License plate camera company halts cooperation with federal agencies

A company that installs license plate-detecting cameras to aid law enforcement has halted operations with federal agencies because of ongoing concerns among officials in Illinois and elsewhere

FILE - In this Oct. 18, 2010 file photo, then-Illinois Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Chicago. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File)

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- One of the nation's leading operators of automated license-plate reading systems announced Monday it has paused its operations with federal agencies because of confusion and concern — including in Illinois — about the purpose of their investigations.

Flock Safety, whose cameras are mounted in more than 4,000 communities nationwide, put a hold last week on pilot programs with the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to a statement by its founder and CEO, Garrett Langley.

Among officials in other jurisdictions, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias raised concerns. He announced Monday that an audit found Customs and Border Protection had accessed Illinois data, although he didn't say that the agency was seeking immigration-related information. A 2023 law the Democrat pushed bars sharing license plate data with police investigating out-of-state abortions or undocumented immigrants.

“This sharing of license plate data of motorists who drive on Illinois roads is a clear violation of the state law," Giannoulias said in a statement. "This law, passed two years ago, aimed to strengthen how data is shared and prevent this exact thing from happening,”

Flock Safety's cameras capture billions of photos of license plates each month. However, it doesn't own that data. The local agencies in whose jurisdictions the cameras are located do, and they're the ones who receive inquiries from other law enforcement agencies.

Langley said the company had initiated pilot programs with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations to help combat human trafficking and fentanyl distribution. The company is unaware of any immigration-related searches the agencies made, but Langley said parameters were unclear.

“We clearly communicated poorly. We also didn’t create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users,” Langley said.

The revelation comes two months after Giannoulias announced that police in the Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect had shared data with a Texas sheriff who was seeking a missing woman. The woman’s family was worried because she had undergone a self-administered abortion.

Although the sheriff in Johnson County, Texas, said he was simply trying to help the family locate the woman, Giannoulias demanded more vigilance from Flock Safety because of the abortion connection.

In addition to halting the pilot programs, Flock has tweaked its system so that federal inquiries are clearly identified as such. And federal agencies will no longer be able to make blanket national or even statewide searches, but only one-on-one searches with particular police agencies.

Asked when the federal agency had accessed Illinois data, a Giannoulias spokesperson said the investigation was ongoing.

After the June incident, Flock Safety responded to Giannoulias' request that its system reject searches that includes terms such as “abortion,” “immigration” or “ICE” (for Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Those flag terms have been in effect since late June, a Flock Safety spokesperson said.