{"id":360653,"date":"2026-08-02T12:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T12:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/360653\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T12:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T12:27:14","slug":"florida-officials-creepily-investigate-citizen-critics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/360653\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida officials creepily investigate citizen critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I still remember the day, years ago, when I learned that one of Central Florida\u2019s more notorious figures, then-Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, was trying to dig up dirt on me \u2014 and my wife \u2014 and possibly breaking the law to do so.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d written a lot of critical pieces about Greenberg, since he was basically the elected incarnation of a Dumpster fire.<\/p>\n

And the newspaper learned<\/a> that he had used a database meant to help cops investigate criminals to instead investigate a local journalist and his spouse.<\/p>\n

Also some of his political rivals. And friends. And Britney Spears. (Joel was an odd duck.)<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/p>\n

Orlando Sentinel<\/p>\n

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Greenberg didn\u2019t find anything on me or my saintly wife. But it was still wildly inappropriate for a public official to use a database meant for criminals to try to target people he personally disliked.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission.<\/p>\n

Orlando Sentinel reporter Jeff Schweers has uncovered<\/a> how officials at the state agency that\u2019s supposed to protect wildlife had been using the same state database against Floridians who\u2019d had the audacity to publicly criticize the agency.<\/p>\n

One was a documentary filmmaker who\u2019d made a film critical of the way he believed the state agency failed to protect gopher tortoises.<\/p>\n

Another was an environmental advocate from Apopka who\u2019d vocally criticized the agency\u2019s board members for green-lighting bear hunts. (He had his driving records accessed more than two dozen times.)<\/p>\n

Yet another was actually an elected official \u2014 a Republican property appraiser in conservative Taylor County \u2014 who had, along with her husband, accused FWC officers of being overly forceful and making unjustified arrests with citizens around the state.<\/p>\n

Public records documented and revealed that all the searches had been run, sometimes many times, on critics of the agency.<\/p>\n

Such is life in the \u201cFree State of Florida,\u201d where you\u2019d better not open your mouth in any kind of dissent.<\/p>\n

Now, unauthorized use of the state\u2019s Driver and Vehicle Information Database (DAVID) is illegal. In fact, just a few years ago, state lawmakers voted<\/a> to beef up the penalties for anyone caught using the database for improper reasons.<\/p>\n

They did this partly in reaction to \u2014 you guessed it \u2014 Joel Greenberg<\/a>. After the now-incarcerated felon had been charged with stealing identifications and creating fake IDs.<\/p>\n

In explaining why the state takes these abuses so seriously, legislative analysts explained at the time that the searches could reveal private information, including Social Security numbers and medical and disability information.<\/p>\n

The analysts\u2019 pull-no-punches conclusion: \u201cMisuse of an electronic database is a violation of an officer\u2019s good moral character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seems pretty clear, right?<\/p>\n

So what does Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 fish and wildlife office have to say for itself? That its staffers did everything right and that anyone suggesting otherwise is wrong.<\/p>\n

FWC Spokeswoman Shannon Knowles said news stories from the Sentinel and the Miami Herald<\/a>, which also wrote about the database use, \u201cmischaracterized\u201d the agency\u2019s actions. \u201cClaims that the FWC misuses or weaponizes its law enforcement authority are false,\u201d she wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

I asked Knowles if the state had conducted any kind of investigation into its own employees\u2019 use of the system. She didn\u2019t answer that, but said use of the system \u201cis permitted only for legitimate law enforcement purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowles then stressed that \u201cThreats concerning the harming of officers, staff and Commissioners are taken seriously \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

So at this point, I guess we\u2019re supposed to believe or imply that threats of violent criminal activity were coming from \u2026 a documentary filmmaker.\u00a0 And a dozen or so other wildlife advocates. And the Taylor County property appraiser.<\/p>\n

So prove it. Show the credible justification for why the FWC conducted every single one of the criminal-database snooping checks it ran on people who\u2019d dared to criticize the agency. (And that means a lot more than the handful of threatening messages released by the FWC after the story, none of which were tied to the people who were spied on.)<\/p>\n

Where the hell is the accountability? Especially from guys like DeSantis, his chief-of-staff-turned-attorney-general James Uthmeier and CFO Blaise Ingoglia, Republicans who constantly throw tantrums about how they don\u2019t believe local Democratic officials are doing their jobs properly.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine if offices run by Democrats were caught running DAVID checks on citizens who criticized them?<\/p>\n

That Tallahassee trio\u00a0would be staging a Category 5 hissy fit that would make the cast of \u201cMean Girls\u201d blush.<\/p>\n

Scott Maxwell is an Orlando Sentinel columnist. Contact him at smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I still remember the day, years ago, when I learned that one of Central Florida\u2019s more notorious figures,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12150,483,28,30,29,114,482,12151],"class_list":["post-360653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-columnists","tag-commentary","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion","tag-opinion-columnists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}