Automatic license plate readers have been an element of law enforcement for decades, but a particular brand of surveillance cameras have recently incensed public outrage and made their way into Florida's gubernatorial race.
Flock cameras are a brand of new technology that allows police departments to search for specific license plates and get access to a nationwide surveillance database that can track a vehicle's movements.
As voter sentiment has grown sour over widespread surveillance, the candidates running for Florida's top job have made a point to denounce the technology on the campaign trail.
Republican frontrunner Byron Donalds issued a statement last month calling for a "full pause" on Flock camera contracts, citing concerns over the violation of people's constitutional rights.
Firebrand Republican candidate James Fishback has touted his opposition to Flock cameras and made it a hallmark of his campaign.
"We have to stop it here in Florida," Fishback said at a rally in Orlando in July. "We must block Flock now."
In an interview with WLRN, Democratic frontrunner David Jolly took a more moderate approach to Flock, but agreed that the cameras need greater limitation.
"Greater restrictions are called for, but we must make sure greater restrictions don't impede on law enforcement activity," Jolly said, adding that he believes police should only be able to use ALPR data with a search warrant, and they should not be used for immigration enforcement.
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Flock Safety has come under fire in recent months after reports of its cameras being used for immigration enforcement activities. While the company said it has no contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), local police departments that do contract with Flock are in many cases deputized by ICE and assist with immigrant arrests.
Additionally, police officers have in some cases used Flock's database to track people for non-law enforcement purposes.
A Monroe County Sheriff's deputy, for instance, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly stalking a woman he met on an Apple TV production set using a license plate database to track her car.
"While it was being advertised, it was very much marketed as this crime-solving tool for looking for missing people or stolen cars. But as we looked more into it, you started to see more instances of it being used to track people who are innocent, maybe even just using their First Amendment rights, like protesters," said Rindala Alajaji, an associate director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital civil rights group.
EFF combed through public records of Flock database searches and found police officers were using slurs while searching for people from minority groups. The organization found in some cases that schools were using ALPR data to follow children's family vehicles to check if they met residency requirements.
" We do see these searches as a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. It is an unreasonable search of people's movements and people's bodies" Alajaji told WLRN. "We believe police departments need to get warrants before they get access to it."
Other technology companies also sell automatic license plate readers, like Motorola Solutions. The company is currently being sued in a class-action case in California for allegedly violating the state's privacy laws.
Several grassroots movements have cropped up to push back against Flock cameras, or to inform people about where they are in local communities.
In Miami-Dade, ALPRs are present all over the county as various state and local law enforcement agencies have contracts with the company. Hundreds of cameras are also present in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
The website Deflock.org provides users an interactive map showing where Flock and Motorola cameras are on a GPS map, embedded below.
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