City police claimed five cameras, while the owners of seven cameras remain publicly unidentified. The county says it will not investigate ownership, citing limited resources.
Florida’s St. Lucie County has completed the removal of unpermitted Flock license-plate cameras from county road rights-of-way, county spokesperson Erick Gill said. The county lacks resources to investigate the owners of seven cameras who remain publicly unidentified.
A county mandate to remove Flock cameras tracking cars on its roads led to the discovery of installations without required permits. In its October 28 report, Ars Technica described 12 cameras: five claimed by city police and seven whose owners had not been publicly identified. Removal resolves the county’s demand to clear the roadside locations, but does not establish that previously collected data has been deleted.
Gill said the county’s goal was removal, not identifying owners. It gave owners 30 days to take the cameras down without answering questions about ownership.
We accomplished that goal.
Flock said it knows who owned the removed cameras and that they belonged to several different customers. It does not disclose details of individual agency contracts, camera counts, locations or deployments.
The Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police departments claimed five cameras between them. A Flock spokesperson said a police department had incorrectly advised that several cameras could share one permit, although the county required a permit for each camera. Neither Flock nor the two departments would identify who issued that guidance.
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Ars Technica’s October 1 report gave a different tally. How that count relates to the October 28 figures remains unclear.
| Date | Unpermitted cameras | Claimed by law enforcement | Cameras with owners not publicly identified |
|---|---|---|---|
| October 1 | 14 | 3 — St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office | 11 |
| October 28 | 12 | 5 — Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police | 7 |
The October 1 account said the sheriff’s office declined to explain the missing permits and had not immediately answered whether it had accessed the cameras’ data. By that date, the county had posted bright-red 30-day removal notices, some deadlines could extend to October 20, and one camera had already been removed.
Gill confirmed by October 1 that talks with Flock had begun. Flock said it had contacted officials and that permit requirements varied by location; these installations lacked permits required by the county. Gill said staff planned to cover cameras with plastic bags while awaiting deadlines, seek removal by those responsible, and then safely remove or cover any remaining cameras to prevent video capture.
Flock’s automated license-plate readers record vehicle plates. The company says they also collect vehicle characteristics, dates, times and camera-location identifiers. Flock says customers decide who can access records and whether to share them.
Police were unsure on October 1 whether the unpermitted cameras were actively collecting data. Todd Richter, who manages a fishing supply shop opposite one installation, told The Washington Post that he did not object to the cameras themselves but wanted to know who could access their information.
The concern followed separate cases of police misuse of Flock databases in Florida. The Post described a Fort Pierce officer accessing a database 382 times while stalking an ex-girlfriend. Those cases do not establish misuse involving the unpermitted cameras in this removal effort.
Resident Hannah Galindo, who petitioned to have Flock cameras removed, told the Post that she remained worried “that data could be anywhere.” Her concern extends beyond whether the cameras remain beside county roads to what happened to any information already collected.
Flock’s published data policy says customers set retention periods under their own policies and applicable law. The company recommends seven days and says records are permanently deleted when the chosen period ends, unless preserved as evidence for an ongoing investigation. That policy is not a camera-specific assurance that any records collected at these locations, or copies shared elsewhere, have been deleted. The county has declined further ownership investigation, and Flock is withholding the customer identities.
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Update ·
The county confirms removal is complete, gives a new tally of five police-claimed cameras and seven cameras whose owners remain publicly unidentified, and declines further investigation while Flock withholds customer identities.
Correction ·
Corrected spelling and punctuation in the Armenian text.
Correction ·
Clarified wording so the article attributes claims to their sources.
