Massachusetts’ highest court will consider a case that could change how police can use information collected by automated license plate readers.

The Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments Wednesday in Commonwealth vs. Jason McCarthy.

A central question in the case is whether the police must get a search warrant or court order to use information provided by automated license plate readers — also known as ALPRs — which are devices that automatically scan the license plates of all passing cars.

McCarthy and Brian Whittemore were arrested on drug dealing charges. According to court briefs, the Barnstable police were investigating Whittemore for drug dealing, and spotted McCarthy’s mother’s car, which McCarthy was later seen driving, at Whittemore’s home in Hyannis. McCarthy had 30 prior drug violations.

Using automated license plate readers mounted on the Sagamore and Bourne bridges, the police tracked McCarthy’s car over a 74-day period, and found that he made 21 same-day round trips to the Cape. The police followed him after receiving a real-time alert from a license plate reader and observed what they believed to be a drug deal. The police arrested both men.

After he was arrested, McCarthy told his brother to get $10,000 in cash to from his dresser to pay his bail. The police, believing the cash was drug money, seized it.

McCarthy is arguing that the police violated his privacy rights by using license plate readers to track his movements over 74 days, and any evidence gathered as a result of the data — observations of the meeting, drugs and statements made — should be suppressed.

McCarthy’s attorney says he has a right to be left alone “free from being surreptitiously surveilled by the government” for a 74-day period in which he was not suspected of criminal wrongdoing.

“Our expectations of privacy are that the Government is not creating a dossier to track our freedoms of movement, to be accessed when they want, without judicial oversight,” McCarthy’s attorney Paul Bogosian wrote in a court brief.

Bogosian wrote that the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s freedom of travel. “With the ALPR, would Paul Revere’s ride ever have gone undetected?” he wrote.

Prosecutors from Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe’s office argue that someone driving on a public bridge does not have an expectation of privacy for their license plate. “There is no expectation of privacy in the photograph of a car license plate taken from a fixed point,” Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Sweeney wrote in a court brief.

Sweeney added that in today’s society, where there is a significant amount of video surveillance from security cameras at all kinds of public locations, “it is simply unreasonable for any person to believe that their public conduct should remain private from observation.”

Prosecutors also say the arrest was made due to probable cause stemming from the larger police investigation.

McCarthy and prosecutors disagree over whether data from the devices — which is relatively new technology — falls under existing federal privacy regulations governing electronic communications data, which require law enforcement to get a court order to access the information.

Data from license plate readers has been used as a law enforcement tool in Massachusetts since around 2014. The police can, for example, “hot-list” a license plate number of a stolen car or a car used in an abduction and get an alert when a license plate reader sees that plate.

The ACLU has for years been calling for limits on how the devices can be used and how the data can be stored and accessed, citing privacy concerns.

Legislation that would limit amount of time license plate data can be stored without a warrant and limit the purposes for which it can be used has been considered by the Legislature but never passed.

The ACLU, the public defender’s office and the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted an amicus brief in the case.

These groups argue that the use of the devices gives the government access to detailed private information that could not be found through traditional surveillance, and the police should be required to obtain a warrant to access that data.

“ALPRs give police previously unimaginable capabilities: the ability to effortlessly track an individual for days or weeks on end, to enter a virtual time machine to review past movements, or to instantaneously pluck an individual’s real-time location out of thin air,” attorneys for the groups wrote. This information could provide insight into, for example, a person’s marital fidelity or religious observance. They argued that without a warrant, these powers undermine individuals’ constitutionally protected privacy interests.