Overview
- The Florida Department of Transportation revoked all permits for automated license‑plate readers in state highway rights‑of‑way in a memo issued Monday and gave agencies 30 days to remove devices or face state removal.
- Several sheriff’s offices and cities, including Jacksonville, Putnam County and multiple Central Florida jurisdictions, quickly announced they would suspend or discontinue use of Flock systems in response to the order.
- FDOT’s directive covers only devices on state highway rights‑of‑way and does not force removal of cameras on private property or most local roads, leaving a patchwork of remaining deployments.
- Flock Safety defended its product and made changes for customers that include mandatory audit tools that flag suspicious searches, requiring case codes for most searches, and shortening default data retention to seven days.
- The action follows documented cases of officer misuse, high false alerts, vandalism and public protests and is likely to prompt more local rollbacks, legal challenges and legislative proposals over how vehicle‑tracking networks are governed.