Florida officials went to remove surveillance cameras and found 14 more they hadn’t authorized.
St. Lucie County had identified 52 approved Flock Safety cameras on county roads. During removal work, crews discovered additional license-plate readers that were missing from that approved inventory.
The sheriff’s office subsequently claimed three. Eleven still had no publicly identified owner, according to reporting published October 1.
Officials also did not know whether the remaining cameras were operating or who could access any information they collected.
These devices do more than photograph traffic.
Automated license-plate readers convert images of passing vehicles into searchable records. A record can include the plate number, vehicle characteristics, time, and camera location.
One camera captures a vehicle at a particular place and moment. Records from multiple cameras can reveal repeated journeys and patterns of movement, depending on which data a user can access.
That makes ownership and access controls important.
Police use the technology to investigate crimes, locate stolen vehicles, and find missing people. Flock also sells cameras to private organizations.
But without knowing who operates a particular camera, residents cannot easily determine who controls its records or how those records are being used.
The county has posted removal notices giving the unidentified owners 30 days to act, with deadlines falling between October 16 and 20. Workers plan to cover the cameras with plastic bags in the meantime.
One camera had already disappeared when reporters visited its location. Officials said they did not know who removed it.
Flock says it has contacted the county and offered to help identify the devices and resolve discrepancies.
For now, the discovery leaves a basic question unanswered: Who installed these cameras, and what happened to any data they collected?