Hundreds of police departments use camera company accused of breaking
state law
[August 28, 2025]
By Andrew Adams
CHICAGO — An automatic license plate reader company used by hundreds of
police departments around Illinois broke state law by allowing federal
border enforcement officers to access Illinois license plate camera
data, according to Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.
The company, Flock Safety, was also allegedly used by out-of-state
police earlier this year to look for a woman who recently had an
abortion. That situation sparked the secretary of state’s office to
audit Flock.
License plate readers are cameras which can automatically detect the
license plate, make, model and other details of cars while they’re
driving. These details are logged and entered into a database that can
be searched and shared between law enforcement agencies, governments and
private companies.
A 2023 state law, which was backed by Giannoulias, prohibits operators
of license plate readers from sharing the data they collect for the
purpose of enforcing immigration or abortion-related laws.
Giannoulias alleges that Flock gave U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
access to Illinois data as part of a pilot program. Flock also didn’t
have any safeguards to prevent other out-of-state police from violating
Illinois’ license plate reader law, according to Giannoulias.
Giannoulias said the company’s actions “put them in direct violation of
Illinois law” in a video statement Monday.
“We will not tolerate any violations to our data sharing and privacy
laws,” Giannoulias said. “Moving forward, we encourage local law
enforcement to closely examine their relationship with Flock and ensure
that their use of this technology is compliant with the law.”
The law prohibiting this kind of data sharing does not contain any
specific penalties for violating it.
Giannoulias’ office told Capitol News Illinois it is “conducting an
investigation” into the matter. The office has been in talks with the
state’s attorney general, although it declined to describe specifics.
At least one city, Evanston, has deactivated its Flock cameras and begun
the process of canceling its contract with the surveillance company. In
a statement, the city called the situation “deeply troubling.”
A spokesperson for Flock, meanwhile, said that they were unaware of any
ongoing investigation and that the company disagreed with the secretary
of state’s legal assertions.
“We clearly communicated poorly,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley wrote in a
blog post earlier this week. “We also didn’t create distinct permissions
and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal
agency users.”
In that statement, Langley said the company had paused all pilot
programs with federal agencies. Langley also said he tasked the
company’s top lawyer with overseeing the rollout of new compliance
tools.
Flock cameras’ prevalence
Flock does not disclose its customers, but a database based on news
reports and company statements assembled by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation found about 90 police departments in Illinois that are
confirmed to use Flock cameras.
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Flashing lights are pictured on an Illinois State Police car.
(Capitol News Illinois file photo)
Flock customers can elect to share information about their system
through pages hosted by the company that disclose what types of
information is collected, how many vehicles have been detected by their
system and how long data is stored.
Police departments can disclose what other law enforcement agencies have
access to the data collected by their cameras. In Illinois, at least 27
police departments disclose information in this way, including 14 which
list the other agencies that have access to their data.
More than 461 police departments, prosecutors, dispatch agencies, state
universities, transit agencies and railroads in Illinois had access to
Flock data, according to these disclosures. All of the transparency
reports have been updated within the past week.
The attorney general’s office and Illinois State Police both have access
to Flock data. ISP pays the company about $50,000 per year, according to
state records. The agency can access Flock’s data for investigations but
doesn’t operate any Flock cameras and doesn’t share its own data with
Flock, according to an ISP spokesperson.
While license plate reader cameras are frequently associated with
Chicagoland — in part due to a major state-backed program in the region
— downstate municipalities use them too. Flock transparency reports
indicate that the Champaign Police Department has 46 cameras. Normal has
51 license plate readers and other cameras, while Springfield has 135.
Out-of-state data sharing
The 14 agencies that disclose data sharing also share information with
551 agencies outside the state, including with law enforcement
organizations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana and more.
These out-of-state agencies that have access to Illinois license plate
data include police departments, universities and state agencies. The
list of organizations also includes the federal General Services
Administration Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection
Service and a U.S. Air Force base, according to Flock transparency
reports.
State law requires that police departments and other license plate
camera operators in Illinois obtain a written declaration from all
out-of-state law enforcement agencies saying that they will not use
license plate reader data to enforce abortion restrictions or
immigration enforcement.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |
