Congress probes Flock; Illinois immigration surveillance law may be moot

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(The Center Square) – During a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., questioned expert witnesses on the use of Flock Safety and other automated license plate reading cameras. 

One witness said the Illinois law banning Flock's use in federal immigration cases may be moot as the issue is more wide-ranging and bipartisan. 

During the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned experts on the uses and misuses of ALPR cameras across the country.

Attempting to discuss the use of such cameras in connection to immigration enforcement, Durbin questioned Chad Marlow, policy counsel for the ACLU, on if other states have laws similar to the one passed in Illinois, which bans the sharing of Flock camera-collected data for immigration enforcement purposes.

Marlow said while the law may be a good faith effort, it may be moot.

“The news I have to share is the value of those laws is limited. If the federal government, you give an example of ICE, were to show up with a judicial warrant or an administrative subpoena for that data, it would not matter much what Illinois law said about it,” Marlow said.

He noted that the Illinois law could also be bypassed if just one officer with access to data that federal agents seek were to conduct a search on their behalf.

Marlow said the extent of the searches and surveillance that can be conducted through the cameras is also more extensive than just immigration issues.

“Looking at it in the immigration context is horrifying, but they've done the same to people who go to gun ranges. This really is non-partisan. It is come up with the group you want to target, and with this level of technology targeting them is fairly easy,” Marlow said.

Earlier in the hearing, Chair of the subcommittee, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., explained that no executives from companies creating the cameras, like Flock Safety, Axon Enterprise and Motorola Solutions, had agreed to testify before the committee.

Hawley said he received a letter from Flock Safety’s CEO Garrett Langley in response to his invitation to testify.

“Flock acknowledged that it conducts very little oversight of client searches and instead relies on its clients to police themselves,” Hawley said. “Flock also admitted in their letter that it is possible to search for humans in images. That is a direct quote.”

Durbin went on to ask others about the extent to which the cameras only record license plates, as previously suggested by ALPR manufacturers like Flock, Axon and Motorola.

Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Ross Teeple said his “breaking point” in using the cameras came after Flock couldn’t answer questions about their capabilities brought to him by concerned constituents.

“They were asking very specific questions and I started asking Flock the company questions and they were not getting answers,” Teeple said. “I think it's remarkable that Chairman Hawley got them to admit that they now can track a person because what I received from a Flock representative was I was told our cameras don't take a high enough resolution picture to be able to recognize a person.”

In Illinois, increased concerns about Flock cameras have been raised by residents in a bipartisan manner.

Republican Gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey has pledged to outright ban Flock cameras statewide if elected, noting he doesn’t want to live in a “surveillance state.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker hasn’t commented in detail regarding his stance on the cameras’ use by local and state law enforcement, aside from the ban he signed into law on out of state and federal access to data collected.