FDOT cracking down on Flock cameras, license plate readers

Our Take

Credit to RickieBobbieNO26 for flagging this one fast, because it's a genuinely big deal. Florida's DOT isn't some rogue county commission grumbling about budget lines — it's a state agency with authority over every highway right-of-way, and it just told local police departments their license plate readers are coming down. The memo's language is the real story: officials cited an "exponential increase" in deployments, misuse reports, and "surveillance schemes." That's not activist rhetoric, that's the state's own engineering leadership admitting the network grew faster than anyone could oversee it.

This is what accountability is supposed to look like when it actually works. Flock and similar vendors have spent years selling ALPRs to small agencies as a low-friction public safety upgrade, quietly building a statewide tracking grid one county at a time with little public debate. When a state DOT steps in and says "no more, and take down what's there," it validates everything watchdogs have been saying about mission creep, data sharing beyond local jurisdiction, and the total absence of meaningful consent from drivers who never agreed to be logged every time they pass a pole.

Don't assume this fixes itself in 30 days — agencies push back, cameras move to local roads instead of state ones, and permits get renegotiated under new rules. Check our camera map to see what's actually deployed near you, and if you want to push your own city or county toward the same kind of reversal Florida just forced, our take-action page has the tools to start that fight locally.