DeSantis: Flock cameras are "out of control" #rondesantis #flockcameras #florida

Our Take

When a Republican governor starts using phrases like "what the hell is going on" about a surveillance company, you know the conversation has shifted. WFLA News Channel 8 caught DeSantis reacting to reports of Flock cameras being used well outside their advertised scope, and calling for lawmakers to rein in the technology. That's notable because ALPR pushback has too often been painted as a partisan or fringe issue — it isn't. Cops, city councils, and now governors across the spectrum are waking up to the fact that thousands of cameras logging every car's movements, with little oversight and murky data-sharing agreements, is a problem regardless of your politics.

What DeSantis is describing isn't a bug in the system — it's the business model. Flock's pitch to municipalities is scale: more cameras, more shared networks, more searchable history. The privacy violations he's referencing aren't edge cases; they're the predictable result of a system built to make casual, warrantless tracking as frictionless as possible for whoever has login access. Legislative action is a good instinct, but the details matter enormously — audit trails, retention limits, and hard restrictions on who can query the data need to have real teeth, not just a press conference.

Florida residents curious whether these cameras have already shown up on their street can check our camera map, and if you want to push your own local officials toward accountability instead of waiting on Tallahassee, our take action page has the tools to get started.