Will County Public Works Committee Shelves License Plate Reader Agreement Amid Bipartisan Privacy Concerns

Will County Public Works and Transportation Committee Meeting | March 3, 2026

Article Summary: The Will County Public Works and Transportation Committee abruptly removed an agreement with the Illinois State Police for automated license plate readers from its agenda Tuesday after an ACLU representative and committee members raised severe privacy and surveillance concerns.

Will County Board Key Points:

• The Illinois State Police withdrew their request for an Intergovernmental Agreement regarding automated license plate readers (ALPRs) prior to the meeting.

• ACLU of Illinois representative Steven Reagan warned that ALPRs “indiscriminately surveil, capture and record” travel patterns, retaining data for 90 days.

• Board members expressed bipartisan outrage over potential tracking, citing fears of monitoring reproductive rights, immigration status, and general government overreach.

• County Board Speaker Joe VanDuyne noted that the technology’s current use extends far beyond the original pitch of solely catching perpetrators of “heinous crimes.”

The Will County Public Works and Transportation Committee on Tuesday, March 3, universally condemned a proposed intergovernmental agreement that would have expanded automated license plate readers (ALPRs) along Interstate 55, citing severe privacy violations and governmental overreach.

While the committee voted unanimously to remove the item from the agenda at the request of the Illinois State Police—who indicated they were not yet ready to move forward—the agenda item sparked a fiery discussion. Steven Reagan, a policy and advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Illinois, attended the meeting to educate the board on the sweeping surveillance capabilities of ALPRs.

“Broadly speaking, ALPRs indiscriminately surveil, capture, and record the travel patterns of everyone passing cameras,” Reagan told the committee. “The information captured includes the license plate number, date, time, location, and other distinguishing characteristics of the automobile like bumper stickers. Some cameras even have the ability to capture images of occupants.”

Reagan highlighted that the Illinois State Police retention period for this data is 90 days, which is three times longer than the standard 30-day retention period used by providers like Flock Safety. He warned that this “just in case” retention of travel patterns could reveal intimate windows into residents’ lives, such as trips to doctors’ offices, protests, or houses of worship, and could even track whether a person crossed state lines to seek reproductive healthcare.

The presentation drew swift and fierce bipartisan agreement from the committee.

“I don’t like it even going for one day personally because I think it’s an intrusion on our people’s rights,” said Member Steve Balich. “The only people that are getting hurt by this will be the citizens that don’t do anything wrong except speed… I don’t like anything about intruding on my rights as a citizen. And if I’m a criminal, I laugh at this kind of thing. For real. Think about it. All you got to do is go take plates off a parked car somewhere and then go steal a car and put the parked car plates on the car… It’s a total waste of money and it’s also another way for big government to watch what I’m doing.”

Member Kelly Hickey echoed Balich’s concerns from a different political angle, noting the dangers of the “mosaic effect” where the government pieces together an individual’s life based on location data.

“I can’t even believe I’m going to say this: I am very supportive of Member Balich’s position here with regard to our privacy,” Hickey said. “The government can cobble together where we are and it can impede on our religious freedoms, our reproductive rights, and people can be targeted because of their immigration status or a bumper sticker.”

County Board Speaker Joe VanDuyne recalled that when ALPR cameras were initially introduced to the county years ago, the technology was sold purely as a tool to solve “heinous crimes” like kidnappings.

“It seems like now everything has shifted,” VanDuyne said. “This is surprising to me that they can actually follow a bumper sticker or the make of the car and all this other information that is being shared… if they are tracking folks going to the doctor or getting their driving patterns, that was not what this was intended to do when they first came to the county board.”

Chair Jacqueline Traynere agreed that the technology had spiraled “way out of control.” She added that existing camera contracts with the county operate on three-year increments and will soon be up for renewal, giving the board a future opportunity to restrict their usage.

“The profiling that’s going on and what you’re profiling them for, it doesn’t really matter,” Traynere said. “That’s not what we agreed to. We wanted it just for catching a criminal if a child is kidnapped, if a bank is robbed. And that’s all we wanted it for. And we didn’t necessarily need it shared with everybody.”

Following the discussion, the committee voted unanimously to strip the Illinois State Police agreement from the agenda entirely.