West Palm Beach surveillance cameras not affected by Florida's Flock camera order
The short version: CBS 12 reports West Palm Beach's own camera network sits outside Florida's recent Flock order, exposing a loophole state rules don't close.
Our Take
CBS 12 News - WPEC flags something we keep seeing play out city by city: a state-level crackdown on Flock Safety cameras that somehow doesn't touch a city's own surveillance network. Florida issued an order aimed at Flock-specific ALPR systems, but West Palm Beach apparently runs cameras that fall outside that definition entirely. The cameras keep watching. The data keeps flowing. The rules just don't apply to this particular flavor of surveillance.
This is the pattern that makes piecemeal regulation almost pointless. Lawmakers write orders targeting one vendor or one camera type, and local governments route around them by labeling their system something else, running it under a different contract, or classifying it as a different kind of infrastructure. The public is left thinking a policy win happened when functionally nothing changed about who's being tracked, how long the data sits in a database, or who gets to query it.
If you live in West Palm Beach or anywhere else running camera systems that dodge state oversight, it's worth checking what's actually deployed near you. Check our map to see what's been documented in your area, and if you want to push back on surveillance infrastructure your city council approved with little public input, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting answers and organizing.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS 12 News - WPEC, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.