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posted by martyb on Thursday April 04 2019, @05:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-suspects-are-guilty dept.

Judge orders Fairfax police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

Victory for privacy advocates could force police statewide to erase license databases

A Fairfax County judge on Monday ordered the Fairfax County police to stop maintaining a database of photos of vehicle license plates, with the time and location where they were snapped, ruling that "passive use" of data from automated license plate readers on the back of patrol cars violates Virginia privacy law.

[...] The ruling by Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Robert J. Smith is a victory for privacy rights advocates who argued that the police could track a person's movements by compiling the times and exact locations of a car anytime its plate was captured by a license plate reader.

[...] Police say they can, and have, used license plate location data to find dangerous criminals and missing persons. Privacy advocates don't oppose the use of the technology during an active investigation, but they say that maintaining a database of license plate locations for months or years provides too much opportunity for abuse by the police. Last month, the ACLU disclosed that the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was tapping into a vast, national database of police and private license plate readers. Such private databases remain unregulated.

The Fairfax judge's ruling applies only to the Fairfax police, but it may find a receptive audience, and have statewide impact

Imagine if all cars looked exactly the same.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday April 04 2019, @05:44PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday April 04 2019, @05:44PM (#824610)

    > Such private databases remain unregulated.

    Yup, that's your problem right here.
    After some people found databases were making their train-loading jobs very efficient, Europe learnt a while back to keep an eye (security, contents) on all databases containing personal information.

    When we hear of breaches and abuse, it's a good reminder that the west side of the pond should learn to regulate before bad shit happens.

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