Florida will be clipping the wings of at least some Flock automated license plate reader cameras in the state.
“Our agencies that had a few of them are bringing them down. We’re going to clear the state right-of-ways,” Gov. Ron DeSantis told Eric Bolling Friday.
While the Governor estimated that “98%” of the roughly nearly 7,500 LPRs in Florida are local, his promise would cover controversial cameras used by the the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Florida Highway Patrol.
The wildlife agency reportedly has used them to track the movements of critics, while the highway patrol has used them as part of an immigration dragnet.
DeSantis left an opening for continuing to use them in a limited way in immigration enforcement.
“They will say that they’ve used them on apprehensions of some illegal aliens. And so, I don’t doubt that. And if that’s being done very targeted, then we can have a conversation,” he told Bolling.
DeSantis previously suggested that legislation similar to that in New Hampshire would be useful in Florida. The state bans the installation of the cameras along public roads.
While law enforcement using them in vehicles is permissible, the data must be purged quickly.
He didn’t re-up his interest in the New Hampshire legislation during Friday’s interview. But he did make a conservative case against the technology, suggesting that had it been ubiquitous during pandemic lockdowns, it would have been used and abused by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Regarding the Republican President’s pandemic-era rule, DeSantis said the following: “I just think back to COVID, and I said, if we had these cameras in March of 2020, would those have been abused? And my answer is, I think, almost assuredly, they would have been abused.”
But it wouldn’t have stopped with Trump.
“If they had had all these cameras during COVID, New York, California, Biden, they would have tried to use them to enforce lockdowns. They would have used them to enforce vax mandates, and vax passports.”
DeSantis also raised concerns about data security.
“They can make some money producing cameras. The real money they make is by selling your data and making a fortune off that,” he said.
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