We are asking you to write to your State Delegate and Senator to ensure neither they nor their colleagues bring forth legislation to expand automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) in the Commonwealth of Virginia during the 2026 legislative session in January.

Since 2023, the Virginia General Assembly has voted down proposals to expand the use of ALPRs to conduct mass surveillance. ALPRs are AI-enhanced surveillance cameras designed to track the movements of every person traveling. ALPRs pose serious threats to liberty, privacy, and our safety. The many times failed proposal would have given Virginia law enforcement unprecedented access to the movements of people by authorizing the Virginia State Police to install, maintain, and operate the surveillance technology for law enforcement purposes on any and all roads/highways maintained by VDOT. Because ALPR systems capture license plate data of all vehicles that drive by, not just of those associated with investigations, database entries can be in the billions. ALPRS are a digital dragnet that captures information about millions of people who’ve committed no crimes. The data can be collected and stored indefinitely and shared.

It is impossible to overstate how grim and harmful mass surveillance is. ALPRs radically transform the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life and create tremendous opportunity for abuse by private companies, the police, and the government. The abuse of the data collected by ALPRs has been prevalent and well-documented. For example, ALPRs have been used to surveil people because of political views, sexual orientation, and immigration status, intimate partners, women seeking reproductive healthcare, and Black and Brown people. ALPR databases have been accessed by federal agencies to include ICE, DHS, ATF, CBP, and other out-of-state law enforcement and government agencies.

We oppose mass surveillance because of the serious and significant implications on our safety, the increasing abuse by law enforcement and government, the disparate impacts on minority communities, the potential this technology has to become another driver of mass incarceration, the growing costs of this new system on taxpayers, and the unavoidable access ALPRs provide to law enforcement, private parties, other states, and the federal government to an immense amount of highly sensitive data. We are also increasingly concerned over the long-term intentions of the private companies who have solicited electeds in our state to help in building an expansive and seamless system of surveillance nationwide. We are asking you to email members of the House of Delegates and Senate and ask them to protect the lives, liberty, safety, and interests of the public, not to take up arms for predatory private surveillance companies with technology that creates opportunity for harm and abuse of their constituents.