Backlash is growing against Flock Safety cameras, automatic license plate readers (ALPR), and other public surveillance tools.
The opposition is so severe in some places it's led people vandalizing the devices and taking up the mantle of "Flock Blockers."
Even Gov. Ron DeSantis recently voiced concerns, saying he’s never supported automatic speeding tickets.
"I'm all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable," DeSantis said. "I think that's important that we do that. And no one's been stronger on law enforcement than me. But I don't want to have this become a surveillance state."
And on Monday evening, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) issued a memorandum revoking existing permits for automated license plate recognition systems installed within the right of way of road on the State Highway System, in part because of “recent exponential increase in deployments along our roadways, couple with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes [that] merit immediate action to preserve Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life."
ALSO READ: FDOT revokes permits for 'Flock cameras’ installed on state land next to roads
Plus, Pasco and Manatee counties are the latest to either ban or pledge to remove the devices.
Police departments and sheriff’s offices say they can be used to fight crime and find missing people, but opponents point to abuse of privacy and mass surveillance, as well as mistakes by artificial intelligence features.
A panel of experts and concerned citizens recently joined host Matthew Peddie on “Florida Matters Live & Local” to discuss where to draw the line.
Read all of WUSF’s reporting on Flock here.
Surveillance cameras in the Tampa Bay region
The Pasco County Commission recently voted to remove dozens of the cameras from county land despite opposition from Sheriff Chris Nocco.
In St. Petersburg, city council member Richie Floyd wants the city to take a closer look at its contract with Flock.
ALSO READ: St. Petersburg police respond to surveillance camera concerns
And in Manatee County, commissioners voted to bar the cameras from being installed in county parks and buildings, and to require additional camera installations to come before the board. Commissioners had no say in the 139 cameras, including Flock’s brand, placed so far, said Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse.
“They're put onto rights-of-way with permits that were administratively approved, funded entirely by our sheriff's budget, which we have limited control over. Once we approved the budget, he can do what he wants with it. He's an independent constitutional officer,” Kruse said.
Sheriff Rick Wells, in a recent statement to FOX 13 Tampa Bay said his office has not placed license plate reader and cameras on county property, doesn’t intend to. But Kruse said his position is an elected one, and he can’t be sure a future sheriff will agree to the same.
Kruse has consistently voted to remove every camera in Manatee County, and was the sole no-vote on a curfew for kids.
“I don't believe government should interfere with how people live their life, and I am always concerned, even with the best of intention, and I believe Sheriff Wells has the best of intention," Kruse said. "But usually, when government gets to do one thing today, they start doing another thing tomorrow.”
How many ALPRs are out there?
According to a live, interactive map of Flock Safety cameras and other automated license plate readers across the United States, there are 131,109 known surveillance cameras as of Monday, Aug. 31. Nearly 9,000 of those are in Florida, with the map reporting Orlando as the most documented city.
They cluster around larger metro areas — Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale — where police departments, homeowners’ associations, and shopping centers have installed automatic license plate readers at high-traffic entry and exit points, but small towns are increasingly installing them, too.
Flock Safety does not publish a public map of its cameras. This map is built by volunteers who have documented on OpenStreetMap after spotting them from public roads.
Flock Safety understands why communities are asking tough questions about privacy, transparency and accountability. The feedback we hear is consistent: residents want effective tools to help solve crime, but they also want clear limits on how technology and data are used. We believe communities should have the information, policy controls and oversight necessary to make informed decisions based on their laws, values and public-safety priorities.
Flock cameras are designed to provide law enforcement with searchable investigative leads and time-sensitive alerts involving stolen vehicles, missing people, wanted suspects and other serious crimes. In Florida in July, Flock alerted police to 69 cars connected to missing people and more than 3,000 stolen vehicles or plates.
Any misuse of Flock technology is unacceptable. Audit Assistance detects abnormal activity and flags it for administrator review; Flock has announced that it will be required for all law-enforcement customers by the end of 2026. Flock is also implementing proactive lockout to suspend access when activity meets defined criteria for abnormal behavior, pending review, and is expanding case-code requirements for law-enforcement searches. Transparency Portals give participating agencies a way to publish information about their policies, retention periods, sharing relationships and search activity.
Flock supports clear legislative guardrails and ongoing community engagement, and we respect each community’s authority to decide how public-safety technology should be governed locally.
Safety vs privacy
Flock cameras and others have been used by law enforcement agencies and private corporations like Walmart to identify speeders, shoplifters and other criminals, and Kruse acknowledged that. But said it is not a good enough reason to violate the privacy of everyday citizens.
“I could pass a curfew for everybody in Manatee County and dramatically lower crime at night, but that's not practical. That's not realistic," Kruse said. "That's not fair to the citizens. We deserve some level of privacy.”
He said the cameras were installed quickly, without much transparency, and that should concern everyone.
ALSO READ: Flock announces changes amid backlash over its license plate reader network
“If we don't do something now, it's going to be 1,034 [cameras] 24 months from now, and it's going to stop five more crimes and it's going to justify putting another 1,000 out,” Kruse said.
“Eventually, we're going to have cameras on every street corner in Manatee County tracking everybody at all times, and we're going to turn into like Minority Report, and you're going to start getting pulled over before you do something wrong.”
Tom Gleason is a retired police captain and advisory board member for PursuitSAFETY focused on police officer and civilian safety during police pursuits.
He’s also concerned about the quick rollout and lack of transparency.
“I call it the ‘Four P’s': poor policy, poor training, poor implementation, and poor leadership, when we pushed all these out. And on top of that … law enforcement as a total hasn't done a good job as far as educating the community what are we using these things for,” Gleason said.
Gleason also pointed out the documented abuse of the surveillance system by active law enforcement officers accessing the network to stalk girlfriends and other private citizens.
Zach Schira with DeFlock St. Pete is also concerned about the lack of public input for these cameras, and what that might say about the intentions of the people approving installation.
He told “Florida Matters Live & Local” host Matthew Peddie the St. Petersburg City Council approved their Flock cameras on a consent agenda without a public comment period.
ALSO READ: 'Don't be following me': Why a Tampa Bay man is protesting Flock cameras by blocking them
“And in the process of trying to get more information, trying to do public records requests and understand how these cameras are being used, we're pretty consistently blocked in that effort,” he said.
Here are the records DeFlock St. Pete has received so far.
He’s also concerned about how Immigration Customs and Enforcement could be using the data, citing reporting by 404 Media that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has been passing Flock data through to ICE, which Flock Safety denies.
Schira points out that these cameras aren’t cheap, and worries about potential kickbacks for elected officials who sign contracts with Flock.
“We don't know what kind of lobbying efforts are going on," he said. "We don't know what politicians are getting any kind of kickbacks, because a lot of that's really hard to tell in our system.”
The grassroots group is asking city council to remove the cameras. Last week, council members took the first step towards considering that by voting to discuss the contract and how the technology is being used at a future meeting.
Guardrails and regulations
Automatic license plate readers and public surveillance cameras are not new technology. But they’ve come into the public consciousness as installations continue at a rapid pace, and as the ethics of Large Language Models and other forms of artificial intelligence are being debated.
Lisa Femia, a staff attorney with Electronic Frontier Foundation said they’ve been tracking these cameras for about 12 years.
“I think that we have just finally seen enough of them implemented that people are noticing that their cities and their roads have turned into a mass surveillance system, where everywhere you drive, the cameras are increasingly popping up and indiscriminately collecting data and images of people, regardless of whether or not you're under suspicion,” she said.
Gleason said Florida has yet to approve guardrails for automatic license plate readers and public surveillance cameras like the Flock devices, and city and county regulations — if they have any at all — are all over the place.
He expressed concern about cameras being used in both the public and private domain without any regulations, but Manatee County commissioner George Kruse pointed out that private companies have the right to record anyone who enters their doors, as long as they are communicating that to customers and clients. Customers then have the right to choose not to shop there. Public roads and other public places, he said, are an entirely different story.
“My concern isn't today, my concern is tomorrow,” Kruse said. “People say, ‘oh, that you can only use Flock if there's a crime. Well, I mean, that's very broad term when it comes to ICE right now. So they can be tracking people. A lot of these Flock cameras are on major roads. That's where protests happen. Can those cameras be used?
“There's very little restrictions on what can and can't be used. They're all self-imposed. I mean, the very fact that Manatee County is doing best practices … of only retaining information for 30 days, whereas Hillsborough, which is literally abutting us, holds it for a year shows how flexible all these places are and how quickly things can change. Manatee County could switch to a year.”
He said the state of Florida, “wants to kind of control everything that everybody does, [and] seems to have given free rein to individual municipalities and sheriffs to make their own decisions on how these are used.”
The future of Flock and others
Kruse said it will cost taxpayer money, beyond what was used to purchase the cameras, to uninstall them if the county goes that route in the future.
“We would bear the brunt, the taxpayers would bear the brunt of whatever break-up fees there are, and the cost of removal of equipment, and so forth. And that's an assessment that staff is looking into, but not a step we've taken,” he said.
Kruse said that decision could be impacted if voters pass Amendment 3 in the November General Election to increase the non-school homestead property tax exemption up to $250,000 by 2028, effectively eliminating property tax for many people. But that means less money for municipalities.
“For now, we've basically just said, ‘don't put any more up until we can have a better assessment of what we can do to hopefully take the rest of them down.’”
ALSO READ: Why some cities are ditching their Flock license plate readers
Gleason is worried as much about mobile cameras as he is the static ones posted along roadways.
“You'll drive by a patrol car, and on the back of it, you'll look at two what you will think maybe blue lights, but they're attached usually on the trunk, and those are reading your tags anytime you go by,” he said.
Femia is concerned that without regulations and transparency, more people will be continue to be misidentified as criminals.
She said that the technology will continue to improve, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.
“This isn’t the surveillance cameras of 30 years ago where you have to manually sift through footage,” she said. “This is a networked camera system that can connect to cameras throughout the state, throughout the country, and there are AI features that you can use to search the camera footage.”
She said you can search for anything in the image, too, like items.
“So there are both accuracy issues that can put people in danger and increased accuracy that can make mass surveillance even easier than it was before. So [it’s] multi-pronged.”
Law enforcement agencies across the state also have 30 days to remove automated license plate readers installed
within the right of way of road on the State Highway System.
Any remaining after that will be removed by FDOT.
This story was compiled from interviews conducted by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full episode here or watch the segment in the YouTube player below.
