Florida cops were caught using surveillance cameras to stalk their ex-girlfriends.
Now the governor who built his career on fighting government overreach is turning that same fire on the cameras watching your every move.
Ron DeSantis just shut the whole system down after Florida cops were caught using government cameras to stalk women.
What the Flock Safety Cameras Were Actually Doing
Flock Safety cameras don't just read license plates.
They record your make, model, color, and bumper stickers.
Every trip you take on a Florida state highway was being logged, timestamped, and stored by private tech companies with almost zero oversight.
Then the abuse started.
A Haines City police officer was arrested for accessing the Flock system on hundreds of separate occasions – not to solve crimes, but to stalk a romantic interest.
A Sarasota officer was fired and arrested for doing the same thing.
Same abuse. Same cameras. Different cities.
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2094578905663295821?s=20
This wasn't a glitch in the system.
This was the system working exactly as it was designed – handing enormous surveillance power to anyone with a badge and a grudge.
On August 31st, the Florida Department of Transportation pulled the plug.
FDOT's memorandum cited "exponential increase in deployments coupled with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns and surveillance schemes" as grounds for immediate action.
Every license plate reader on a Florida state road must be gone within 30 days.
If agencies don't remove them, FDOT will.
The New Hampshire Model DeSantis Is Pointing To
New Hampshire figured this out years ago and passed the strictest automated license plate reader law in the country.
Three minutes.
That's the maximum time any plate scan can be retained – purged and destroyed unless it triggers a hit on a stolen vehicle, a wanted broadcast, a missing person alert, or results in an arrest.
Compare that to New York City, which has never deleted a single plate file.
Colorado retains data for three years.
Most states have no retention limits at all.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2094489472951869593?s=20
New Hampshire lawmakers built their law around a simple premise: if you're not a suspect, the government has no business knowing where you've been.
DeSantis is now telling Florida legislators to build something like it.
"I don't want to be in a situation where these tech companies know everything about you and where you're going," DeSantis said Monday. "The only way it could be dealt with is legislatively."
What This Actually Means for Every Driver
Flock Safety operates more than 80,000 AI-powered cameras across 49 states.
That data doesn't stay with your local police department.
It flows to other agencies, other jurisdictions, and federal authorities – building a profile on your movements without a warrant, without probable cause, and without you ever knowing it happened.
The Jacksonville Sheriff acknowledged the cameras helped solve serious crimes and locate missing people.
That's real, and it matters.
But Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters still shut his program down – because the community demanded it, and because he understood the difference between a law enforcement tool and a surveillance dragnet.
DeSantis drew the same line Monday.
"Go after criminals? Great, let's do all that. But surveilling just regular Floridians' movements and how that data is used? That's a bird of a different feather,” he said.
That's not a liberal talking point.
That's the Fourth Amendment.
The government doesn't get to track where you go, who you visit, and when you leave – just because the technology exists to do it.
New Hampshire proved you can give cops the tools they need to catch real criminals while still deleting the data the moment it's no longer relevant.
Three minutes is enough to run a plate against every criminal database in the country.
Three minutes is not enough to build a permanent surveillance file on 22 million innocent Floridians.
Florida needs that law – and DeSantis just made clear he's going to push until they get it.
Sources:
- Avery Everett, "Florida Gov. DeSantis points to New Hampshire as model for license plate reader rules," WESH, September 2, 2026.
- "FDOT orders removal of Flock cameras along Florida state highways," Bay News 9, August 31, 2026.
- "FDOT orders that license plate readers, including Flock cameras, be removed from state roads," WTSP, August 31, 2026.
- "St. Johns County removing license plate readers from state roads following FDOT directive," News4Jax, September 2, 2026.
- Pat Fox, "New tool for NH police: license plate readers," Union Leader, December 22, 2018.
- New Hampshire Revised Statutes Section 261:75-b, "Use of Number Plate Scanning Devices Regulated," 2025.
