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.”
More context: 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.
