Virginia State Police Used License Plate Readers At Political Rallies, Built Huge Database

By Rebecca Glenberg, Legal Director, ACLU of Virginia

From 2010 until last spring, the Virginia State Police (VSP) maintained a massive database of license plates that allowed them to pinpoint the locations of millions of cars on particular dates and times. Even more disturbing, the agency used automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) to collect information about political activities of law-abiding people. The VSP recorded the license plates of vehicles attending President Obama's 2009 inauguration, as well as campaign rallies for Obama and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. (Documentation of this program, disclosed in response to an ACLU of Virginia public records request, can be found here.) These practices starkly illustrate the need for tight controls on government use of technology for surveillance purposes.

To be sure, there are legitimate law enforcement purposes for ALPR. Some law enforcement agencies maintain "hot lists" of vehicles that are stolen or that have been used in crimes. Data from ALPRs can be instantaneously checked against these lists to quickly locate suspect vehicles. The impact on privacy rights is minimal as long as information about license plates not on the hot list is disposed of promptly.

But by creating and maintaining a database of millions of license plates and targeting political activity, the VSP crossed well over the line from legitimate law enforcement to oppressive surveillance. In the cases of the campaign rallies and the 2009 inauguration, the VSP collected personally identifying information on drivers solely because those drivers were heading to a political event. These drivers were not suspected of or connected to any crime -- their only offense was practicing their First Amendment rights to speak freely and assemble peacefully.

Monitoring protests and political rallies will chill this fundamental form of expression. We must be able to participate in demonstrations and campaign events without fearing that our license plate will be scanned and stored by law enforcement. Surveillance or perceived surveillance of political events -- especially if participation might be controversial -- will make law-abiding people think twice before attending. This is a threat to democracy, and we are not the first to recognize that. Back in 2009, the police themselves beat us to this scoop -- the International Association of Chiefs of Police explained that when it comes to license plate readers, "[t]he risk is that individuals will become more cautious in the exercise of their protected rights of expression, protest, association, and political participation because they consider themselves under constant surveillance."

Belatedly, the VSP asked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli about the legality of its information-gathering practices. In a strong opinion, Cuccinelli explained that the use of ALPRs for "passive" collection of information violates Virginia's Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act. That is, law enforcement may use ALPRs to search for specific vehicles suspected of involvement in criminal activity, but it may not simply collect and save data on thousands of vehicles for which there is no grounds for suspicion.

Since the Attorney General's opinion was issued, the VSP says that it has purged its license plate database and now disposes of such information within 24 hours of collection, unless it is relevant to a clearly defined criminal investigation. But, return of passive data collection should not be just a bad Attorney General opinion away -- our lawmakers must act to clearly prohibit the VSP from resurrecting this surveillance in the future.

The VSP's former use of ALPR data is just one of the ways government uses technology to obtain detailed information about the everyday lives of Americans, along with the National Security Agency's collection of data on every phone call to or from the United States, or the increasing warrantless tracking of cell phone locations by law enforcement agencies. It is essential that Americans remain alert to these encroachments on liberty and demand that their legislators rein in the use of surveillance technology by local, state, and national government.

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The headline should read "Virginia Police State"

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Virginia Cops Claim Amazing Pot-Sniffing Abilities

by Phillip Smith

Police officers in Chesapeake, Virginia, have developed the ability to smell marijuana in cars as they cruise down the highway, even when the police have their windows up. Or, at least, according to a report in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot this week, that's what they are claiming.

"We drive our patrol car with the vents on, pulling air from the outside in, directly into our faces," Officer Barrett Ring said late last year in court during a preliminary hearing, according to a transcript of the proceedings. "Commonly, we'll be behind vehicles that somebody in the vehicle is smoking marijuana, and we can smell it clear as day."

Smelling the odor of marijuana would create probable cause to stop and search a vehicle. Ring said police would follow a car until there were no other cars in the area so they could make sure it was indeed that vehicle from which the odor of weed was emanating.

Defense attorneys and civil libertarians are pronouncing themselves mind-boggled by the claim.

"The idea that police can drive behind a car and smell marijuana is preposterous," said Assistant Public Defender Matthew Taylor. "What do we need drug dogs for if (police) can drive behind cars and smell marijuana?"

The police were claiming powers verging on the "supernatural," he said.

"It stretches the imagination that the police can drive down the road and home in on a car," agreed ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis.

Willis said that traffic stops based solely on an officer's sniffing from a police car will draw legal challenges. "Experts will have to tangle over this and decide," he predicted.

So far, no cases have been thrown out, although Taylor tried unsuccessfully to make that happen in a recent case. In that case, police claimed they smelled marijuana in a vehicle while driving down the highway and pulled it over. But the issue of their amazing olfactory abilities wasn't addressed by the court because police also said they smelled marijuana when they approached the vehicle on foot.

Other area defense attorneys who had cases where police made similar claims said they had not challenged the searches because police had reasons to conduct the traffic stops.

The practice is apparently limited to Chesapeake Police, according to the Virginian-Pilot's survey of local law enforcement agencies. Suffolk County prosecutor Phillips Ferguson said he hadn't heard of the practice, but it expected it to catch on.

"It's very creative policing," he said, but added that if police were using the moving automobile sniff as their as their sole basis for making a traffic stop, that might be successfully challenged. "I'm not saying they wouldn't have been justified in stopping the car, but it's pushing the line," Ferguson said.

Instead, he recommended that if police smell the odor of marijuana coming from a passing vehicle on the road, they find some other pretext to pull it over.

Public defender Taylor said he challenged the vehicle search in his case because he wanted to challenge the validity of the technique. "If cops can get away with this, they will have total authority," he said.

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It's actually pretty easy to smell someone smoking something in the car in front of you, if they have their windows down. But, I guess reason and logic don't help when writing obliviously moronic cop-hating articles. The point isn't that cannabis can be detected by it's strong odor...

The point is that the smell becomes impossible to hone in on when the wind has dispersed it out the window.

It could be coming from anywhere.

It also doesn't seem highly effective peace officer tactics to tail a car for as long as it takes for it to be the only vehicle on the road.

How far behind are they tailing? How windy is it? How fast is the vehicle travelling?

All of these things play a part in whether someone would not only be able to detect the odor of cannabis...but from where EXACTLY it may be coming.

This is bs, they are just trying to vaildate their illegal stops..

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Virginia Is Not for Small Businesses

by S.M. Oliva

No matter how bad the economy gets, governments at all levels will always put their own petty authority ahead of productive market activities. An example is the Batesville Store in rural Albermarle County, Virginia, which was closed -- without notice or due process -- by a local bureaucrat who decreed the store, which was being used primarily as a restaurant and live music venue, had too many seats. The store?s owners explained:

The Batesville Store is closed until further notice.

Earlier today two representatives from the state of Virginia showed up at the store without warning, informed us that we were not in compliance with certain state regulations, and gave us basically no choice except to close immediately.

This came as a complete shock to Liza and me. We believed that we had been operating in compliance with all state regulations since we opened in April of 2007, and we received no indication otherwise from anyone representing the state.

In fact, we have been inspected regularly by Warren Ollinger, the representative from the state's Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services who is responsible for inspecting the store, and he has always given us favorable reports on our operation. He never suggested in any way that we would encounter what happened today. The two representatives who showed up this afternoon told us that Mr. Ollinger initiated the complaint and the subsequent review that led to the decision to close us down.

Jessica Jaglois of CBS 19 in Charlottesville added:

A store employee [said] that the reason behind the shutdown wasn?t a health issue, but a safety?issue. He says the store had exceeded their seating capacity.?A country store is allowed to have 15 total seats by law, but The Batesville Store has over 40. The employee was frustrated saying that the Health Department hadn?t given them a warning.

The problem, as Waldo Jaquith noted, is that Virginia officials classify the Batesville Store as a ?country store,? which legally restricts their business to certain government-defined functions. Unfortunately, the store?s owners chose to serve their customers instead of the bureaucrats, and now everyone will pay the price:

As you know from yesterday?s email, the state has given us no option except to close The Batesville Store.

For the past five years, we?ve attempted to serve the community by keeping this classic, historic country store alive and thriving. Ironically, our success has proven to be our undoing.

Although we have always operated with an eye toward Virginia State Health Department guidelines (and have never been cited for a health code violation of any kind), we were in fact defined by the state as a country store and thus fell under the governance of the state?s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. We were regularly inspected by the Ag Department and were never informed of any significant problems with our operations.

However, the state representatives who suddenly appeared yesterday afternoon and shut us down without warning told us that it was decided (note the passive voice, please) that we do too much business to remain a country store. They went on to say that our only option for remaining open was to convert the store into a restaurant that would comply with all Virginia Health Department regulations.

Our kitchen is basically in compliance with Health Department regulations now. But the legalities of the store?s historic status as well as the limitations of the building itself make it impossible for us to meet the state?s other requirements for operating a restaurant.

We would have to make a host of changes in the facility to stay open legally, but because of a combination of the law and practical realities, we cannot make those changes.

So much to our regret, we are closing The Batesville Store ?

No doubt Thomas Jefferson, Albemarle County?s most famous former resident, is beaming with pride at how the government he helped to establish has crushed a small business for the greater glory of the state health department.

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Apparently, there were problems:

http://www.newsplex.com/home/headlines/Historic_Albemarle_County_Store_Closes_Unexpectedly_123670304.html?storySection=comments

Here is what one of the commenters on the article said about the store:

by sean Location: batesville on Jun 12, 2011 at 04:56 PM

"The store is disgusting, not to mention slow as heck. I complained to Cid two years ago because I saw one of his employees put a spoon in her mouth, then back in the pasta salad to stir it. Not just disgusting, but dangerous. Cid told me the girl was having 'problems' and that he's had similar complaints about her. He wasn't going to do anything about it, though, so I called the dept of health. Turns out they're under the dept of agriculture. What a joke. I'm glad they've been shut down before someone gets killed like in Germany."

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

Physician, heal thy self.

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