Are Flock Cameras Legal in Illinois? Yes, within the rules below. Flock’s license plate readers are lawful to operate in every state; the real question — the one this page answers — is what rules Illinois puts on them: how long your plate data can be kept, who can search it, whether a warrant is needed, and what rights you have to see the record.
The rules exist, they have teeth, and knowing them is the difference between guessing and acting. All details are for general guidance, verified against Illinois sources as of September 2026.
In This Illinois Guide:
Are Flock Cameras Legal in Illinois? The Short Answer
YES — Illinois is NOT a no-statute state. Automated license plate readers are governed by 625 ILCS 5/2-130 (“User of automated license plate readers; prohibitions”) of the Illinois Vehicle Code, plus the Expressway Camera Act provisions authorizing ISP expressway ALPR use. The core privacy restrictions were added by a 2023 amendment (effective 2024) championed by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias.
Illinois also has the Biometric Information Privacy Act (740 ILCS 14) which advocates argue reaches any face/biometric add-ons, though BIPA is not an ALPR statute as such. UNVERIFIED: the exact Public Act number of the 2023 amendment.
State law sets the floor; each city sets its own camera count, contract, and search policy on top of it, and several have gone further than the state. Oak Park’s board voted in August 2025 to terminate its Flock contract and shut off its 8 cameras. Evanston deactivated its cameras and issued a termination notice to Flock effective September 26, 2025, later ordering a cease-and-desist after cameras were reinstalled (dispute ongoing into late September 2025).
Springfield PD publicly decided to stay with Flock. Mount Prospect maintains a public Flock transparency portal, and Wilmette and Normal PD publish written ALPR policies. Statewide there are roughly 7,100 to 7,400 documented Flock/ALPR cameras across about 549 Illinois towns per independent trackers — so the practical rule a driver faces is usually the local department’s policy, obtainable by FOIA.
What Illinois Law Actually Requires
| Question | Rule in Illinois |
|---|---|
| ALPR statute | YES — Illinois is NOT a no-statute state. Automated license plate readers are governed by 625 ILCS 5/2-130 (“User of automated license plate readers; prohibitions”) of the Illinois Vehicle Code, plus the Expressway Camera Act provisions authorizing ISP expressway ALPR use. The core privacy restrictions were added by a 2023 amendment (effective 2024) championed by Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias. Illinois also has the Biometric Information Privacy Act (740 ILCS 14) which advocates argue reaches any face/biometric add-ons, though BIPA is not an ALPR statute as such. UNVERIFIED: the exact Public Act number of the 2023 amendment. |
| Data retention | Illinois law sets retention rules that are LONGER, not shorter, than Flock’s 30-day commercial default — the statute is a ceiling plus an access-tightening step, not a 30-day mandate. Detection records must be ARCHIVED 90 days after creation unless relevant to an ongoing investigation or pending criminal trial; records older than 90 days may be accessed only with the written approval of the law enforcement agency head; archived records over 90 days are barred from being searchable by out-of-state agencies; and all detection records must be DESTROYED 5 years after creation unless relevant to an ongoing investigation or pending criminal trial. Note that these 90-day/5-year figures are the provisions restated in SB 3257 (2026) tracking current law — a driver relying on this should confirm the operative text with the agency or counsel. |
| Who can search | NO warrant and no individualized suspicion standard is required by Illinois statute for a routine ALPR database query. Access is limited by PURPOSE rather than by a judicial standard: Illinois law permits ALPR use for investigating vehicular hijacking, terrorism, motor vehicle theft, missing persons, and forcible felonies (treason, first- and second-degree murder, criminal sexual assault, kidnapping, arson, robbery, burglary, aggravated battery causing great bodily harm). Records older than 90 days additionally require written sign-off from the agency head. A federal court has confirmed no warrant is constitutionally required — in Scholl v. Illinois State Police, No. 1:24-cv-04435 (N.D. Ill.), Judge Martha Pacold denied a preliminary injunction, holding expressway ALPR scans are not Fourth Amendment searches under Carpenter (ruling issued 2025). |
| Immigration use | YES — this is Illinois’s signature restriction. Under 625 ILCS 5/2-130 as amended in 2023 (effective 2024), ALPR operators and agencies may not share or allow use of ALPR data for the purpose of detaining or investigating a person based on immigration status, and may not share with another jurisdiction for immigration enforcement. Before sharing with an out-of-state agency, the Illinois agency must obtain a WRITTEN DECLARATION that the requesting agency will not use the data for immigration (or abortion) enforcement. The parallel reproductive-health rule bars use of ALPR data to investigate or enforce any law that denies or interferes with a person’s right to obtain reproductive health care or other lawful health care. |
| Data sharing | Sharing is permitted but conditioned. Out-of-state and federal sharing requires the written attestation described above; archived records older than 90 days are flatly non-searchable by out-of-state agencies; and ALPR information must be held confidentially to the fullest extent permitted by law. In practice these limits have been repeatedly broken — the Secretary of State found in 2025 that roughly 46 out-of-state law enforcement agencies had run improper searches of Illinois Flock datasets, and that federal CBP had access it should not have had. |
| Search audits | YES. The 2023 law made Illinois law enforcement agencies subject to compliance audits by the Illinois Secretary of State, which built an auditing system and safeguards to flag trends and upticks in suspect search reasons. The Secretary of State ran a statewide audit beginning June 2025 and a sampling audit of 12 local agencies in August 2025. Separately, Flock and Motorola systems generate per-search audit logs (“Organization Audit” / “Network Audit”) recording the searching user, agency, and stated reason — those logs are the practical record of who looked at a plate. |
The retention number is the one to watch. Flock’s national default is 30 days; some states now force shorter windows by statute, and where Illinois law is silent, the local contract decides. When people ask “are flock cameras legal in Illinois,” the retention and search rules above are usually what they actually need to know.
Misuse penalties: There is no dedicated criminal penalty for ALPR misuse written into 625 ILCS 5/2-130 that this research could verify. Reported enforcement consequences are administrative: police departments that violate the sharing restrictions can face LOSS OF STATE FUNDING, and the Secretary of State can order a vendor to cut off improper access (as was done to Flock regarding CBP in August 2025).
Criminal exposure for an officer would run through general statutes such as official misconduct (720 ILCS 5/33-3), not the ALPR section. For civilians, no ALPR-specific penalty exists. UNVERIFIED: any fine amount or misdemeanor classification attached specifically to 2-130. Note that HB 5151 (2026) would have added express penalties and a private right of action, and it did not pass.
Your Rights: Seeing What Illinois Has on Your Plate
Knowing whether are flock cameras legal in Illinois is only half the question — the other half is what you can see about your own plate. There is no dedicated “look up searches on my plate” portal. The working path is the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, 5 ILCS 140, filed with the FOIA officer of the specific municipal or county police department that operates the cameras — request the agency’s Flock/ALPR contract, camera locations, retention policy, and the ALPR audit/network audit logs (including the “Reason” field) for a date range.
Transparency groups have used exactly this route against Wilmette, Wheeling, Des Plaines and Naperville PDs via MuckRock. Complaints about unlawful sharing go to the Office of the Illinois Secretary of State (ilsos.gov), which holds the audit authority; FOIA denials can be appealed to the Public Access Counselor in the Illinois Attorney General’s office (illinoisattorneygeneral.gov). Many drivers can obtain audit logs this way, but agencies frequently assert investigative exemptions — check with the agency’s FOIA officer and be prepared to appeal.
A records request is the single most useful lawful move for a driver asking are flock cameras legal in Illinois: it is free or cheap, it forces the agency to state its rules on paper, and the answers feed every other channel — council testimony, comments on pending bills, or a lawyer if the logs show misuse. If a camera-based citation is the concern, the Flock camera ticket guide for Illinois covers that side.
The bills and rulings below are what will change the answer to are flock cameras legal in Illinois next — each item is dated, and this section is refreshed as they move.
Illinois ALPR Bills and Rulings in Motion
HB 5151 (104th General Assembly, 2026) — the Automated License Plate Recognition System Act, sponsored by Rep. Nicolle Grasse (D-53) with a large Democratic co-sponsor list and backed by the ACLU of Illinois; it would have sharply cut retention, restricted permitted uses, and added reporting requirements, penalties, and a private right of action. Status: re-referred to the Rules Committee under Rule 19(a) on April 17, 2026 — dead for the session (source: ilga.gov Bill Status for HB5151; ACLU-IL factsheet dated March 2026).
SB 3257 (104th General Assembly) — restates/codifies the 90-day archiving, agency-head written approval for records over 90 days, out-of-state search bar on archived records, and 5-year destruction rule; re-referred to Assignments on May 22, 2026, status Introduced (source: ilga.gov Bill Status for SB3257). Coverage of the HB 5151 push ran May 29, 2026 (Shaw Local). No Illinois ALPR bill has been enacted in the last 12 months.
Where communities have pushed back, it shows up here: cancellations, lawsuits, and documented cases — the practical backdrop to are flock cameras legal in Illinois, reported as cases and charges only.
The Backlash in Illinois: Cancellations, Lawsuits & Cases
June 2025 — Illinois Secretary of State opened an investigation after Mount Prospect police shared Illinois ALPR data with Texas authorities searching for a woman connected to an abortion, and separately found out-of-state agencies (including searches touching Danville data) ran queries flagged for “immigration”; Giannoulias announced a statewide crackdown and audit (ilsos.gov, June 12, 2025). August 25, 2025 — Secretary of State audit of 12 agencies concluded Flock Safety violated the 2023 law by letting U.S.
Customs and Border Protection reach Illinois cameras through an undisclosed federal pilot; access ordered shut off; about 46 out-of-state agencies identified as having made illegal searches (ilsos.gov). August 7, 2025 — Oak Park trustees voted to terminate the village’s Flock contract.
August 26, 2025 — Evanston shut down its cameras and terminated its Flock contract effective September 26, 2025; a cease-and-desist followed on/around September 28, 2025 after cameras were reinstalled. September 5, 2025 — Secretary of State audit found Forest Park Police Department shared ALPR data with CBP via Motorola Solutions technology, another violation.
May 30, 2024 filing / 2025 ruling — Scholl v. Illinois State Police, No. 1:24-cv-04435 (N.D. Ill.), Liberty Justice Center suit by two Cook County residents; Judge Martha Pacold DENIED the preliminary injunction, holding expressway ALPR scans are not unconstitutional searches.
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December 2, 2025 — further reporting on Border Patrol use of Flock cameras affecting Illinois jurisdictions. Vandalism prosecutions: July 26–27, 2026 — five Flock cameras stolen or damaged in Lisle and unincorporated Lisle, DuPage County; Anthony Pareigis (34), Jacob Steichmann (32), both of Downers Grove, and Thomas Yano (31) of Indian Head Park were each charged by the DuPage County State’s Attorney with two counts of theft of government property valued at $500 to $10,000 (Class 2 felony) and two counts of criminal damage to government-supported property (Class 3 felony); all three were released pretrial as the charges are non-detainable under the SAFE-T Act, and the cases remain pending.
August 2026 (offenses overnight August 14) — Hayden Green, 19, of Glendale Heights was charged with three counts of theft of government property and three counts of criminal damage to government-supported property after six Flock cameras and a school-zone speed radar unit were damaged or taken across Glendale Heights, unincorporated DuPage County and Bloomingdale; case pending.
A Class 2 felony in Illinois carries a sentencing range of 3 to 7 years and a Class 3 felony 2 to 5 years, and fines can reach 25000 per count — the exposure for damaging a camera is far larger than the value of the camera.
What Flock and Other Vendors Are Saying
August 2025 — Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley responded to the Illinois audit, confirming the federal pilots were “paused” and writing that Flock had “engaged in limited pilots with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), to assist those agencies in combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution”; he conceded “We clearly communicated poorly” and that the company “didn’t create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users” (GovTech, August 2025).
August 2025 — Flock halted federal pilot programs with Homeland Security agencies nationwide, not only in Illinois, and announced new distinct search permissions.
Langley subsequently apologized in a CBS News interview for instances where Flock data was misused by officers, saying “I apologize” and “we could have done more earlier,” and separately apologized for having called opponents “terrorists.” August 23, 2026 — Langley publicly called for “compromise” as the company faced growing national backlash (TechCrunch).
Motorola Solutions was named in the September 5, 2025 Forest Park finding as the technology path by which data reached CBP; UNVERIFIED whether Motorola issued a dated public response specific to Illinois. No dated Axon statement on Illinois located.
Key Takeaways: Are Flock Cameras Legal in Illinois
- Start with the statute question: the honest answer to “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” begins with whether Illinois has any ALPR law at all — and where it does not, vendor defaults and local contracts are the only rules.
- Retention is the number that matters: when drivers ask “are flock cameras legal in Illinois”, what they usually need is how long a plate read is kept and who can search it, both covered in the table above.
- Your city may answer differently than your state: because local policy fills the gap, “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” can have one answer in one town and another across the line.
- A records request is the lawful lever: for anyone asking “are flock cameras legal in Illinois”, the search logs and the written policy are obtainable under the public-records law, and they are what changes council votes.
- Bills move monthly: the dated sections above are refreshed because the answer to “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” is being rewritten in real time by legislation and court rulings.
- Cancellations are facts, not rumors: the backlash section records which Illinois communities have ended contracts and why — the practical backdrop to “are flock cameras legal in Illinois”.
- Damaging a camera is a crime: the lawful channels are the ones that work, and the cases above show the charges that follow the other route.
- Check the date on everything: including this page — the verification date is printed above, because “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” is a moving answer.
- Vendor statements are not law: a company’s retention promise can change by press release; “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” is answered by statute and contract, which is why both are quoted above.
- Sharing is the quiet issue: a plate read in Illinois can be searchable by agencies elsewhere by default, and “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” includes whether the local contract turned that off.
Bottom line on are flock cameras legal in Illinois: confirm the current rule at the official sources below, keep every notice and envelope, and treat the dated sections of this page as the record of what changed and when.
Illinois FAQ: Are Flock Cameras Legal in Illinois
Can I find out if police searched my plate in Illinois?
Often, yes. ALPR search logs are records, and public-records laws reach many of them — the request path in the rights section above is the route. Some state statutes require agencies to keep audit logs precisely so this question is answerable. Expect exemptions for active investigations, but the policy, the retention schedule, and aggregate search data are routinely producible.
Do Flock cameras use facial recognition?
No — the cameras photograph vehicles and plates, not faces, and the company states the system does not identify drivers or passengers. The privacy concern is different and real: a network of timestamped plate captures builds a movement history of your vehicle, which is why retention limits and search rules are where every serious legal fight is happening.
Is it illegal to block or damage a Flock camera in Illinois?
Damaging one is criminal property destruction — and prosecutions are real: vandalism cases around the country in 2026 have drawn felony charges, including over a police decoy camera. Blocking or obscuring one on public land can also draw obstruction or tampering charges depending on state law. The lawful channels — records requests, council testimony, pending bills — are covered above, and they are the ones actually cancelling contracts.
Why the Answer to “Are Flock Cameras Legal in Illinois?” Keeps Changing
ALPR law is the rare corner of traffic law being written in real time. The cameras spread faster than legislatures could react, so the first rules were whatever the vendor’s defaults and each city’s contract said. Now the statutes are arriving — retention caps, search standards, immigration-use bans, audit duties — and every session moves the line somewhere. A page that answered “are flock cameras legal in Illinois” correctly last year can be wrong this year.
The fights driving it are concrete: officers caught running personal searches, federal agencies reaching into local data, cities discovering their contracts allowed sharing they never intended. Each scandal produces a bill; each bill resets the rules. That is why the dated sections on this page exist and get refreshed — the statute table is the stable part, and everything else is a moving front.
For a driver, the takeaway is to check the date on anything you read about are flock cameras legal in Illinois — including this page, which is why its verification date is printed above — and to anchor on the statute citations, which are the one part of this fight that is always checkable at the source.
Official Illinois Sources & Resources
- Illinois Legislature: https://www.ilga.gov
- Illinois DMV: https://www.ilsos.gov
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: nhtsa.gov
- Cornell Legal Information Institute: law.cornell.edu/wex
Statute reference: 625 ILCS 5/2-130 (Illinois Vehicle Code — User of automated license plate readers; prohibitions), as amended by 2023 legislation effective 2024
Other Illinois rules to know: Illinois is one of the strongest ALPR-restriction states in the country on PURPOSE, and one of the weakest on RETENTION — a 5-year destruction deadline is far longer than Flock’s 30-day commercial default, so a driver’s plate history may sit in an Illinois agency’s archive for years. Unique to Illinois: (1) the written-declaration requirement — an out-of-state agency must attest in writing before receiving Illinois plate data; (2) the hard bar on out-of-state searching of records older than 90 days; (3) the audit power sits with the SECRETARY OF STATE, not the Attorney General or state police, which is unusual nationally; (4) the reproductive-health restriction is tied to the Illinois Reproductive Health Act and the statute expressly does not limit rights under that Act; (5) BIPA (740 ILCS 14) supplies a separate private right of action if a camera system captures biometric identifiers, which is the main private-suit theory available since the ALPR section itself lacks one; (6) the SAFE-T Act makes camera-damage charges non-detainable, so defendants are released pretrial, but the felony classes and 3-to-7-year exposure remain.
Nothing here guarantees an outcome — if you believe your plate was searched improperly, you may be able to obtain the audit log by FOIA and complain to the Secretary of State, but check with the specific agency and with counsel about your situation.
This guide to are flock cameras legal in Illinois was last verified against official sources in September 2026. ALPR law is the fastest-moving area of traffic law — the dated sections above are refreshed as developments land.
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