Virginia Police Can Now Use Facial Recognition, Under Strict New Rules Effective July 1, 2026

Virginia Police Can Now Use Facial Recognition, Under Strict New Rules Effective July 1, 2026

As of July 1, 2026, Virginia local, campus, and state police may use facial recognition technology (FRT), but only under a regulated-use regime: a posted policy, annual reporting, a 98% accuracy floor, and a ban on real-time public tracking, under Va. Code §§ 15.2-1723.2 and 23.1-815.1.

Information last verified on July 8, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: Effective July 1, 2026, statewide for local, campus, and state police.

Jurisdiction scope: This story covers Virginia state, local, and campus law enforcement use of facial recognition technology under Va. Code §§ 15.2-1723.2 and 23.1-815.1. It does not cover private business or employer use of facial recognition, which Virginia regulates separately under the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act's biometric-data provisions, or the older State Police-only framework at Va. Code § 52-4.5.

What Happened

Virginia's local and campus police departments spent nearly four years operating under a statutory pause on facial recognition technology. In 2022, the General Assembly authorized the Virginia State Police to use FRT under a model policy while giving local law-enforcement agencies and campus police departments a deadline, July 1, 2026, to either adopt that same model policy or write their own policy meeting or exceeding its standards before they could purchase or deploy the technology themselves. That deadline has now passed. As of July 1, 2026, Va. Code § 15.2-1723.2 governs local police use of FRT, and the parallel § 23.1-815.1 governs campus police departments at Virginia's colleges and universities.

The amended statutes do not create open-ended authority. They tie any FRT deployment to three conditions: a publicly posted, State Police-caliber policy; an annual public report; and a hard technical floor on the software itself. On that last point, the statute is specific about testing. Any algorithm an agency uses must have:

"algorithms that have demonstrated an accuracy score of at least 98 percent true positives within one or more datasets relevant to the application in a NIST Face Recognition Vendor Test report and minimal performance variations across demographics associated with race, skin tone, ethnicity, or gender."

That threshold comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology's ongoing Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) program, which independently benchmarks commercial facial recognition algorithms. Virginia's Division of Purchases and Supply will not approve a vendor's technology for law-enforcement use unless it clears that NIST bar.

The statutes also draw specific lines around what agencies cannot do with the technology, regardless of accuracy score or policy compliance. Under § 15.2-1723.2, a local law-enforcement agency:

"shall not (i) use facial recognition technology for tracking the movements of an identified individual in a public space in real time; (ii) create a database of images using a live video feed for the purpose of using facial recognition technology; or (iii) enroll a comparison image in a commercial image repository of a facial recognition technology service provider except pursuant to an authorized use."

Those three prohibitions, no live tracking, no live-video database building, and no dumping comparison images into a vendor's commercial repository, are the statute's hard ceiling. They apply on top of, not instead of, the policy-adoption and reporting duties.

Reporting to attorneys and news outlets that have reviewed the framework, including WUSA9's VERIFY team and the outlet State of Surveillance, describes Virginia's 2022 pause as exactly that: a pause tied to a fixed compliance date, not a permanent ban. The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) has published agency guidance on the annual reporting requirement, aimed at helping local chiefs meet the April 1 filing deadline built into the statute.

What the Law Actually Says

Virginia's facial recognition framework now has three parallel statutory tracks: § 52-4.5 for the Virginia State Police (in place since 2022), § 15.2-1723.2 for local and county law-enforcement agencies (now in effect), and § 23.1-815.1 for campus police departments at public colleges and universities (also now in effect). All three share the same structural spine.

Policy adoption and posting. An agency that wants to use FRT must either adopt the Virginia State Police's model FRT policy outright or draft its own policy that meets or exceeds that model's standards. Whichever policy an agency uses, it must publicly post it and update it annually, and it must do so before deploying FRT on a specific criminal investigation or citizen-welfare situation.

Annual reporting by April 1. Agencies using FRT must track their query volume, the number of matches returned, how many of those matches produced an investigative lead, and how many cases closed with an assist from an FRT lead. The police chief must publicly post that data in an annual report due April 1 each year, per Virginia's reporting requirements as summarized in the DCJS agency guide.

The 98% NIST accuracy floor. No algorithm may be deployed unless it has demonstrated at least 98% true-positive accuracy on a relevant NIST FRVT dataset, with minimal demographic variation across race, skin tone, ethnicity, and gender. This ties Virginia's law directly to an outside, federally run testing regime rather than letting agencies or vendors self-certify accuracy.

Barred uses. The statute prohibits three specific categories of use regardless of policy or accuracy: live tracking of an identified person's movements in public, assembling an image database from a live video feed, and enrolling a comparison image in a commercial repository outside an authorized search.

Not probable cause on its own. A match made through facial recognition technology cannot be included in an affidavit to establish probable cause for a search warrant or an arrest warrant. It is admissible only as exculpatory evidence, meaning it can help clear a suspect but cannot, by itself, justify seeking one.

Data control and access. FRT systems must stay under an agency's exclusive control, and any resulting data must be kept confidential and accessible only through a search warrant or an administrative inspection warrant, rather than disseminated or resold.

Penalties. An FRT operator who violates agency policy or runs a search for a reason other than an authorized use is guilty of a Class 3 misdemeanor for a first offense and must complete retraining before being reinstated. A second or subsequent violation is a Class 1 misdemeanor, and the agency must terminate that operator's authorization to run FRT searches.

This regulated-use structure sits alongside Virginia's separate, business-facing biometric privacy rules. The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act classifies biometric identifiers as sensitive data requiring opt-in consent from private businesses, a framework enforced by the Attorney General rather than through the criminal penalties that apply to police misuse under §§ 15.2-1723.2 and 23.1-815.1. It also runs parallel to Virginia's general surveillance camera laws, which govern how cameras themselves may be placed and operated, and to the state's recording-the-police rules, which cover a citizen's right to film officers in public, a distinct question from what technology police can point back at the public.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team. Virginia's approach illustrates a middle path that several states have tried between an outright FRT ban and unrestricted police use. Rather than banning the technology or leaving its use to agency discretion, the legislature built compliance into the statute itself: a public policy requirement, an independent accuracy benchmark tied to NIST, and an annual reporting obligation that creates a public paper trail an agency cannot avoid.

The barred-use list is narrow by design. It does not stop police from running a facial recognition search against a still image from a surveillance camera or an evidence photo, the core investigative use case. It stops the technology from becoming a live public-tracking tool, from turning ordinary camera feeds into a growing facial database, and from letting a commercial vendor retain comparison images beyond what a single authorized search requires. Those three carve-outs map closely to the scenarios that have drawn the most public criticism of facial recognition nationally: persistent surveillance of public spaces and data retention by third-party vendors.

That procedural design is reinforced by the statute's express bar on using a match alone to establish probable cause: a match can point investigators toward a suspect and feed the annual reporting requirement's investigative-lead metric, but it cannot itself support a search or arrest warrant. Readers should treat that as the statute's general design rather than a guarantee about how any individual department applies it in practice.

How This Affects You

If you live, work, or attend a public college in Virginia, this law affects how local and campus police may use footage or images against you, not whether you can record police yourself; that separate question is governed by Virginia's one-party consent recording law. Agencies that comply with the statute must have a publicly posted FRT policy you can review, and an annual report showing how often the technology was used and what it produced. If you believe a local agency is using facial recognition without a posted policy, or is using it for real-time tracking, courts and the General Assembly have generally treated those categories as outside any authorized use under the statute. This is general information, not an assessment of any specific department's compliance.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers Virginia and reflects sources verified on July 8, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• Virginia Recording Laws: Recording the Police
• Virginia Biometric Privacy Laws
• Virginia Surveillance Camera Laws
• Virginia Data Privacy Laws (VCDPA)
• Surveillance Camera Laws by State

Last updated: 2026-07-08. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-07-08.