How Automatic License Plate Reader Surveillance Networks Are Spreading Across Illinois
If you have driven on a road in Illinois recently, or in many areas of the United States for that matter, there is a good chance a camera recorded your license plate, your vehicle’s make and model, its color, and the exact time and place it was seen by the camera. That data is then uploaded to a centralized, searchable database accessible by law enforcement agencies and their law enforcement officials across the state or country, including agencies you may have never heard of in jurisdictions you may have never been. As we have previously covered, these automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems (which include perhaps the most ubiquitous and covered company, Flock Safety) have received increasing scrutiny over the past several months as the public has become increasingly aware of the awesome, and in some cases terrifying, amount of data they collect on ordinary citizens. These private companies are responsible for the installation of the systems and storing the mass quantities of information they collect, which have little to no government oversight, worrying observers.
A recent Forbes report revealed that the Schaumburg Police Department, a Chicagoland suburb, is sharing its automated license plate reader data with more than 400 agencies through the Vigilant/Motorola LEARN, worrying privacy experts. The finding came from a public records request filed by a Georgia-based open-records researcher, Jason Hunyar, whose work helps the website “Have I Been Flocked?” which allows users to see if their vehicle has been the subject of a police inquiry, though the website warns it does not have complete data available to the Flock website’s users as it relies on Freedom of Information Act or Open Record Requests, and other publicly available records, which some law enforcement agencies do not have to comply with or do not report their searches. What the report found that is perhaps most troubling is that in Illinois, those 400-plus agencies are not limited to just traditional police departments and include university campus police, railroad police, park districts, the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, amongst others. Each one of them can query a database that logs the plate, location, and timestamp of every vehicle that passes a network camera. These networks are frequently touted as a tool for helping fight crime, but concerned citizens worry about government or private agencies overreaching and/or false arrests/investigations as the accuracy and effectiveness of these dragnets of data have been frequently found to commit errors in their daily use. Effectively, given the access to the information is available to the other subscribing agencies of the private companies that provide these networks, the local community that allowed for the cameras to be placed on their street corners has no control over how that data is ultimately used, or by whom, hence the growing skepticism.
Flock’s Expansion of A.I. Tools Leaves Many Worried About Future Abuse
According to a recent WIRED investigation into Flock Safety’s most recent software developments, a new investigation tool may be its most troubling update for privacy advocates. For years, Flock has told the public that its cameras “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals,” but their new technology update may render that assertion obsolete. Reporters discovered that Flock has built an A.I.-powered tool, originally called Nightshift and now known as OS Investigate, that lets police search for people and vehicles by searching through patterns of movement alone. The tool does not require a license plate number, a name, or even a specific crime to initiate a search, but allows a law enforcement official with access to their system to prompt the software to search a location, a timeframe, and/or a behavioral pattern, and the system will identify matching vehicles. Though not limited to these parameters, the tool comes with 69 prewritten search prompts that officers can select, edit, or customize, some of which require no plate, name, or physical description at all. The system can cross-reference vehicle scans with police case files, arrest records, 911 dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial identity databases containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and lists of relatives and associates of those whose vehicles match the desired location, timeframe, or behavior. Effectively, anyone who was in the vicinity of a crime or travels through a certain area of police inquiry at some arbitrary time could find themselves or their family members being investigated by police regardless of their reasons for being in the area of interest to any law enforcement official. In short, Flock’s camera network has evolved from a system that checks plates against hot lists and APBs into a tool that can generate suspects using A.I. from scratch.
These are not purely theoretical concerns. Recent audits in states like Georgia have led to criminal charges against officers and deputies for allegedly using plate-reader networks to stalk ex-partners, track personal acquaintances, and spy on neighbors. In addition, while the Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures the law and its protections have not necessarily caught up with this technology. With the proliferation and improvements of these surveillance technologies, many wonder if Constitutional rights are being eroded, if not outright eliminated in the future. For anyone charged with a crime in Illinois, the proliferation and access of ALPR surveillance create new and serious issues that could affect how a case unfolds once discovery reveals how an investigation was conducted and if there are legal challenges available to a defendant. Expect these issues to be heavily litigated in the near future.
