VA police retain license plate scans in spite of AG opinion

Police in northern Virginia continue to retain en masse scans of license plates, which they harvest daily simply by driving around in suitably equipped cruisers, in spite of an AG opinion indicating they had no authority to do so.

A spokesman defending the practice, Prince William Police Chief Stephan Hudson, used the classic argument for justification: “It’s impossible for us to say within a set period of time whether the [license plate] data would be relevant to a criminal investigation.” (Quote taken from the linked Post article.) In other words, police will harvest the data and decide later how to use it.