By Ghost Zero
In May 2025, authorities in Texas ran a nationwide search of more than 83,000 license plate cameras to find a woman they said had a self-administered abortion. The search reached cameras in Illinois, including in suburban Mount Prospect.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias went public in June 2025. He also said that between January 14 and April 30 of that year, there had been 262 searches for immigration-related matters in Mount Prospect alone. He told Flock to cut off out-of-state access, called in the Illinois Attorney General, and set up an audit system.
That is how Illinois found out what was flowing out of its cameras.
This is Part 5 of The Warrantless Road, and it is about home.
The Law Illinois Already Had
Illinois was not unprotected. A 2023 state law, 625 ILCS 5/2-130, bars sharing plate reader data with anyone in another state to investigate or enforce laws against reproductive health care, or to detain people based on immigration status.
The law was on the books. The data moved anyway.
The Audit
In August 2025, the Secretary of State's audit found that Flock had let U.S. Customs and Border Protection access Illinois license plate cameras on Illinois roads, in violation of state law. The office ordered the access shut off. The same week, Flock posted its admission that some of its earlier public statements about federal access were inaccurate.
Less than two weeks later, a second audit found that Forest Park's plate reader data, through a different vendor, Motorola, had also been accessible to CBP. That was shut down too.
How big is the network here? Capitol News Illinois reported in August 2025 that more than 461 Illinois police departments, prosecutors, dispatch centers, state universities, transit agencies and railroads had access to Flock data. By September 2026, WTTW reported that more than 500 Illinois law enforcement agencies use Flock cameras.
The Towns That Pushed Back
Oak Park voted on August 5, 2025 to end its Flock contract immediately. The Institute for Justice later identified Oak Park as the only jurisdiction in the country it found that published regular reports of plate reader errors.
Evanston switched off all 19 of its Flock cameras on August 26, 2025 and sent a termination notice. Flock challenged it and, according to city records and local reporting, reinstalled cameras without authorization. Evanston sent a cease-and-desist and covered the cameras in plastic. The final two came down in March 2026.
Illinois Officers Facing Charges
These are charges, not convictions. Both men are presumed innocent.
– Holiday Hills. Former police chief William Copp, who also worked part-time for Prairie Grove, faces 12 felony counts of official misconduct in McHenry County. Prosecutors allege about 250 unauthorized searches on Prairie Grove's Flock system and 31 personal searches of the state LEADS database. He resigned as chief and pleaded not guilty.
– Joliet. In October 2026, a Will County grand jury charged former Joliet police lieutenant Jeremy Harrison with computer tampering and official misconduct, both felonies, after an Illinois State Police investigation. The police chief's termination notice alleged about 153 searches of a female officer's plate in July 2025, using false reasons like "wanted" and "stolen." Harrison is appealing his firing, and his attorney disputes the allegations.
And one more Illinois record from the national audits: the Electronic Frontier Foundation found the Lake County Sheriff's Office among the agencies that typed an ethnic term for Romani people as a Flock search reason.
The Expressways and the City
Flock is not the only grid in Illinois.
The Tamara Clayton Expressway Camera Act took effect in 2020. Illinois State Police say they have 808 expressway plate reader cameras and keep reads for up to 90 days. A 2025 update to the law limits use of the images to listed serious crimes and highway safety, bars discriminatory monitoring, and requires images exported into a police database to be deleted within 120 days unless they are part of an ongoing case. It also widened the public-records exemption for those images. The Act is set to expire on July 1, 2028 unless lawmakers renew it.
Chicago does not have an active Flock contract, but it has something bigger. A 2024 Chicago Tribune and Illinois Answers investigation counted roughly 4,400 core police cameras plus permitted access to about 35,000 more owned by the CTA, schools and private businesses. The CTA alone reports about 39,000 cameras with full connection to the police department.
Springfield
Several bills would put real limits on plate readers in Illinois. HB5151 and SB3816 would create an Automated License Plate Recognition System Act, with use limits, retention rules, penalties and a right to sue. SB3257 deals with how long plate data is kept. SB2712, the Immigration Enforcement Act, would add plate reader limits with fines of up to $25,000 per violation.
As of the latest official records we could confirm, from August 2026, none of them had become law. HB5151 passed a committee. SB3816 was sent back to the Senate Assignments Committee in May 2026. Check ilga.gov for where each stands today, because this is where your calls matter most.
My opinion, labeled as my opinion: Illinois wrote a law to keep this data home, and the data left anyway. The audits caught it after the fact. Cameras came down in Evanston only after a fight. Two Illinois officers now face felony charges over searches nobody stopped in real time. Rules are not enough when the machine is built to share. I do not consent, and Illinois towns should take the cameras down.
What You Can Do
The goal is removal.
– Tell your village board, city council or county board in writing: I do not consent. End the Flock contract and take the cameras down. Oak Park and Evanston already did.
– File a FOIA request with your police department for the Flock contract, the renewal date and the audit log of outside agencies searching your town's cameras.
– If you find out-of-state searches tied to abortion or immigration, report them to the Secretary of State's office, which has already audited and shut down this kind of sharing.
– Call your state representative and state senator about HB5151 and SB3816. Ask them to support the strongest version, and ask where they stand on the record.
If your town will not take them down yet, demand the fallback in writing while you keep pushing: no National Lookup, no out-of-state or federal sharing, 21-day deletion, and a public error report like the one Oak Park published.
Safeguards are the floor, not the goal.
Start today. Search your village or city board's records for the words "Flock" or "license plate reader" and find out when the contract renews.
The full research is in The Flock Files: How a $7.5 Billion Startup Built America’s Surveillance Grid – and How We Stop It, free in the Red Pill Library. Part 1 of The Warrantless Road covers who built the network, who is watching through it and how exposed it is, Part 2 covers what happens when the machine is wrong, Part 3 covers officers who abused it and the honest ones who want it checked, and Part 4 covers the way out. I also put this subject into song form, released by Vigilant Protocol as FLOCKED and by The Valkyrie Project as SMILE, with songs from Redline Republic and Axiom 312 on the way. Protocol Media is building an archive for every topic it covers: books, briefs, music, art and short-form video, backed by the Evidence, Founding and Acts Records. The work is underway and the documents are still being added, so the page keeps growing.
ART AS THE WEAPON. TRUTH AS THE AMMUNITION.