Officials investigate the license plate data shared with the police for a woman on abortion
Springfield, ill. – The Secretary of State of Illinois asked on Thursday an investigation into a police department of the suburbs of Chicago after learning that he had violated the law of the state by sharing the data of the automatic license platers with a sheriff of Texas seeking a woman who had an abortion.
Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias asked the Attorney General to examine the issue. He also creates an audit system to ensure that police services are not presented at the end of a 2023 law prohibiting the distribution of license plate data to follow women looking for abortions or to find undocumented immigrants.
The incident highlights the fears that led to the law: in particular, that the states which have restricted access to abortion after ROE c. Wade have been canceled would use technology to monitor and possibly continue women looking for the procedure crossing Illinois, where it is easily available.
“Readers of registration plates can serve as an important tool for the application of the law, but these cameras must be regulated so that they are not mistreated for surveillance, by following data from innocent persons or by criminalizing lawful behavior,” the Democrat said in a press release.
According to Giannoulias, Mount Prospect police, 24 miles (39 kilometers) north-west of Chicago, shared data on the license plate with the sheriff in the county of Johnson, Texas, who was looking for a woman whose family was worried because she had suffered an auto-administered abortion.
Giannoulias says that Mount Prospect also shared data outside the Illinois on undocumented immigrants, in violation of the law. Between mid-January and April 262 searches on immigration issues at Mount Prospect alone, he said.
The phone and emails were left to Mount Prospect police chief Michael Eternno. Mount prospect violations could lead to a loss of state financing, said assistant secretary of state Scott Burnham.
The incident was revealed by a website called 404 Media, which indicated that Sheriff from Texas had sent a national data request of 83,000 cameras operated by the private company FLOCK SAFETY, including those of Mount Prospect.
At the request of Giannoulias, the security of the herd blocked access to 62 agencies outside the State which requested data related to abortion or immigration, said Burnham. The company has also set up a program to report the terms “abortion” and “immigration” in requests for access and refuse these requests.
Police services must also comply with the audits of the Secretary of State to mark trends or increases in certain requests, said Burnham.
The herd security cameras take photos of passing passing plates thousands of times a day. The technology, called automatic recognition of license plates, is useful for following vehicles or stolen carjacks, disappeared and in other cases authorized.
Technology allows police services to read thousands of license plates per minute from images captured by cameras along the roads.
After roe c. Wade, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which legalized abortion, was canceled in 2022, Giannoulias was at the origin of the law of the Illinois nation which obliges the other states wishing to access the data of the license plate of Illinois to not use them for this purpose or to follow without enecoded immigrants.
