The Associated Press (via the Pantagraph) published an article about the bill (HB 3289) that aims to regulate the use of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) in Illinois. ALPRs are cameras mounted on police cars that are able to scan the license plate of every car that passes by. The system records the plate, and stores date, time and GPS location of each passing vehicle. ALPRs have the capability of enabling police to undertake widespread, systematic location surveillance, yet are currently unregulated in Illinois. A bill sponsored by State Representative Peter Breen would place modest regulations on the user of ALPRs needed to prevent abuse and protect the privacy of innocent motorists. The Associated Press spoke with ACLU of Illinois Communications and Public Policy Director Ed Yohnka:

"Privacy tends to be the least partisan and least ideological issue on the spectrum today," ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said.

Yohnka said police have used license plate readers outside gun shows and mosques, suggesting there is opportunity for abuse and "ideological or partisan reasons to capture the data." Breen noted that such high-speed reading of license plates wasn't available a few years ago, and that "they are collecting data and they are entirely unregulated."

Read the entire article (via the Pantagraph).

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."

Read the entire article.