Daily Herald opinion: Driving change: Arlington Heights’ penalties for improper use of license-plate readers send clear message
When Arlington Heights trustees voted this week to extend contracts with Flock Safety for automated license-plate reader cameras, they added an important clause.
Going forward, should the company share unauthorized data from the village’s 35 cameras — as it has elsewhere — Flock will face financial penalties.
Arlington Heights is the first Illinois town to set fines, but we suspect others will follow suit as they weigh the cameras’ benefits against their risks. It’s not a perfect solution, but penalties offer a deterrent, and a recourse, should abuses occur.
Used correctly, ALPR cameras can be a powerful tool for law enforcement in solving crimes, tracking those who pose a danger to others, finding a missing person and gathering evidence for trial. But misused, they raise serious privacy issues and run afoul of Illinois law.
Mount Prospect learned that the hard way last year that their cameras were used improperly to search for a Texas woman whose family reported her missing after an abortion. While the village did not initiate or participate in the search, its ALPR settings provided a gateway into Illinois’ system.
Additional revelations from an Illinois Secretary of State audit showed hundreds of searches tied to immigration, which are prohibited by the state’s Trust Act.
Cities and states nationwide are grappling with the camera issue, with some canceling their Flock contracts in response.
Arlington Heights’ contracts expired last summer as the controversy here in Illinois unraveled. The agreements approved Monday, made retroactive, set penalties ranging from $22,000 to $70,000 per incident of unauthorized disclosure or access.
The unanimous vote followed questions from earlier this winter about how the cameras worked and what contract revisions could be made. The suggestion to include penalties came from Trustee Wendy Dunnington.
“The Arlington Heights Police Department over many, many years has developed a lot of trust in the community,” she said Monday. “It’s just really important that by us working with Flock Safety that we don’t ruin that trust.”
There are guidelines, and penalties don’t apply to disclosures “pursuant to a lawful subpoena, emergency, or judicial compulsion, or as a result of circumvention of Flock’s controls.” The contracts also spell out that access to data by federal officials isn’t considered unauthorized sharing as long as Arlington Heights police initiated it.
But the contract’s language makes clear the village’s intent: Penalties are meant “to serve as a deterrent to unauthorized sharing of customer data by Flock.”
Penalties don’t prevent breaches, and towns using the cameras have a responsibility to make sure they have guardrails in place. But a financial slap on the wrist holds Atlanta-based Flock accountable.
And the fees send a strong message to suburban residents that improper usage will not be tolerated.