By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida<\/p>\n
Amid a growing backlash to license plate reader (LPR) cameras and citing concerns over privacy, Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 administration on Monday moved to shut down the newly ubiquitous technology on state roads.<\/p>\n
The cameras, made by Flock Safety and other companies, use artificial intelligence to track suspects and flag speeders. But reports of abuse by police in Florida and around the country have sparked a bipartisan push to rethink their use.<\/p>\n
A memo from the Florida Department of Transportation to local law enforcement agencies stated the authority to use the cameras on state roads is being withdrawn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Florida law limits the issuance of permits for LPR systems to law enforcement agencies, the recent exponential increase in deployments along our roadways, coupled with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes merit immediate action to preserve Floridians\u2019 sovereignty and quality of life,\u201d the memo from FDOT chief operating officer Will Watts states.<\/p>\n
DeSantis himself has soured on the cameras.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one has given law enforcement more tools than we have, but they need to be targeted at criminals,\u201d DeSantis told reporters at an event in Jacksonville on Monday. \u201cIf they can create a dossier on your movements they would be able to make a fortune in selling that to companies for advertising and product placement.\u201d<\/p>\n
DeSantis also raised the specter of the COVID-19 pandemic-era lockdowns as another reason to block the cameras from creating a \u201csurveillance state.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s their intent to do general surveillance, but I will tell you, if we had all this around the country when covid happened you absolutely would have saw those turned on people who were outside of lockdown orders in California,\u201d DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
He added that while local sheriffs likely have used the technology effectively, the potential for abuse is too great.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou also have to say how can this be misused,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we have really strong penalties at all for that type of misuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the memo, local law enforcement agencies that previously received a permit to use the cameras to take them down within 30 days. The memo also states there aren\u2019t going to be any more permits given going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cFurther, as of the date of this memorandum, the Department will use its discretionary authority to cease the issuance of all future requests for LPR systems within its jurisdictional authority,\u201d Watts wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida Amid a growing backlash to license plate reader (LPR) cameras…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-387221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387221","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=387221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}