A lawsuit has been filed against the Illinois State Police, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, challenging the state’s use of automatic license plate reading cameras.
On May 30, the lawsuit was filed by the Liberty Justice Center. Its lawyer, Reilly Stephens, said Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are ubiquitous: “Every time you drive on one of these expressways, they are tracking every time you go past one of these cameras. They’re feeding that into a national database which is shared by thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country.”
Five months ago, the Illinois State Police said they were stepping up the use of ALPRs to “target and track criminal activity”, noting that ALPRs “capture a visual of vehicle license plates and anytime a wanted or suspected vehicle is detected by an ALPR, an alert is issued and law enforcement are better able to locate and track the vehicle.”
Governor Pritzker noted that ALPRs around Chicago are “another step to enhance public safety for residents of and visitors to the nation’s third-largest city.”
By December 2022, 289 ALPRs were installed in the Chicago area. Last year, 139 ALRPs were installed in Cook, St. Claire, Champaign and Morgan counties. This year, the Illinois State Police plan to add ALPRs in Macon, Madison, Peoria, Bureau, Lake and Winnebago counties, and increase the number of ALPRs in Boon, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Henry, Kane, Kendall, LaSalle, McHenry, Rock Island, Sangamon and Will counties, and on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
Center Square reports that
Installation in Cook and St. Clair counties cost $6.6 million. Maintenance cost $100,000. The total number of detections, the number of license plate reads captured by the system, is 1.5 million. The number of inquiries where the investigation involved criminal offense totaled 282,118.
The budget legislators approved this week for the coming fiscal year includes $7 million for the Illinois Department of Transportation to install cameras and automatic license plate readers on state routes.
While Stephens said the dragnet may help track a fleeing criminal suspect, it’s capable of tracking much more.
“Every time you went to the doctor, every time you went to a political rally, a Trump rally, a Joe Biden rally, a Black Lives Matter rally, an NRA event,” he said.
The lawsuit argues the system is a violation of Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted search and seizure.
“The permanent tracking of every citizen and all of their travels and whereabouts is a bridge too far,” he said.
