On August 31st, Florida’s Department of Transportation (FDOT) revoked the permits for Automated License Plate Recognition Systems, more commonly known as Flock cameras, on state highways, after the governor criticized police use of the technology as “out of control.” The state’s decision to remove LPR cameras from state highways follows a growing number of municipalities in Florida that have also ended their contracts with Flock and prohibited their law enforcement agencies from using the technology. Naturally, with growing public backlash toward the cameras, the decision to remove the technology from Florida’s roads is not surprising.
Floridians should not, however, mistake these movements for the end of the surveillance state. FDOT’s order does not touch LPR cameras operated by Florida counties or by cities and, critically, it is a memorandum, not a law, and memos can be reversed. Similarly, local politics are notoriously fluid, and once the public’s attention is elsewhere, a county board could simply renew the contract to put the cameras back into operation. Recognizing this, Governor DeSantis has called for a more permanent fix.
This distinction matters because what turned Floridians against LPRs wasn’t the technology or the existence of the cameras themselves, but how those with access to the data used it. Christopher Goodson of the Haines City Police Department was arrested and charged with multiple felonies after using LPR cameras for logging over 700 unauthorized searches of his estranged wife’s vehicle between September 2024 and June 2026. Cory Waiters of the Sarasota Police Department faces felony charges for conducting over 350 unauthorized LPR searches. In both cases, an officer accessed law enforcement data for personal ends, and nobody had stopped them until it had been done hundreds of times. That’s a governance failure rather than a problem inherent in the technology.
The same logic applies to jurisdiction. Removing automated LPR cameras from state or county highways does not prevent law enforcement from running their own plate readers with none of the restrictions currently under debate. Additionally, a business or homeowners association is still free to deploy the same technology on private property, creating the same searchable record that has led to misidentification and abuse and created the public outcry and demands for reform. Add to that the spread of facial recognition-enabled doorbell cameras and cameras in major urban centers, and it’s impossible to walk through any major city without being recorded by a system Tallahassee has largely failed to regulate.
The larger concern is that banning a specific technology leaves a capability untouched, reflecting a broader policy failure that only the legislature can address. What constrains government and preserves Floridians’ rights is not where cameras can and cannot be, but the rules governing who can access the data, for what purpose, what audit trail exists, and how long data can be retained. Those are the hard questions Tallahassee must answer and, unfortunately, the questions that the governor’s order to remove LPR cameras from state highways and the municipalities banning them have failed to address.
When lawmakers return to Tallahassee, they should focus their attention on data governance reform such as restricting how long law enforcement agencies can retain the public’s data absent an active investigation, requiring a paper trail that shows who searched the system and why, and warrant requirements. Lawmakers should also restrict sharing Florida drivers’ location data with out-of-state agencies or federal authorities without a warrant, and attach real consequences beyond termination for officers who abuse the system. None of this requires banning a technology that has helped agencies recover stolen vehicles and locate missing persons. It requires binding government officials to the rule of law and reining in an unaccountable surveillance apparatus.
Removing LPR cameras may make for a good headline and will give elected officials something to point to before constituents go to the polls in November, but the cameras are not the problem. The deeper problem is a failure of Tallahassee to create a data governance program that would prevent bad actors from exploiting powerful technologies – and the growth of a surveillance state that Americans have, until now, been too comfortable with. When lawmakers return to Tallahassee in 2027, they will have a golden opportunity to finally write the rules that should have been there in the first place.
