Flock Cameras - Don’t Break The Law And You Wont’ Have A Problem

Our Take

Credit to Eye On Margate for capturing Commissioner Arlene Schwartz's defense of Flock cameras after Florida's DHSMV reportedly flagged compliance issues. But "don't break the law and you won't have a problem" is the same tired line we hear from officials in every city that adopts this technology, and it dodges the actual complaint. Nobody is arguing that catching car thieves is bad. The argument is that blanket, suspicionless tracking of every single driver's movements — logged, stored, and searchable by police and whoever else gets database access — is a fundamentally different kind of policing than knocking on doors with a warrant.

"Nothing to hide" rhetoric only works if you ignore how these systems actually get used: data shared across jurisdictions with no local oversight, officers running personal searches, and vendors like Flock controlling infrastructure that a city council barely understands, let alone audits. Florida's own state regulator flagging compliance problems should be the headline here, not a commissioner's talking point. When a state agency is raising red flags about how a mass surveillance network is being operated, that's not a reason for reassurance — it's a reason for the public to ask harder questions.

If you want to see whether Margate or your own city is running these cameras, check our camera map, and if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR deployment in your community, our take-action page has concrete steps to get started.