SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — One of the nation’s leading operators of automated license-plate reading systems this week announced it has paused its operations with federal agencies because of confusion and concern about the purpose of their investigations.

Flock Safety, the cameras of which are mounted in more than 4,000 communities, put a hold last week on pilot programs with the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection and its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations, according to a statement by founder and CEO, Garrett Langley.

Among officials in other jurisdictions, Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias raised concerns.

He announced that an audit found Customs and Border Protection had accessed Illinois data, although he didn’t say that the agency was seeking immigration-related information. A 2023 law the Democrat pushed bars sharing license plate data with police investigating out-of-state abortions or undocumented immigrants.

“This sharing of license plate data of motorists who drive on Illinois roads is a clear violation of the state law,” said Giannoulias. “This law, passed two years ago, aimed to strengthen how data is shared and prevent this exact thing from happening.”

Flock Safety’s cameras capture billions of photos of license plates each month. It doesn’t own that data, however. The local agencies in the jurisdictions of which the cameras are located do and they’re the ones who receive inquiries from other law enforcement agencies.

Langley said the company had initiated pilot programs with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations to help combat human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.

The company is unaware of any immigration-related searches the agencies made, but Langley said parameters were unclear.

“We clearly communicated poorly. We also didn’t create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users,” Langley said.

The revelation comes two months after Giannoulias announced that police in the Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect had shared data with a Texas sheriff who was seeking a missing woman. The woman’s family was worried because she had undergone a self-administered abortion.

Although the sheriff in Johnson County, Texas, said he was simply trying to help the family locate the woman, Giannoulias demanded more vigilance from Flock Safety because of the abortion connection.

In addition to halting the pilot programs, Flock has tweaked its system so that federal inquiries are clearly identified as such.

Federal agencies no longer will be able to make blanket national or even statewide searches, but only one-on-one searches with particular police agencies.