Big Brother is watching your license plate. That's because local governments across Virginia are using license plate readers to track who is going where and when they arrive.
Senator Lashrecse Aird is a Democrat from Petersburg who says expanding the use of license plate readers should wait until lawmakers know more about how it works.
"It ensures that we have the opportunity to take a closer look at the impact of expansion," Aird said, "particularly in this new political climate because of what we're seeing at the federal level and it allows us to give the guardrails time to work."
A Senate committee reduced the amount of time law-enforcement can keep the information, and they slapped a reenactment clause on the bill delaying expansion and forcing another vote next year.
"I think we have to be very careful when we are expanding mass surveillance on a mass scale like we are with automated license plate readers," said Senator Jennifer Carroll Foy of Prince William County. "It is very clear that automated license plate readers cannot go onto state-maintained highways, and if we were to pass the expansion then we would be expanding onto 60,000 miles in Virginia."
If the bill gets out of the closed-door conference committee with an expansion this year, Carroll Foy says, she'll be voting against it on the Senate floor.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.TagsNews Local News
