West Palm Beach Flock cameras stay online despite Florida’s statewide order

Our Take

Credit to CBS12's reporting for catching what looks like a loophole built right into the fine print. Florida's DOT told agencies to pull license-plate readers off state roads within 30 days, pulled permits, and said no to future requests. Sounds like a win for privacy. Except West Palm Beach Police say their camera network doesn't count because it sits on city-owned roads and is classified as CCTV rather than a straight ALPR system. Same cameras, same plate-reading capability, same data pipeline — just a different jurisdictional label that happens to exempt it from the order.

This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: a state or city makes a show of reining in mass surveillance, and the agencies running it quietly point to whatever technicality keeps their feeds running. Flock's business model depends on exactly this kind of ambiguity — networked cameras sprawled across state roads, county roads, city streets, and private HOAs, each falling under a different rule or none at all. When enforcement is this patchwork, residents have no real way to know whether a court order, a statewide ban, or a local ordinance actually touches the camera outside their house.

If you want to see what's actually watching your commute, check our camera map and look up what's running in West Palm Beach and your own city. And if your local council or state legislature is debating ALPR rules, don't let vague carve-outs do the work of gutting them — our take-action page has tools to push for real limits, not loophole-friendly language.