The Virginia Senate passed a bill Thursday to regulate license plate readers. House Majority Leader Chariniele Herring, D-Fairfax, is sponsoring the bill. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee amended the bill, which means the House, where the original legislation passed 59-39, will have to either accept the changes and advance it to the governor or work out the differences between the two chambers in a conference.
The legislation would limit automatic license plate readers to be used; only as part of a criminal investigation where there is a reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed; as part of an active investigation related to a missing or endangered person; or to receive notifications related to a missing or endangered person, a person with an outstanding warrant, a person associated with human trafficking, a stolen vehicle or a stolen license plate.
In the original legislation, data from the readers would be destroyed after 30 days. It was amended Monday by the Senate Courts Committee to reduce the time to 21 days.
The original legislation also allowed for the expansion of camera use on Virginia’s highway system, but Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, successfully added an amendment to the bill Monday that would require a reenactment vote from the General Assembly next year to allow for this.
This change to the bill turned law enforcement groups who initially supported the bill against it.
“We’ve worked closely with the patron, with the advocates, and we were supporting the 30 days, but we can no longer support the bill because the retention time has been reduced to 21 days, and that lessens the effectiveness of the program,” said John Jones from the Virginia Sheriff’s Association.
The legislation also allows localities to reduce the number of days that data is saved from the cameras to less than 21.
Charlottesville already has a law in place limiting the retention of data to seven days.
A representative of the Charlottesville Police Department said that the system was working well that week when speaking to the Courts Committee Monday.
When asked if he would like to see that time increased, he said: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Democrats on the committee previously expressed concerns about the data from these cameras being used by other states and the federal government for their own reasons, like searching for a woman who may have come to Virginia for an abortion from a more restrictive state.
Herring acknowledged Monday that the legislation does not completely alleviate some of those concerns, but it will add restrictions to a system that is already in place with no limits.
“This bill limits the way data can be shared in all feasible ways, though it cannot wholly avoid federal warrants and subpoenas,” she said to the committee.
“This bill does not allow LPR data to be shared with other states or the federal government, except for subpoena duces tecum or search warrants, which requires authorization by a judicial officer,” she continued.
Herring also said that this bill would make Virginia the most restrictive state in the country for storing data from license plate readers. However, that is not true.
“[This bill] still makes Virginia the most restrictive data retention state in the nation,” she said. “To give the committee some perspective, Alabama is five years, Colorado three years, Florida three years, North Carolina 90 days and Minnesota 60 days. Without this bill, there are absolutely no limitations set by this legislature.”
Herring did not mention New Hampshire, however, which requires records to be purged from the system within three minutes.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, reemphasized on the chamber floor Thursday that this legislation adds guardrails to a system without any.
“Say, for example, the City of Richmond wants to go pull one up over here in the corner. They can still do that. That was the law yesterday. Law today. It’ll be the law July 1,” he said. “That doesn’t change. So what the bill does is basically put a bunch of guardrails and restrictions on what you can do with data that comes out of these things. Right now, the data can be held indefinitely and can be shared with anybody if you access it. There are no rules on illegal access and appropriate access.”