Concerns over Flock cameras in Florida

Our Take

When a governor who's built a career on law-and-order politics starts publicly worrying about license plate readers, it's a signal worth paying attention to. 10 Tampa Bay's report on DeSantis calling for legislative guardrails around Flock Safety cameras confirms what we've been saying for a while: this isn't a partisan issue. Mass surveillance infrastructure doesn't care who's in office, and once it's installed, it tends to stick around long after the political mood shifts.

What makes Flock's rollout across Florida (and everywhere else) so unsettling is the sheer lack of friction. Cities and counties have quietly stacked up camera after camera with almost no public debate, no meaningful oversight, and no real limits on how long data gets stored or who else gets to query it. That a sitting governor is now saying "maybe we should regulate this" tells you just how far ahead of the law the technology has run.

Legislative promises are cheap until they're written into statute and enforced. Floridians shouldn't wait around for Tallahassee to act on its own timeline — check our camera map to see what's already watching your daily commute, and head to our take-action page for ways to push back before more of these cameras go up.