(The Washington Times)—A federal judge is mulling the legality of Illinois’ dragnet surveillance program amid a challenge that it runs afoul of the constitutional right to privacy.
Two Illinois residents challenged the Tamara Clayton Expressway Camera Act, which was passed in 2019 after the shooting of a postal worker on the expressway.
More than 300 surveillance cameras operate along Cook County’s expressway, according to court records, and the program was expanded to 20 other counties in 2022. The law allows law enforcement to use images of vehicles and their license plates to monitor roadways and investigate criminal activity along them, among other activities.
The challengers say they have a reasonable expectation of privacy in objecting to the government’s bulk collection of location data over time. They’ve sued the Illinois State Police, its director, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and state Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
“Defendants are tracking anyone who drives to work in Cook County — or to school, or a grocery store, or a doctor’s office, or a pharmacy, or a political rally, or a romantic encounter, or family gathering — every day, without any reason to suspect anyone of anything, and are holding onto those whereabouts just in case they decide in the future that some citizen might be an appropriate target of law enforcement,” their complaint reads.
“Defendants deprive Plaintiffs of their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches by tracking their movements via continuous dragnet surveillance of any citizen who drives a car.”
The state now has more than 600 surveillance cameras, with hundreds of those in Cook County. The state installed 71 in St. Clair County, four in Champaign County, eight in Morgan County, and four in Winnebago County. Other cameras are along tollways.
A Congressional Research Service report issued in August said the use of automated license plate readers has increased since 2020.
“Law enforcement agencies may use ALPRs for a variety of proactive and reactive policing purposes, including gathering intelligence and evidence, helping identify potential suspects, and facilitating crime scene analysis,” the report read.
Stephanie Scholl and M. Frank Bednarz, the Cook County residents, are represented by the Liberty Justice Center. They have argued that Illinois doesn’t have a substantial interest that justifies its retention of records for every citizen’s car and daily movement.
“It is an unreasonable search when the government tracks the movements of every citizen who drives a car just in case it might someday have reasonable suspicion as to one of the millions of people being tracked,” their lawsuit reads.
They’ve asked U.S. District Judge Martha M. Pacold to issue an injunction halting the surveillance program.
Judge Pacold, a Trump appointee, heard oral arguments on the request earlier this month.
Illinois officials, meanwhile, have asked the judge to dismiss the challenge.
The state says the plaintiffs haven’t had the collection of their plants used against them, so they do not have standing — or sufficient legal injury — to bring the lawsuit.
State officials also say there’s nothing illegal with the program.
“Plaintiffs’ claims rely on a faulty understanding of the Fourth Amendment — they do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the license plate number that they freely share with the world every time they pull onto an expressway. With no reasonable expectation of privacy, Plaintiffs’ claims stall at the starting line,” the state’s filing reads.
The case is Scholl v. Illinois State Police.