In a pair of moves that are seen as a major blow to the business of building a surveillance state, the governors of Florida and Texas have both taken action over Flock Safety license plate readers.
The most comprehensive one is the order by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to remove the cameras from state highways within 30 days, and prevent their future installation. This is a reversal of policy, as in the previous year DeSantis approved $4.6 million for local police to buy 440 of the devices, supposedly to be used for immigration enforcement. But DeSantis now says the technology is dangerous, and can be used to build a dossier of a person’s movements, and then sell that information to advertisers.
DeSantis’s order came on August 31, and was preceded by the news that Texas Governor Greg Abbott on August 27 ordered a pause in state agency funding of Flock cameras. In Texas, the devices were installed with the help of a $1 fee added to auto insurance policies to supposedly help combat the theft of catalytic converters.
But a Texas Tribune investigation showed that at least $30 million was used to buy at least 3,200 Flock cameras, while lawmakers said there was no discussion before they approved the bill in 2023 of using the money for Flock or similar devices.
Abbott’s order does not remove the cameras already in place in Texas, but pauses state funding.
The Flock system turns driving, a routine activity that in itself is not suspicious, into a trackable and searchable record. And since the data collected by Flock can be shared with other agencies, this can effectively create a national surveillance network, given that participating agencies can search data from elsewhere in the country.
In Florida, several counties and cities have already stopped using Flock, and DeSantis’s order affects only those cameras installed on state roads, not those on local roads. Several alleged instances of Flock’s misuse for personal tracking purposes by those with authorized access to the system have been reported in Florida.
These include a former Brevard County deputy who resigned after an internal investigation found he had searched his ex-girlfriend’s license plate while off-duty, and a former Sarasota officer who was arrested and charged with searching the same plate hundreds of times.
The city of Pflugerville, Texas, decided to cancel its contract with Flock Safety after learning that 459 outside organizations had performed nearly 1.6 million searches on its network, even though the city believed its settings prevented outside access.
The city council voted unanimously to end the agreement. In Shively, Kentucky, officer Asad Zahir was arrested after allegedly using Flock to track an ex-girlfriend more than 2,000 times from January through May while recording a drug investigation as the reason.
In Arizona, the city of Tempe and in Tennessee, Knox County, have also recently canceled their contracts with Flock. According to reports, some 93 jurisdictions did the same in August alone, which is said to be a record. Flock spokesperson Courtney Terlecki said: “So far in 2026, new city partnerships have outpaced nonrenewals by approximately 10 to one.”
Flock says it is in favor of legislation that would impose safeguards on the use of its technology and prevent abuse, while at the same time protecting the ability of law enforcement to use it.
But for critics, such as Senator Ted Cruz, the cameras should not “be surveilling innocent citizens.” Representative Lauren Boebert made the same point, and accused Flock and other license plate reader systems of “quietly turning American streets into zones of constant monitoring.”
As for DeSantis, he explained his decision to order the cameras off state highways by saying that the technology can be abused to build a dossier on people’s movements, and sell that information to advertisers.
Florida Senate President Pro Tempore Jason Brodeur says he intends to file legislation next year setting standards for Flock and similar programs, covering data collection, access, retention and consequences for misuse. One idea is to reduce retention from 30 days to between 24 and 48 hours.
