James Fishback: Ban Flock Cameras & Palantir - Florida's Surveillance Nightmare #florida #fishback

Our Take

When a gubernatorial candidate goes on a podcast and names Flock Safety and Palantir specifically as things he'd ban, that's a signal worth noting. James Fishback's appearance on The Nik & Colten Show frames Florida's ALPR and data-fusion buildout as a bipartisan liability, not a niche ACLU talking point. We credit the hosts for giving the issue airtime beyond the usual privacy-advocate circuit, even if a campaign promise is a long way from a repealed statute.

What makes this notable isn't the politics of any one candidate, it's the pattern: Flock's camera network and Palantir's data-mining contracts keep getting bundled together in public criticism because that's increasingly how they actually function together in the field — cameras feeding plate reads into platforms that cross-reference them with other law enforcement and commercial data streams. Florida has been one of the more aggressive states for Flock deployment, which is exactly why pushback there carries weight for the rest of the country.

Campaign rhetoric is easy; dismantling procurement contracts and interagency data-sharing agreements is hard. If you want to see whether this kind of surveillance has already landed in your own county, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has the tools to start.