Bills aim to regulate license plate readers
Police departments across the nation are obtaining a device that takes a picture of your license plate, stamps the location, time and date on it, and sends it to a database. The devices could be in parking lots, attached to traffic lights, or on top of squad cars. They are completely unregulated in Illinois, but two competing bills in the House would change that.
Civil liberties advocates worry that the technology could be abused and want limits on how long the data can be retained. Police say it is a valuable tool for collecting evidence and building cases against offenders, but they also recognize the risk of abuse. They want to be able to retain the information indefinitely while putting restrictions on its use.
Rep. Peter Breen, R-Lombard, is the chief sponsor of House Bill 3289, which would limit how long law enforcement entities could keep license plate information. After 30 days, any data obtained through the use of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) would have to be deleted.
For certain purposes, like an ongoing investigation, law enforcement agencies would be able to retain the data for longer. For other purposes, like red light cameras or toll ways, the bill would simply regulate how the data can be used without limiting how long it could be kept.
Khadine Bennett, legislative counsel with the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that 30 days is more than enough time for law enforcement to know whether or not they will need the data.
“Most crimes are reported immediately after they are committed, so you don’t really need the data for a significantly long time,” Bennett said.
Terry Lemming, co-chairman of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police (ILACP) legislative committee, said that a limit on retention of ALPR data could hamper a police department’s ability to gather evidence. He said that if police have a witness or informant give them information about a crime, they have to corroborate it somehow, and data from license plate readers is one of the ways used.
Lemming pointed to an example of ALPR being used in the department he oversees in Lockport. He said his officers were able to uncover a retail theft ring by crossreferencing license plate data with old reports of shoplifting in nearby communities. He said that data wouldn’t have been available if law enforcement agencies had to purge it after 30 days. He also pointed out that there have been no documented cases of abuse of the system in Illinois.
Bennett said that’s to be expected. “Generally (with) law enforcement, they don’t really tell the public that they’re abusing this kind of information,” Bennett said.
Lemming and other opponents of Breen’s bill have proposed their own bill regulating license plate readers. House Bill 3272, sponsored by Rep. Mike Zalewski, D-Riverside, would treat the technology similar to the data in the Law Enforcement Agency Data System (LEADS).
Lemming said that LEADS contains more personal information, like driver’s license information and criminal history, than an agency could get from an ALPR system, but police are still able to prevent abuses of the more extensive system.
“If we can successfully do that with this very private information contained in LEADS, why can’t we do it for the picture of a license plate?” Lemming said.
Using the LEADS system for anything other than a law enforcement purpose is a crime in Illinois. Lemming said that police officers have to log in to use the system, and it is periodically audited by an independent agency.
Bennett said that kind of regulation would actually make the risk of abuse worse.
“I don’t think it’s real regulation,” Bennett said. “What they end up doing is asking or requiring the Illinois State Police to create this massive ALPR database for Illinois, which is super scary.”
Contact Alan Kozeluh at [email protected].
