“If you want to get in your car and you want to go down to Buc-ee’s in St. Augustine, it’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that, right?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday at a news conference. He announced that Florida will revoke all law enforcement license-plate-recognition camera permits on state highways, with all such cameras to be removed by the end of September.

“What we don’t want in the state of Florida is to have a digital AI surveillance state where everything we’re doing is being tracked at all times,” DeSantis added, referring to the recent expansion of ALPRs—automated license plate reader cameras—across the country. The cameras are supposed to catch people committing crimes, and sometimes they do. But they’re also ripe for abuse. Each camera forms part of a nationwide network, and by sharing vehicle information between and within police departments, ALPRs can enable officers to track what are called “patterns of life”: where a person is likely to be, who they spend time with, and what they’re doing in a given moment.

Police officers nationwide are taking advantage of that surveillance ability. In dozens of cases, officers........

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