In These Times published an overview of current tactics being used by police forces in Illinois that have the power to monitor the everyday activity of innocent people. Along with stingrays and facial recognition technology, police officers across the state have been utilizing automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) to track the location and behavior of criminal suspects.

However, ALPRs remain completely unregulated in Illinois, which means that police have the capability to perform widespread surveillance of innocent motorists and store data about their behavior for unknown lengths of time. A bill being introduced in the Illinois legislature aims to place modest regulations on the use of ALPRs by law enforcement. In These Times spoke with ACLU of Illinois Senior Staff Counsel Adam Schwartz:

This retention of data is what most worries the ACLU’s Schwartz: “If you have hundreds of ALPRs around your city capturing hundreds of license plates every hour … you can punch in somebody’s license plate number and see where they’ve been, or after the fact, you can punch in the location of a protest three years ago and see who was there.”

Read the entire article.

In an effort to reform services and care for children who are wards of the state of Illinois, independent monitors from the University of Illinois at Chicago's psychiatry department have begun their review of residential treatment centers operated by the Department of Child and Family Service (DCFS), as the result of a court-approved agreement in ACLU litigation against the agency, the Chicago Tribune reports. Investigative reports from earlier this year exposing cases of abuse and neglect within the facilities prompted the ACLU to go back to court to jump-start reforms. The ACLU of Illinois represents these children under a decades-long consent decree originally designed to improve the quality of services and to ensure the safety of children who are under DCFS care. The Chicago Tribune spoke with ACLU of Illinois associate legal director Ben Wolf:

"Residential treatment ought to be something we rely on much less often and that we oversee much more aggressively," said ACLU associate legal director Benjamin Wolf. "The real test of any reforms is whether the children in state custody are better off."

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Harmful legislation signed today by Governor Mike Pence of Indiana will allow business owners to refuse to follow anti-discrimination protections and other laws based on religious objections. In an opinion piece for the Chicago Tribune, Rex Huppke notes that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, now Indiana law, will most likely harm lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, as they are not protected under the state's anti-discrimination laws like they are in Illinois, where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited. The ACLU of Indiana and the National ACLU had petitioned Governor Pence to veto the bill, but to no avail. The ACLU remains concerned about similar bills in other states that have been introduced. Huppke spoke with ACLU of Illinois Communications and Public Policy Director Ed Yohnka:

“I think Indiana may be the tip of the spear,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. “If we get a favorable ruling on marriage equality from the court, then there probably are a number of states where there will be an attempt to pass this kind of legislation. Somehow the person being discriminated against has become the business owner who is discriminating against someone.”

Read the entire piece.