Texas police 'abused' license plate data for immigration search, Illinois police say
The Johnson County Sheriff's Office allegedly used data from Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) — also referred to as Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) — through Flock Safety, a private company. The "National Lookup" feature is used by law enforcement agencies "for purposes of immigration enforcement."
The Illinois Secretary of State's Office notified the Mount Prospect Police Department that it was among multiple other law enforcement agencies whose data was used by the Texas department.
"The use of ALPR data collected by Mount Prospect Flock Safety cameras for this purpose does not align with the Mount Prospect Police Department's values and is a clear violation of Illinois state law," the Chicago department stated in a press release.
A site called 404 Media shows the Johnson County Sheriff's Office requested data from 83,000 of Flock Safety's cameras, including those in Mount Prospect.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias is requesting an investigation into the incident by the attorney general, The Independent reports. He says he is also making an audit system to prevent similar uses of ALPR data in the future.
A 2023 Illinois law prohibits the sharing of license plate data to track undocumented immigrants or people seeking abortions.
A total of 262 immigrant-related searches were made between mid-January and April in Mount Prospect alone, Giannoulias said. Deputy Secretary of State Scott Burnham warned that such violations could lead to the loss of state funding.
Giannoulias says he requested that Flock Safety block access to 62 out-of-state agencies seeking data related to abortion or immigration. The ALPR company also created a program to flag access requests with the terms "abortion" and "immigration" and deny the requests. Finally, law enforcement agencies will be required to respect the secretary of state's audits with the goal of noting trends in certain requests, Burnham explained.
"I am tremendously upset that some law enforcement agencies who agreed to follow Illinois law, in order to gain access to our ALPR data, conducted illegal searches violating the trust of our community," Chief of Police Michael Eterno said. "As disappointed as I am with these other agencies, I want to emphasize that no member of the Mount Prospect Police Department shared ALPR data in violation of the law.
I realize that this misuse of Mount Prospect's ALPR data violates the trust of our community, and we as a department will continue to work to enhance the Flock ALPR software and ensure this abuse does not occur in the future."
Following the incident with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office, the Mount Prospect Police Department said it has made, or plans to make, several changes to prevent similar incidents in the future, including
opted out of the Flock Safety "National Lookup" feature
cancelled any data sharing agreement with law enforcement agencies who violated Illinois state law
revoked access to Mount Prospect's ALPR data for all law enforcement agencies outside of Illinois
will be updating its ALPR policy to include regular audits of the searches being conducted by internal and external users
As of Friday morning, the Johnson County Sheriff's Office had not issued a public statement about the incident. The name of the individual who was the focus of the search has not been disclosed to the public.
Flock Safety has released a statement amid what it calls "a misunderstanding."
The ALPR company indicated contact with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office regarding the incident in Illinois, seeking to correct "misreporting" that the program was used "to target people seeking reproductive healthcare." The Sheriff allegedly told Flock Safety that this "is unequivocally false."
"According to the Sheriff's office, a local family called and said their relative had self-administered an abortion, and then she ran away," Flock Safety said. "Her family feared she was hurt, and asked the deputy to search for her to the best of their abilities. Law enforcement performed a nationwide search in Flock, the broadest search possible within the system, to try to locate her quickly. Luckily, she was found safe and healthy in Dallas a couple of days later."
The woman faces no charges and was never under criminal investigation, the ALPR company added, saying that Texas police were looking for her as a missing person rather than as a crime suspect.
"We're grateful for the opportunity to work with Illinois officials to clarify what happened, correct misconceptions, and implement lasting improvements that uphold the trust of both law enforcement agencies and the residents they serve."
— The Independent contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas police use of license plate data under investigation in Illinois
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Nevertheless, he said he didn't want to wait for it to happen to pass an ordinance against it. 'This is what's coming,' Biss said. 'What I have learned is that if you wait for the bad thing to happen and then try to retroactively prohibit it — not only do you not solve the one individual problem of the bad thing that happened — but also you've allowed a bad habit to form, which is really, really dangerous.' Another Evanston media outlet reported that out-of-state police agencies have tapped into Flock's national look-up tool to conduct seven searches related to immigration including Evanston and elsewhere. The practice troubled several members on the dais. 'I'm not comfortable with this… what I've learned so far has not given me the comfort that I need,' Biss said. 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