Virginia’s Supreme Court has overturned a lower court ruling that barred the Fairfax Police Department from using automatic license plate scanners. The Supreme Court ruled that because the system doesn’t include personal information such as phone numbers or addresses it doesn’t violate the state’s privacy law. The court noted that law enforcement can cross-reference license plate data with other databases to obtain such information. But because that other data isn’t part of the license plate scanner data it isn’t illegal.
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