By Enabling Police Surveillance, Elected Officials Fuel Trump’s Agenda

In a remarkable series of avoidable mistakes, elected officials in Illinois have demonstrated to the rest of the country the impossibility of meaningful regulation of police use of surveillance technology.

In May of this year, 404 Media published evidence that Illinois automated license plate reader data was being accessed on behalf of federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as directly by law enforcement agencies across the country, including in Texas, who used the information for immigration enforcement and to monitor people seeking abortions. This all came despite an Illinois law passed in 2023 that made it illegal for that data to be used by state or local police agencies to enforce laws that interfere with reproductive rights or investigate a person’s immigration status.

While these breaches of state laws are alarming, they are not unexpected. In fact, I predicted that this would occur in an op-ed published by the Chicago Tribune in February 2024, not long after the law went into effect. As I argued, Illinois elected officials attempted to do the impossible: both spur the growth of a vast surveillance apparatus by enabling the rapid adoption of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) across the state, while also trying to place limits on how the data could be accessed. Now, Illinois elected officials and Flock Safety, one of the fastest growing surveillance vendors in the country, have doubled down and are creating conditions for history to repeat itself.

ALPRs are a common surveillance technology across the country. These cameras take pictures of every car that drives past and scan the license plate against a “hot list” of license plate numbers that police claim to be connected to criminal activities. Researchers found that a vast national database owned and operated by Flock Safety was being routinely searched by police officers both inside and outside of Illinois for the purposes of immigration enforcement.

In response to the violation of this law in Illinois, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias asked the state attorney general’s office to conduct an investigation into this data sharing. Meanwhile, Flock published a set of underwhelming changes to the company’s software, purportedly designed to prevent any searches by police if the reason given for the search is prohibited — for example, if the query contains words like “immigration” or “abortion.” Since we know that police officers lie, Flock’s changes will likely do little except encourage police to conceal the reason that they are conducting searches, which will only make oversight even more difficult. In fact, police have been caught in lies regarding how they use Flock. When 404 Media reported in May that the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas used Flock to monitor someone who had an abortion, the agency said that they conducted this search out of concern for the woman’s “safety.” Well, that’s not true. On October 7, 404 Media provided an update, including court records showing the sheriff’s office conducted the search in order to charge the person under surveillance with a crime. Further, we know that police officers already use Flock Safety’s system for illegal purposes, including tracking the driving habits of their own estranged wives, another predictable use of Flock Safety that I wrote about two years ago.

Flock likely hoped that the attention paid to these uses of their surveillance technology would eventually die down. But just recently, the company also admitted that its consistent denial of a relationship with federal immigration agencies was, in fact, dishonest. This was also predictable: ICE has long accessed data from Flock’s biggest competitor, Vigilant Solutions, as well as other companies, like Rekor. After pressure from organizers across the country, Flock admitted to 9News in Denver that they did operate pilot programs with both Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations. In response, Flock explains that the company “inadvertently provided inaccurate information” regarding these relationships, language that does not inspire confidence even to Flock’s most ardent supporters. Flock’s willingness to both work with federal immigration authorities and to then conceal this collaboration from the public should indicate that the company cannot be trusted.

Despite this evidence, the Illinois Secretary of State has focused on delivering public relations rhetoric rather than prioritizing and ensuring the safety of Illinois residents, which requires ending the use of ALPRs across Illinois.

In their response, the Secretary of State’s office is actively working to ensure data sharing with federal immigration authorities ends. This approach has already proven to be inadequate and ineffective. In August, Unraveled Press reported that a Palos Heights officer shared his login to Flock’s software with a Drug Enforcement Administration officer who then conducted immigration-related searches. It’s impossible to limit access or prevent data sharing as long as the data exists. The Secretary of State will have their hands full trying to police all ALPR data sharing moving forward and it’s likely that more stories like this from Palos Heights will surface.

The issue is bigger than Flock Safety as well. Illinois police customers of Motorola Solutions have actively shared ALPR data with ICE this year. Documents I obtained in May from a Freedom of Information Act request prove that the Forest Park Police Department, a Motorola customer, was sharing ALPR data with ICE ERO, among other agencies. Federal immigration agencies love ALPR data, regardless of the vendor. The problem is the existence of ALPR data, not a specific vendor.

Since the predictable outcome occurred and the law was broken, Illinois residents would expect that their elected officials would take the necessary steps to address their past mistake but this has not happened. The problem has only worsened, as the State of Illinois is actively equipping more police agencies with additional surveillance technologies that will be used for tracking immigrants, those seeking reproductive healthcare, and other criminalized communities.

As reported by Unraveled Press, the Illinois attorney general — the same office asked to investigate Flock’s data sharing — has made $15 million in grants to police across the state primarily for purchasing surveillance equipment. Agencies have spent millions on Flock Safety ALPRs, Axon Fusus’ real time crime center software and cameras, Motorola Solutions and Genetec ALPRs, and other tools like Cellebrite and GrayKey, which enable police to hack cellphones. This is all ostensibly done under the guise of preventing retail crime theft. However, as we saw with the Flock data sharing, once a technology is adopted, police inevitably use it for more than what elected officials may have intended. Rather than interrogate the use of surveillance technology, Illinois elected officials are making the same mistake, again and again. This seems to be just the beginning of a long saga for Illinois residents as the state fuels a surveillance apparatus that will facilitate intensified oppression and repression. Despite this, it appears that the state is preparing to move on while Flock Safety escapes with a slight bruise to the company’s reputation.

As I said back in February 2024, “Illinois elected officials need to know that they cannot have it both ways. When mass surveillance is the goal, it cannot be limited.” As long as elected officials treat public safety as a product that can be bought and sold, this history will continue to repeat itself. The ALPR story in Illinois illustrates that this technology cannot be used “safely,” no matter who holds the White House. And none of this is particular to Illinois. It is worthwhile to consider the national implications as ALPR data, among other surveillance data, is being collected in every state amidst the Trump regime’s relentless and continuing assaults on immigrant communities, abortion seekers and providers, and trans communities, among others. Every elected official who does nothing to oppose and dismantle this vast surveillance infrastructure is complicit in facilitating the Trump agenda.