spaces disappearing for so many queer people, and the importance of that, of somewhere where you can relax and be amongst the people who understand you. 'The disappearances of those is dangerous.'
