St. Lucie County ordered every Flock Safety license plate reader off its roads. The sweep that followed found more than a dozen cameras that had never been approved, and most of them have no traceable owner.
Officials counted 14 cameras operating without permits. Eleven had no obvious owner, according to reporting by The Washington Post and Ars Technica. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office later claimed three of the units, then declined to explain why it never filed the required permits, or whether it had viewed their footage.
Residents said the discovery left them uneasy. “That makes me feel very unsafe,” one local, Ty Grant, told the Post. Commissioner James Clasby said there was a “potential for non-law enforcement to have cameras out there, and I’m not OK with that.”
The county gave owners 30 days to remove the cameras, with some deadlines running to October 20. Staff planned to cover the lenses with plastic bags in the meantime. One camera had already come down.
Patterns like this have surfaced before. Cambridge, Massachusetts, banned the technology, yet two cameras went up there in December anyway. An unrequested unit turned up on city property in Millcreek, Utah, last month. Palm Bay, Florida, paused its own system once officials realized inspections had been skipped.
The mystery units compound a wider backlash. The Post has documented at least 50 cases of police misusing Flock data, including a Fort Pierce officer who ran 382 searches while stalking an ex-girlfriend. Flock says it has added safeguards; researchers call them ineffective.
For drivers, the concern is simple: a camera on a public road should not have an owner nobody can name.
