Why Florida Just Ordered ALL Flock Cams Removed #TheOutbreak

Our Take

Credit to the outbreak for flagging this one fast: if FDOT really did revoke permits for ALPR and Flock cameras statewide and gave agencies 30 days to pull them off state right-of-way, that's a big deal. Florida is not exactly a hotbed of privacy-first policy, so a state DOT stepping in over "extreme privacy risks" and tracking abuse is the kind of admission we don't get often — someone with actual authority over the roads is saying the quiet part out loud.

The bigger picture matters more than any one state's paperwork fight. Flock's pitch has always been that these cameras are just passive infrastructure, no different from a stoplight. But infrastructure doesn't build a searchable, retroactive map of every car that passed a point, shared across agencies and sometimes states, with little independent oversight. When a right-of-way permit is the only thing standing between a highway and a de facto tracking network, that tells you how thin the legal foundation for this stuff really is everywhere it's been installed.

Don't assume this fixes anything on its own — permits get renegotiated, agencies find workarounds, and cameras have a habit of reappearing under new agreements. If you want to see what's actually deployed near you right now, check our camera map, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for city council meetings and public records requests.