License plate reader bill clears the House, but privacy concerns persist
Flock Safety cameras capture license plates. (Photo courtesy of Flock Safety)
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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Taylor's senseless death "reflects not only a catastrophic failure of the warrant process, but also a foreseeable consequence of Jones," Walker's brief argues. "By allowing magistrates to issue warrants based on hearsay, Jones removed the requirement that a declarant appear in court, swear to the truth of their statement, and be subjected to questioning, and replaced it with a framework that lends itself to fabrication." Thanks to Jones, "officers seeking a warrant but lacking probable cause—like Detective Jaynes—may now be motivated to enhance their own affidavits by inventing conversations with third-party declarants," the brief notes. "And, because Jones requires no oath or appearance from those declarants, the reviewing judge must rely entirely on the affiant's secondhand account of what a declarant allegedly said and why he/she should be believed. Not only does the magistrate have no opportunity to evaluate the declarant's demeanor, consistency, or basis of knowledge, but also, more fundamentally, the magistrate effectively has no way to verify whether the declarant even exists or ever even made the statements attributed to him/her. The result is a system in which wholly fabricated claims can serve as the basis for intrusions into our most private spaces." That brief was joined by Anjanette Young, another victim of a raid based on secondhand information. On a Thursday evening in February 2019, a dozen Chicago police officers, acting on a tip from a confidential informant, burst into Young's apartment. Young, who was changing out of her work clothes, was caught "completely naked and exposed." She was handcuffed in that state, feeling utterly humiliated, for 10 minutes while the officers vainly searched her apartment for an armed felon. "It quickly became apparent that the information they had received from the informant was bad," the brief says. "They were at the wrong apartment." Young "should never have had to endure the invasive and degrading raid that was conducted on her home," the brief adds. "When presented with a warrant application that relied entirely on an unverified tip from an informant, the magistrate judge who issued the warrant had a constitutional obligation to probe the basis for the officer affiant's assertions—e.g., by asking whether the informant's claims were corroborated and what, if anything, law enforcement had done to verify them. While it is unclear whether the magistrate ever spoke with the informant, the fact that he issued the warrant at all—given the apparent lack of any attempt by officers to verify the informant's tip—is highly suggestive of a lack of any meaningful consideration." Jones encourages such lax oversight, the brief argues: "The magistrate judge is no longer able to meaningfully perform [his] constitutional role. Denied access to the declarant, the judge cannot assess his/her credibility firsthand. Instead, the affiant alone decides which facts to include and which to withhold, effectively filtering the evidence and shielding the judge from any information that might undermine the affiant's narrative….The Fourth Amendment demands more than this system of magisterial rubber-stamping that Jones has engendered." The post Denver Case Highlights the Potentially Deadly Hazards of Police Raids Based on Secondhand Information appeared first on
