Can you conceal your car tag?

Hah! You thought you’d fool the NSA, CIA, FBI, Perry Police, the Sheriff and everyone else who wants to track your every movement by following your car around with surveillance cameras.

So you thought you’d conceal your license plate by putting one of those smoky plastic coverings over the top of it. After all, you see cars all over town doing it and the cops don’t seem to care, so why not? But then it occurs to you, can you legally conceal your tag from the prying eyes of the government?

Of course not. There is a law on that, as there is a law for almost everything. O.C.G.A. Sec. 40-2-41 provides, in part, “No license plate shall be covered with any material unless the material is colorless and transparent. No apparatus that obstructs or hinders the clear display and legibility of a license plate shall be attached to the rear of any motor vehicle required to be registered in the state. Any person who violates any provision of this Code section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.”

But how often does a cop care about concealed tags? They let the people who obscure their plates go free all the time, so apparently that is way low on the cops’ priority list.

But let’s say that you are smarter than the average bear and devise a license plate covering that appears 100 percent transparent, but in reality has metallic flakes in the plastic that makes the plate unrecognizable to a surveillance camera such as the license plate readers that the Perry Police and the Sheriff recently tried out.

Well, the Legislature is one step ahead of you on that, too. O.C.G.A. Sec. 40-2-6.1 says: “Any person who willfully covers any license plate with plastic, other material, or any part of his or her body in order to prevent or impede the ability of surveillance equipment to clearly photograph or otherwise obtain a clear image of the license plate is guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000.00.”

Your buddies under the Gold Dome thought of this in 2005 when they made this law. It was undoubtedly made for those traffic light cameras, but now it applies to license plate readers as well.

License plates are vitally important to the government as they need your money. The tax and spend guys can’t have you not being detectable because you might not have paid your taxes. Your right to be free from government surveillance is lost as soon as you hit a government street. Get used to it because so few people seem concerned about the current state of affairs that I don’t see freedom prevailing any time soon.

Kelly Burke, former district attorney and magistrate judge, is engaged in private practice. He focuses on personal injury cases and corporate litigation. These articles are not designed to give legal advice, but are designed to inform the public about how the law affects their daily lives. Contact Kelly at kelly@burkelasseterllc.com to comment on this article or suggest articles about the law that you’d like to see.

HHJ News