Officials investigate license-plate data shared with police for woman over abortion

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- The Illinois caput of authorities connected Thursday asked for an probe into a suburban Chicago constabulary section aft learning that it violated authorities law by sharing information from automatic license-plate readers with a Texas sheriff seeking a pistillate who had an abortion.

Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias asked the lawyer wide to reappraisal the matter. He besides is creating an audit strategy to guarantee constabulary departments don't tally afoul of a 2023 instrumentality banning the organisation of license-plate information to way women seeking abortions oregon to find undocumented immigrants.

The incidental underscores the fears that led to the law: In particular, that states which restricted termination entree aft Roe v. Wade was overturned would usage the exertion to travel and perchance prosecute women seeking the process by crossing into Illinois, wherever it is readily available.

“License sheet readers tin service arsenic an important instrumentality for instrumentality enforcement, but these cameras indispensable beryllium regulated truthful they aren’t abused for surveillance, tracking the information of guiltless radical oregon criminalizing lawful behavior,” the Democrat said successful a statement.

According to Giannoulias, constabulary successful Mount Prospect, 24 miles (39 kilometers) northwest of Chicago, shared license-plate information with the sheriff successful Johnson County, Texas, who was looking for a pistillate whose household was disquieted due to the fact that she had undergone a self-administered abortion.

Giannoulias says Mount Prospect besides shared information extracurricular of Illinois connected undocumented immigrants, successful usurpation of the law. Between mid-January and April, determination were 262 searches connected immigration-related matters successful Mount Prospect alone, helium said.

Telephone and email messages were near for Mount Prospect Police Chief Michael Eterno. Violations by Mount Prospect could effect successful nonaccomplishment of authorities funding, lawman Secretary of State Scott Burnham said.

The incidental was revealed by a website called 404 Media, which reported that the Texas sheriff sent a nationwide petition for information from 83,000 cameras operated by the backstage institution Flock Safety, including those successful Mount Prospect.

At Giannoulias’ request, Flock Safety blocked entree to 62 out-of-state agencies that person sought information related to termination oregon immigration, Burnham said. The institution besides acceptable up a programme to emblem the presumption “abortion” and “immigration” successful requests for entree and contradict those requests.

Police agencies volition besides beryllium required to comply with audits by the caput of authorities to people trends oregon upticks successful definite requests, Burnham said.

The Flock Safety cameras instrumentality photos of passing licence plates thousands of times a day. The technology, called Automatic License Plate Recognition, is adjuvant successful tracking stolen vehicles oregon carjackings, missing persons and successful different authorized cases.

The exertion allows constabulary agencies to work thousands of licence plates per infinitesimal from images captured by cameras on roadways.

After Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, was overturned successful 2022, Giannoulias was down Illinois' first-in-the-nation instrumentality that requires different states wanting entree to Illinois license-plate information to hold not to usage it for that intent oregon to way undocumented immigrants.