Minn. Lawmaker Wants Non-Criminal Data Tossed

ST. PAUL (AP) - A Minnesota House committee chairman says police should not be storing license plate tracking information on law-abiding citizens.

DFL state Rep. John Lesch of St. Paul says he doesn't think police or government "has any business" holding information on people who are not part of an active investigation.

Lesch chairs a House civil law committee and is a St. Paul criminal prosecutor. He says he expects legislation on license plate readers to be introduced in the next two weeks.

Police across Minnesota regularly employ license plate readers to catch criminals in real-time by automatically checking vehicles against state databases.

But those readers also store exact location information on millions of regular vehicles. The information is stored in public databases that are subject to open records requests.

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