Daily Herald opinion: Surveillance fears: Legislation, community leadership needed to calm growing concerns about risks of license readers

Some days it is hard to know which technological wonder is more aggravating to people in the suburbs, data processing centers or Flock cameras.

In recent weeks, Flock cameras and other technologies that read license plate numbers and instantaneously transmit driver and location data to law enforcement authorities have been muscling in on the attention. In particular, Bartlett, Rolling Meadows and Mundelein joined a growing list of towns where leaders are beginning to rethink the merits of a technology that seemed to offer only benefits when it was introduced.

The cameras could help track crime suspects, find missing persons and stolen cars, assist in criminal investigations and more. Why wouldn’t communities and local police departments want to deploy them?

As in other communities that have experienced issues related to privacy violations and misuse, leaders are finding that question is not so easily answered.

In Bartlett, officials delayed a vote on extending the village’s contract for the devices until Sept. 15 to give village board members more time to evaluate them. In Rolling Meadows, where protesters placed anti-Flock cameras on lawns throughout the city earlier this month, leaders grilled a Flock representative Tuesday over how data is collected, shared and secured.

Alderwoman Jenifer Vinezeano specifically wondered whether the city could determine which communities it was willing to share data with. She emphasized her concern as Police Chief Anthony Peluso assured her that his department would notify another community if it found officers had misused data involving a resident of the town but could not guarantee that other towns would have the same commitment to Rolling Meadows.

“That is a huge concern. If another municipality has this red flag, we cannot rely on another municipality to guarantee that they’re going to notify our police department,” Vinezeano said. “I cannot bank on that. They may not do their job the right way.”

She and other council members indicated they may be prepared to cancel contracts involving 10 cameras posted around the city if they can’t get satisfactory answers.

In Mundelein, village board member Tony Ugaste expressed similar concerns about data sharing and wanted more specific information on what Flock does with the data it collects. He also worried that even auditing tools that have been put in place only identify a problem after it has occurred.

“The damage is done, and then we’re just reacting. And that’s part of what concerns me,” he said.

Concerns like these are not merely hypothetical. They derive from experiences in other communities. After Mount Prospect police learned their data had been used by Texas authorities investigating a possible abortion, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office initiated a variety of reforms. In Holiday Hills, the police chief was accused of accessing data from plate readers hundreds of times to track individuals, including women he dated. In Bloomingdale, an internal audit in response to concerns about the cameras led to an investigation into whether a village police officer misused camera data.

But the potential benefits of the cameras are also real. Acknowledging that, Mundelein’s Ugaste said the question facing communities is whether the crime-fighting benefits outweigh the privacy risks and potential for abuse. That’s a reasonable assessment. But an even more reasonable one is to ask whether measures can be put in place to ensure that they do.

In that regard, we point again to House Bill 5151, cosponsored by Arlington Heights Democratic state representatives Nicole Grasse and Mary Beth Canty. The legislation aims to define legitimate and prohibited uses of license plate readers, limit how long data may be stored and set penalties for their misuse.

Clearly, people are growing increasingly concerned about this surveillance technology. Law enforcement agencies and community leaders who recognize the value of the cameras need to act assertively to acknowledge the growing fears about them and find ways to reassure skeptics that they are aware of the risks and doing something about them. And lawmakers need to step in and help as well.