Unless Required To Be Retained - Florida's 3 Year Clock On Plate Reads Has An Unless On It

Our Take

Everybody ran the same story: Florida's DOT yanked ALPR permits off the state highway system and gave agencies 30 days to pull the poles. Case closed, surveillance win, move on. Magnetic Norse did the thing most outlets skipped — actually read the statute the memo is built on — and found the catch hiding in subsection 2(d) of 316.0777: plate reads can't be kept longer than whatever the state's official records retention schedule allows. That schedule, GS2 for Criminal Justice Agencies, is a separate document written by the Department of State, and it's the real ceiling on how long your location history sticks around.

This is exactly the pattern we track at DeFlock: a headline win on hardware (poles coming down) that leaves the data pipeline and legal plumbing untouched. Physical cameras get the press coverage; the records schedules, interlocal data-sharing agreements, and vendor retention defaults quietly keep doing the surveillance work in the background. A 3-year retention limit sounds like a privacy win until you learn "unless otherwise required" can mean a different, longer clock entirely.

Florida residents and watchdogs should treat this as a reminder to read past press releases and into the actual statutory text and schedules governing their local agencies. Check our camera map to see what's still logging plates near you, and hit take action for ways to push your city or county toward real retention transparency — not just a memo about poles.