Tom Jackman reports:
Every day, police officers across Virginia scan the license plates of tens of thousands of vehicles and enter that information into their departments’ databases, hoping that it might help solve a crime.
But last year, then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II issued a clear opinion about the use of license plate readers, which have become common across the country: If the information isn’t directly related to a criminal case, it “may not lawfully be collected.”
Virginia State Police quickly adopted a policy to purge the data within 24 hours, unless a crime was involved. But in Northern Virginia, police departments have decided to ignore Cuccinelli’s opinion.
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