Days after Forest Park officials were alerted that license plate data from cars traveling through the village were shared with ICE, commissioners and officials discussed another privacy concern involving the police department’s use of Clear, a software that consolidates public and proprietary data.
At the Sept. 8 council meeting, four of five commissioners approved a resolution authorizing a subscription renewal agreement with Thomson Reuters, the company that provides Clear, but not before asking about when and how the Forest Park Police Department uses the software.
Commissioner Jessica Voogd abstained from the vote, expressing a desire to review Police Chief Ken Gross’ monthly audit of the village’s use of Clear, where he documents who accesses the system’s data and why. Gross was out of the country at the time of the meeting.
According to Deputy Chief Christopher Chin, the police department uses Clear for investigative services and background checks for potential candidates. Only Gross and three department detectives have access to Clear.
“We’ve actually bounced a couple candidates [to join the police department] because they’ve been a little untruthful in their backgrounds,” Chin said during the council meeting. “It’s also information that it’s publicly available,” he added of Clear’s data, like financial information and home address.
Voogd started the discussion around the meeting’s agenda item, sharing her concerns about privacy.
“One of the things that is out of our hands is that there’s a lack of comprehensive data privacy laws in the United States, which we can’t change here,” Voogd said. “So even when information is publicly available in sort of a disaggregated form, we do have to consider the significant personal exposure created by a company compiling and selling cradle-to-grave dossiers on individuals.”
Voogd also said she wants a formal local policy “that is reiterating to the public that, as useful as these tools are, we’re using them in a way that takes your privacy and data to heart, and we are protecting that.”
Commissioner Michelle Melin-Rogovin agreed.
“I really respect Commissioner Voogd’s perspective on this because I think, especially in the environment that we’re in, with increased law enforcement or federal presence of Customs and Border Patrol enforcement, our residents are asking us a lot more questions about data and how their data is being used and what data is available,” Melin-Rogovin said. “I think the idea of us showing that we’re doing our due diligence about data and how we’re using data is very important.”
Melin-Rogovin said two things can be true — that the village takes the necessary steps to review police department processes around Clear and how detectives use data, and that the village should assure residents that it’s carefully taking care of their data.
For that reason, “I am okay with moving forward with Thomson Reuters, knowing that we have trained professionals who understand how this system works,” Melin-Rogovin said. “I feel like we can continue the agreement knowing that we can have processes and procedures that will be responsible.”
Commissioner Maria Maxham also shared her reasoning for approving the Clear subscription renewal.
“I trust that [Police Chief Ken Gross] has in place a system that allows the very small group of people who use this database to do it in a way that is respectful and does not violate privacy,” Maxham said. “I agree with Commissioner Melin-Rogovin. I think maybe we can ask our village administrator to communicate to the public what controls are in place so that people feel more confident about this and other things too.”
The other things in question include the recent accidental sharing of village license plate data. Maxham said that, without that privacy breach, perhaps the council wouldn’t have discussed the Clear agenda item as much.
“My understanding is that that was an inadvertent and one time error,” Maxham said of the license plate data that was accidentally shared with federal agencies starting in April 2024. “It wasn’t a policy decision that we have in place that resulted in that, nor was it a pattern of problems that have occurred in the department that means that we should have tighter control and oversight as a council over what they’re doing. While that mistake was concerning, it’s isolated, and I don’t think that it justifies pausing or delaying this contract that will enable our department to function effectively.”
License plate data privacy
On Sept. 3, Forest Park officials discovered that, on April 5, 2024, a police department detective accidentally accepted over 200 data-sharing requests from law enforcement agencies, one of which was ICE.
At the Sept. 8 council meeting, Village Administrator Rachell Entler said during her administrator’s report that she and Mayor Rory Hoskins met with Motorola Solutions, the vendor for the license plate scanners, about the data sharing mistake.
“According to Motorola, the Illinois Secretary of State is also going to be issuing some protocols to Motorola to further help prevent inadvertent and accidental sharing of information,” Entler said. “Per the Illinois Secretary of State, the village of Forest Park is not in any trouble . . . nothing bad has happened as a result of the inadvertent access sharing that was detected.” She added that Forest Park is now in compliance with state law.
During his commissioner’s comment at the end of the Sept. 8 meeting, Hoskins said Motorola Solutions said the company recognizes the Secretary of State’s audit of license plate reader systems is new technology.
“They recognize that different departments may have had mishaps and maybe have granted access to the users of data inadvertently, similar to what happened in Forest Park,” Hoskins said.
Hoskins added that Motorola Solutions is proposing an alert system, where departments will periodically get a listing of what agencies they’ve granted access to. He added that the Secretary of State’s office is also looking at best practices to train departments in using license plate readers.
“I read the police reports pretty regularly, and I know of several instances where the community has benefited from the LPR technology,” Hoskins said. “I think we can improve how we use it and continue to work with our police department and the Secretary of State.”