Last week, police in Texas illegally used Illinois Automatic License Plate Reader data to track down a woman in connection with an abortion-related matter, according to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias. Police departments across the country use ALPRs placed on streetlights and in police cars to scan license plates and provide real-time locations of vehicles.
The Illinois Office of the Secretary of State released a press release Thursday outlining its allegations against Texas police, the data they are accused of accessing and the state’s planned next steps.
“In May, law enforcement authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras to locate a woman they said had a self-administered abortion,” the press release wrote. “Included in the search were cameras located in states where abortion is legal – including Illinois, specifically Mount Prospect in suburban Cook County.”
Giannoulias claimed the actions taken by the police in Texas were illegal in a speech Thursday.
“Despite having laws on the books that our office championed, making it illegal for police to use ALPR cameras to locate individuals seeking abortion care, (Texas police) managed to find a way to circumvent the law and collect Illinois license plate data illegally,” Giannoulias said.
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The law in question, Public Act 103-0540, prohibits out-of-state law enforcement and local governments from using ALPR data to punish people seeking reproductive healthcare or investigate their immigration status. However, law enforcement can use ALPR data in other cases, such as felonies, carjackings, vehicle thefts and missing person alerts.
In addition to being used to track the woman, Giannoulias says ALPR data was used for immigration-related matters by law enforcement. In Mount Prospect, there were 262 searches for immigration issues between Jan. 14 and April 30, according to the press release.
In response, Giannoulias plans to “crack down” on unlawful usage of Illinois ALPR data.
“We’ve instructed Flock, the largest operator of ALPR cameras in the nation, to shut off access to these outside agencies that are violating Illinois law immediately,” Giannoulias said. “As of yesterday, they identified 46 individual out-of-state agencies who violated the act. And those agencies’ access have been shut off.”
Additionally, Giannoulias said he plans to conduct audits to determine if any other agencies gained access to ALPR data, put in place “additional safeguards” to protect the personal information of Illinois residents and work with the Illinois Attorney General’s office to enforce Illinois law.
Giannoulias answered questions from the press. When asked how law enforcement from other states were able to access data, he did not directly address the mechanism by which it was shared.
“I mean people break the law every day unfortunately,” Giannoulias said. “Whether it’s intentional, unintentional, that’s why us getting this information, us conducting this audit, us working to shut off access to these agencies, is incredibly important. So this is all about following the law. I’m less concerned about the fact that the law was broken and making sure we do everything we can to protect this personal data.”
Mount Prospect’s Chief of Police, Michael Eterno, was adamant the department did not willingly share ALPR data with Texas police.
“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,” Eterno said in a statement. “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.”
The department says Mount Prospect had previously opted into Flock Safety’s “National Lookup” feature, which, according to Flock, allowed other participating law enforcement agencies to search Mount Prospect’s ALPR data without a formal data sharing agreement. In response, the department says they have opted out of the “National Lookup” feature, revoked access to ALPR data from any out-of-state law enforcement agency and canceled data-sharing agreements with any agencies found to have violated Illinois law.
The Texas law enforcement agency in question is the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. According to a statement from Flock Safety, the Sheriff’s Office denies any wrongdoing, stating that no charges were filed and that the ALPR data was used as part of a missing person search — not for criminal investigation or abortion-related enforcement.
“According to the Sheriff’s office, a local family called and said their relative had self-administered an abortion, and then she ran away,” the statement wrote. “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.”
The statement also wrote the woman was found safe and healthy a few days later.
After Giannoulias’s speech, Sarah Garza Resnick, CEO of Personal Pac, a pro-choice political action committee, spoke out about the growing criminalization of pregnancy since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
“In the first year after the Dobbs decision ended the federal right to abortion, law enforcement charged at least 210 pregnant people for conduct related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth,” Resnick said. “If this woman didn’t want her family involved in her health care decision, she has every right to her privacy. And despite what anti-abortion politicians want, she has every right to travel freely and across our country.”
Both Giannoulias and Resnick noted that Illinois is surrounded by states that have banned abortions. Indiana and Kentucky have banned abortion in nearly all circumstances, and in Iowa, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy. In Missouri, voters codified abortion rights in a constitutional amendment, but abortion clinics have halted procedures amidst a legal battle.
Giannoulis said the use of ALPRs sets a potentially dangerous precedent. He emphasized that while ALPRs can be used to solve kidnappings and carjackings, it has the potential to determine where “people are shopping” and “having dinner with their family.”
“That is a very slippery slope, especially when you have a chaotic, callous leader in Washington, D.C., who is rolling tanks down our city streets to go after people he doesn’t like or doesn’t agree with,” Giannoulias said.
In 2021, Urbana looked into adopting ALPRs but ultimately decided against it. Carol Spindel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Champaign County Chapter wrote about how ALPRs could open the door to broader surveillance concerns.
“There are deep civil liberties concerns with the use of ALPR technology, in part because of the risk this powerful surveillance technology poses to civil liberties and privacy, and also, importantly, because it has often been used to close off and monitor Black and Brown communities, aggravating the disparity in tickets, arrests, and fines and fees,” Spindel wrote.
The Champaign Police Department has installed 66 ALPR units throughout the city. UIPD has five ALPR units of their own and access to Champaign’s. Data is retained for 30 days before being deleted unless it is connected with civil or criminal action.
In addition to Illinois and Champaign laws preventing ALPR data from being used for immigration and reproductive health matters, CPD’s policies prohibit the use of ALPR data to “harass or intimidate any person or group” and “for personal reasons.”
