Florida revokes permits for license plate readers on state highways | Hacker News Reader

Florida revokes permits for license plate readers on state highways

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89 pointsilamont57 comments

This refers only to Flock cameras. In Pinellas and Hillsborough counties (probably others or even most, but I cannot personally verify), there are non-Flock ALPR cameras on every major intersection stoplight gantry, feeding license plate and vehicular-fingerprint data to regional LE "Fusion Centers," where Palantir's Gotham product absolutely is in use. This is of course in addition to FDOT's PTZ cameras also. Forgive a cynic for telling you that banning Flock on state highways is purely performative in such light.

The memo refers to all ALPR systems, and does not mention Flock at all.

It's one page: https://fdotwww.blob.core.windows.net/sitefinity/docs/defaul...

In that case, marvelous. Here's hoping it's actually executed.

This has the backing of the governor of the state, who I trust not one bit. But the removal is happening within 30 days, which gives him basically no wiggle room to undo it in a backroom deal.

I’m sure they’ll clarify this, but wouldn’t that include SunPass toll-by-plate facilities?

Those are presumably owned by the state, so there's no permit to revoke.

The governor did address this. The primary concern is that these systems are being intentionally diminished as LPRs, and he specifically warned of a "digital AI surveillance state" when giving comments about it.

He has also suggested ending toll programs, or exempting residents from tolls, so this is pretty consis

"On Monday, Aug. 31, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) issued a memorandum revoking existing permits for automated license plate recognition (ALPR) systems, commonly referred to by the brand name "Flock cameras," that are installed within the right of way of roads on the State Highway System."

Very first paragraph. "Flock" is basically being used like "Kleenex" here

I am thinking that Palantir has fully established tech and AI systems to be weapons of harm. All tech companies should now be seen as private defense contractors.

We are sleeping here

This is definitely a good step, however, ALPRs are not going away unfortunately. They have and are and will keep getting deployed by private businesses. They are too valuable for them at this time. The likes of Wal-Mart, etc., will potentially sell information to brokers and so on and some aggregator will resell the data to whomever wants to use the data.

Any business that puts an ALPR in their parking lot is a business I do not visit.

How would you know if it's there?

I ask rhetorically but I also imagine that at some point there will be an app that tells you and then people will vote with their dollars to the places that don't have them.

DeFlock already tracks ALPRs in private businesses' parking lots. https://maps.deflock.org/

How do you know a camera is a ALPR camera? How reliable is the data, is it just random people's unvetted reports?

https://deflockilm.org/war-driving-for-flock-cameras/

I know a couple of very tech savvy crews that war-drive and collect data on ALPRs in my city and they were the ones who mapped most of our city back in the day. there's been a big post-50501 DeFlock movement, though, so it's possible that more recent results are lower quality backed by lower subject matter expertise but it's not hard to set-up a good-enough scanner with something like Flock-You: https://github.com/MaxwellDPS/Flock-You-Android

even then, Flock cameras are visually distinctive compared to the Clearview/Motorola solutions that are more traditionally orb-like or are just straight tube CCTV housing. if you see a long black camera attached to a black pole with a solar panel attached, 99.9% chance you've spotted a Flock camera: https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Flock_Safety_...

Also, how do you account for cameras that are so well placed that nobody even notices them?

pretty easily - with wifi and BLE scanning. it's not like there's a guy at Flock climbing every pole, sticking in a USB, and then trucking it back to home base

https://hackaday.com/2025/09/26/detecting-surveillance-camer...

What if the camera is fully wired? Maybe Flock is only wifi based, but other cameras can be 100% setup with ethernet...

Is that how they work or are you just speculating wildly about things that are easily looked up in a few minutes?

Flock is a new in this market, before Flock there were loads of cameras wired up because wifi was not considered reliable until recent times. I'm asking, how do you detect well placed, subtle wired cameras? My overall point being, these apps are only as good as long as Flock and others don't just go fully hardwired (which before Flock, many were!).

It won’t matter. Slow encroachment. Everyone has learned from Google that slow encroachment gets what you want.

Price sensitive folks going to dollar general, wal-mart, etc., are not going to go shop at whole foods (assuming they even differentiate), and for people who go to ikea or Lowe’s for home goods, it’s not like they’re going to drive 30 miles out of their way to avoid ALPRs.

We can get pols to not deploy them with public monies, but I think that’s all we can do.

>We can get pols to not deploy them with public monies, but I think that’s all we can do.

If we tighten the 4th through 8th amendment case law to reign in the current wild west that is civil enforcement by holding them to the same standards for data access and imposing of penalties that criminal enforcement is the problem would be a lot smaller because then the tracking would be mostly limited to private interests who simply want to screw you out of your money but you can mostly choose not to do business with or will open up themselves to being undercut if they take too much.

Where are you gonna go when everyone has them?

Interesting question. I'm not sure yet. Insane? The woods? Time may tell.

I once interviewed for a trucking logistics SAAS vendor who installed cameras every X number of miles along every major highway/interstate to track shipments of freight. their moat was that physical surveillance network that they had already installed, cameras which scanned (like Flock) not just license plates but decals, looked for signals of driver awareness, new scuffs/dents/marks, collected EMF emissions to see if certain safety and satellite features were on, etc

now they said they didn't sell their data to LEOs but their founders also literally used to work for the CIA (it was bragged about in the initial interviews)

I wouldn't be surprised if companies of that kind are a dime-a-dozen

The more I hear about how surveillance-at-scale like this is so common the more I think we need systemic privacy legislation to make that kind of monitoring impossible, but I don't know how you'd get it through the American legislature.

This, combined with grocery stores coallating your purchases by loyalty program or credit card number, Spotify tracking everything you listen to, smart TVs tracking what you watch... What information _isn't_ available on a random citizen?

Combine this with a seemingly constant stream of data breaches on SSNs or photo IDs, it feels impossible to meaningfully protect my own privacy at this point.

one of the things I cover a lot in the security trainings I do for movement spaces is something I don't hear a lot about in the privacy space atm - and that's active counter surveillance

you start small with things like data poisoning, intentional signal creation, etc. that looks like mistagging geos on social media, clipping your favorite BLE tracking device to your indoor/outdoor cat that you also borrow for your own keys, scripts/macros that will randomly click-through ads, etc

another idea I had was just using those magnetic bumper stickers to confuse things like Flock cameras in combination with IR/reflective bumper covers since those services tend to profile cars based on a lot more than just the plate - wish this was something I could test but alas, an insider with an ethical backbone has yet to leak their source code

You know that might work a little if, and only when people follow through. Unless trained as spies, and even they fail on occasion, people will lapse. As a feel good option, yeah, go for it. In reality I don’t think it does much. They have too many cross references for you to overcome.

right, it has to be a bit of a mass movement that can possibly work out if we get enough tooling popularized. also I don't think you need perfect coverage all the time - the way I see it, an intelligence analyst even paired with an LLM has only so many hours in a day to make analyses and generate reports. a dozen people in the same organizing group creating junk data on the regular leads to exponential increases in time/effort/validation work. and that increased workload means less capacity overall for other folks with fun extracurricular activities, and so on.

that Charlie Day conspiracy board meme comes to mind lol

Has there been any reporting into whether Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise has adequate data access controls around SunPass? They have ALPRs to operate the toll-by-plate system on bridges and toll roads across the state.

In my view, that’s one of the better reasons to have ALPRs at all, but you do need strict controls to prevent misuse.

Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay on the data from toll roads:

"The data is used by all law enforcement. All they have to do is contact the state and get the information. We’ve used it countless times for criminal investigations to see where they’re going, what car they’re in, who the driver is to possibly ID the suspect."

https://keysweekly.com/42/state-orders-removal-of-plate-came...

What would proper governance of a powerful flock like tool be? It is a public private partnership. Public benefit. Public infrastructure. Private collection. Private software. Private computing. Private access.

Private power.

At a minimum a judge signed warrant should be required for any data access.

Second, a third-party annual security and data audit, with power to revoke licenses if findings aren't mitigated within a reasonable time frame.

Finally, a civilian oversight committee with real power to sanction bad actors.

The fact that it is private data, they could have made this openly accessible

I cannot help to think 1 or more politician or their children was caught breaking a serious law that they would have avoided if the camera was not there. So the fix is to ban the cameras.

Doubtful. Look at the Kennedys. The political class was never in serious danger. Worst case they have to do a favor for the department that has dirt on them.

But 1 thing, decades ago items were easier to hide. If the video from the camera got out, or to an opponent, that is harder to cover up.

I meant like today. It's not like they're not still drunk crashing into stuff.

Also nobody really cares because you know they can just write the check to make it right.

It's almost like in the movie Minority Report. The state knows where you are at all times (well, not entirely true right now, but to a high extent true now, at the least for car drivers).

More like Enemy of the State. Where's your phone right now?

This is the wrong thing to do, but we need more. Mass surveillance is a crime against humanity.

What is the wrong thing to do?

Whatever it is, we need more.

I could have been more clear. Mass surveillance is not something for which we should be issuing and revoking permits or licenses. It should be simply illegal full stop.

Fundamentally we need controls on how both the state and private industry can store, use, and share such data.

Playing whack-a-mole with each specific type of surveillance and company involved isn't really fixing the issue.

I'll go out on a limb here, all this pushback against ALPRs is starting to feel like throwing the baby out with the bathwater

this article in particular was an interesting case for the benefits of ALPRs: https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/a-cops-case-for-flock

tl;dr - actually useful for stopping car related crime like thefts, which has a wide ranging affect on other related violent crime, - is not the same as facial recognition, or phone tracking - abuse is detectable - constitutional arguments for ALPRs being a form of privacy intrusion are flimsy since they are mostly applied to public roads which have no privacy protections

The constitutional arguments have actually already been heard, and the court has determined that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy from continuous government surveillance of movement. The relevant cases are Carpenter and Chatrie.

Florida is leading the nation on wise legislation where surveillance is involved in this example. It isn't doing too bad on income tax and other pain points either.

Moving here after living in NYC for a decade was a breath of fresh air. I had forgotten that competent governments exist.

>Moving here after living in NYC for a decade was a breath of fresh air. I had forgotten that competent governments exist.

Kinda sad since even though NYC was always iffy, it was never flat out as useless as it is now.

What about NYC's current state makes it iffy?

Probably that it’s blue and is run by a non Christian is my bet.

The local code enforcement situation is not great compared to a lot of other states due to how funding works (causes incentive to be predatory) but you probably won't notice coming from NYC.

Louis Rossmann said this too after he left NY but I feel that his content created when he was still in NY was "sharper". Perhaps a shitty government makes for better content even if they ruthlessly tax-milk the people there.

Counterpoints:

Parental Rights in Education Act aka "Don't Say Gay" (HB 1557)

Individual Freedom Act / "Stop WOKE" Act (HB 7)

School Choice & Expansion Reforms (HB 1)

Curriculum & Higher Education Governance (SB 266 / SB 7044)

Those are all reasons to like Florida.

*not

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