Court docket lets in Police to use registration code Scanners to ALL Drivers, Even innocent Ones

 In a blow to privacy that extends the government’s authority to make an internet of surveillance, the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that state and native police are unengaged to use Automated registration number plate Readers (ALPRs) to gather data about the travel and movement of persons throughout the state. Denouncing the actual fact that Americans cannot even drive their cars without being tracked by the govt., The Rutherford Institute had asked the Court to rule Fairfax County local department v. Neal that the utilization of ALPRs violated a Virginia law restricting government collection of private information.

Mounted next to traffic lights or on police cars, ALPRs photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take an image of each passing license tag number, and store the tag number and therefore the date, time, and placement of the image in an exceedingly searchable database. the info is then shared with enforcement, fusion centers, and personal companies and accustomed track the movements of persons in their cars.

There are reportedly tens of thousands of those registration code readers now operative throughout the country. it's estimated that over 99% of the people being unnecessarily surveilled are entirely innocent.

“We’re on the losing end of an industrial 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 so storing the info for later use, the govt has erected the final word suspect society. In such an environment, there's no such thing as ‘innocent until proven guilty.’”

Since 2010, the Fairfax County department of local government (FCPD) has used ALPRs to record the time, place, and driving direction of thousands of drivers who use Fairfax County roads daily. vehicle plate readers capture over 1,800 images of license tag numbers per minute and convert the photographs to a computer format which will be searched by tag number.

This information, stored during a police database for a year, allows the police to work out the driving habits of persons further as to where they need to be. In 2014, Fairfax County resident Harrison Neal filed a complaint against FCPD asserting its collection and storage of vehicle plate data without an energetic investigation violates Virginia’s Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act (Data Act), a law enacted thanks to the fear that advanced technologies would be employed by the govt to gather and analyze massive amounts of private information about citizens, thereby invading their privacy and liberty.

In 2018, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of Neal but sent the case back to the judicature to see whether the case involved an “information system” covered by the Information Act. On a second appeal, the Court upheld the employment of ALPR data collection because the info isn't stored within the ALPR system then wasn't a part of a “record-keeping” system covered by the info Act.

In weighing in on the case, Rutherford Institute attorneys argued that the history of the information Act affirms that it's intended to ban the gathering and maintenance of ALPR data by the govt., which together with other surveillance technologies, creates vast dossiers about the lives and activities of citizens.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights are threatened or violated and educates the general public on a good spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.