Crime & Law
Flock Cameras Raise Questions About Surveillance, Privacy
In recent months, automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) have gained national attention as critics voice concerns about surveillance of private citizens.
ALPRs can read license plate data and record a vehicle’s make, model and color to help build a profile on a potential suspect in police searches.
Flock cameras, the ALPRs created by private security company Flock Safety, are used by more than 500 law enforcement agencies in Illinois. The city of Chicago does not have an active contract with Flock Safety, but has been using other ALPR systems for decades.
Police departments say Flock cameras help track down suspects in cases involving missing people, vehicle hit-and-runs and human trafficking.
Kristian Hammond, professor of computer science at Northwestern University, said the technology can be used to connect someone’s license plate to other data.
“It doesn’t identify people, but it does identify the cars they’re driving down to a very high level of precision,” Hammond said. “The thing that’s powerful about it is, of course, if I have them situated in an area, I can literally track someone as they’re driving, or as they have driven. That’s the power, the strength and the danger of that system.”
Critics have raised concerns about the constitutionality of ALPRs, citing the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Because ALPR data can be used to track where a vehicle has been, there are concerns that agencies are able to reconstruct a person’s movements and therefore locate where they conduct daily activities. This argument has not gained much federal appeal, as courts have held that there should be no expectation of privacy in public view.
Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said the cameras were originally promised to make our streets safer, but promises have fallen short.
“What has become very obvious over the last, I would say maybe 18 months to two years, is that the cameras are rife for abuse,” Yohnka said.
Law enforcement officers in several Illinois towns have been accused of making unauthorized Flock camera searches. Officers who used the ALPR data to track ex-romantic partners and former colleagues are now facing criminal charges and internal investigations.
Hammond said there needs to be tighter restrictions for who has access to these systems and what they are used for.
“There have got to be very specific reasons for using the technology,” Hammond said. “We don’t know how to interpret the patterns that we’re seeing and our interpretation immediately goes to, ‘Well, my job is to find criminals, I’m gonna use this to find criminals,’ even though there might be absolutely no connection between a crime and these behaviors.”
ALPR critics have also voiced concerns related to immigration enforcement and abortion access.
Last week, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias announced that Flock camera data had been accessed by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, violating an Illinois law that states ALPR data cannot be used to investigate or enforce a law that allows a person to be investigated or held based on their immigration status.
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley posted a statement on the company’s website, saying, in part, the company “engaged in limited pilots with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to assist those agencies in combating human trafficking and fentanyl distribution” and “didn’t create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users.”
Similarly, Illinois law states that ALPR data cannot be used to interfere with a person’s right to obtain reproductive healthcare services as explained in the Illinois Lawful Health Care Activity Act. However, several other states have access to Illinois Flock camera data and can use it to track whether an individual left their state to obtain an abortion in Illinois.
“You’re able to essentially follow someone, track them and look at what they’re doing without any sort of probable cause, without a warrant or without any of the usual kinds of court oversight that we would really demand under our constitutional system,” Yohnka said.
In recent months, several Chicago suburbs have taken action against Flock cameras. Evanston, Oak Park and other cities have decided to end their contracts with the company.
In the western suburbs, three men were charged with theft and criminal damage for wrongfully removing five Flock cameras.
Yohnka said these issues could potentially be avoided if community members were more involved in how and whether these cameras are used in their areas.
“To have this kind of powerful tool in the hands of local law enforcement officials, we ought to have as a community an annual or a semi-annual audit in which they take a look at who’s searching, for what and what’s the outcome,” Yohnka said.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
