Putnam County Sheriff pulls plug on license plate readers amid privacy debate<\/a><\/p>\nDeSantis held a press conference in Jacksonville at the FSCJ Cecil Commerce Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want in the state of Florida to have a digital AI surveillance state where everything we\u2019re doing is being tracked at all times,\u201d DeSantis said, arguing some uses of license-plate reader systems are appropriate \u2014 such as toll-by-plate \u2014 but not for routine criminal penalties or broad tracking.<\/p>\n
DeSantis said he has pushed for an \u201cAI bill of rights\u201d and noted the Florida Senate approved a version of such legislation 39-1. He criticized the Florida House for not taking up the measure, saying lawmakers who ignored the issue \u201cwere totally dismissive of the need to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He warned about private companies harvesting movement data and said there are too few safeguards against misuse by both corporations and law enforcement. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou can make a lot of money if you can sell people\u2019s data,\u201d he said, adding that some officers have used license-plate reader data improperly, for instance, to track an ex\u2011girlfriend and that penalties for such misuse are weak.<\/p>\n
DeSantis also described wider risks from AI systems, saying some applications can behave in unexpected ways and that humans must remain in control. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo go in a situation where you have computers that are not under human control and could potentially do things to harm people, that\u2019s a huge, huge threat and risk,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The governor said he has discussed the issue with legislative leaders and cited New Hampshire as having a model approach to handling license-plate reader systems. He urged targeted tools for law enforcement focused on criminals, not broad systems that \u201csweep up just every day citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis acknowledged the difficulty of opting out of tech-driven society, saying that after becoming governor he chose not to use text or email in part because such communications can become public records. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really none of the government\u2019s damn business if you\u2019re doing that,\u201d he said, describing routine travel as private.<\/p>\n
He said the Legislature will need to act to protect Floridians\u2019 privacy as AI and surveillance technologies expand.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that Florida must avoid becoming a \u201cdigital AI surveillance state,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2872,2683,142043,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-386625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-ai","tag-desantis","tag-flock","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386625","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=386625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}