Automated license plate readers like Flock cameras have been quietly appearing on roadsides all over the U.S.

Florida is no exception: Over the past several years, law enforcement agencies across Florida have signed contracts with Flock Safety, one of the largest purveyors of these technologies. Crowdsourced mapping projects currently show nearly 10,000 cameras in Florida, with concentrations around major metropolitan areas. This is likely an undercounting, as these are the units observed by the public, not an official tally.

But in the summer of 2026, reports of widespread abuse of this technology – both in Florida and nationwide – began to surface.

In late August, Florida banned Flock cameras from state highways. But questions about these technologies, the networks they link to and the safeguards surrounding them remain.

As a Florida-based economist who has spent the past 15 years working at the intersection of economics, politics, surveillance and civil liberties, I think such conversations are long overdue.

Automated license plate readers are not a new technology. Often mounted on patrol cars, these have been used to capture license plate information since the 1990s.

But the current version of this technology goes well beyond an officer looking up a plate number. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement guidelines, readings from these devices potentially contain not only a plate number, but also images of a vehicle’s license plate, date and time information and geographic location.

Companies like Flock allow users to conduct searches based on characteristics like vehicle make, model and color, as well as other distinctive vehicle features like dents and stickers. So even though these technologies generally do not contain the vehicle owner’s name or other personal information, the data they collect can easily be used to find that information by running queries in other systems, such as Florida’s driver-and-vehicle database.

The use of automated license plate readers has also expanded significantly in scope. Since the early 2000s, Florida agencies have used them to identify and track stolen........

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