Okaloosa County is quietly building something most residents never voted for: a location-tracking grid.

The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office says it has deployed 79 Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras across the county.  These aren’t ordinary “security cameras.” ALPR systems capture license plate + time + location and make it searchable. Over time, that can reveal routines—where you go, when you go, and how often.

The part that should alarm every resident:
There was no public vote. Local reporting says permits for cameras on county-maintained roadways were approved at the staff level without coming before the Board for discussion, and the Board Chairman said the installations were a surprise.

This is how a community slides into an Orwell/Black Mirror reality: not with one dramatic law, but with “helpful tools” that quietly become permanent infrastructure.

 
Why this matters (even if you’ve done nothing wrong)

1) This isn’t just Okaloosa—Flock is built as a network
Flock promotes a national ALPR network and cross-agency searching at scale.  That means Okaloosa isn’t just installing cameras—it’s connecting our community into a broader surveillance ecosystem.

2) Your life can be “stitched together” from driveway → road → store → home
This isn’t theoretical. Flock’s technology shows up in multiple parts of modern life:

Retail parking lots: Reuters reported Home Depot has acknowledged using Flock license-plate readers, and investors are demanding transparency about how surveillance data is used and shared with law enforcement.
Now add your front door: Flock and Ring announced a partnership integrating Ring’s Community Requests into Flock’s law-enforcement platforms (FlockOS / Nova), making it easier for agencies using Flock to request footage from Ring users via the Neighbors app.
This does not mean police automatically have live access to everyone’s Ring doorbell. But it absolutely does mean the pipeline for neighborhood video requests is becoming smoother—and easier to normalize.

That’s the danger: an ecosystem that can reconstruct a person’s routine without ever needing to stop them, question them, or suspect them of anything.

3) “30 days” isn’t the whole story—exceptions create permanence
Flock’s standard retention policy describes a 30-day standard retention period for customer data unless otherwise specified. 
Okaloosa’s Sheriff’s Office FAQ says captured data is retained for 30 days unless designated as evidence. 
In real life, “evidence” and downstream exports can turn a short default window into long-term storage. That’s why verifiable deletion + independent audits matter more than “trust us.”

4) The vendor’s track record shows why “trust” isn’t a safeguard
Cambridge, Massachusetts terminated its contract after the city said Flock technicians installed two cameras without the city’s awareness after the city had deactivated its ALPRs—calling it a material breach of trust.

If boundary-pushing happened elsewhere, Okaloosa should not assume we’re magically immune.

5) Misuse by insiders is real—and it’s already happened
ALPR systems are ripe for abuse because they turn movement into a database. Across the country, there are documented cases of misuse:

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested and charged a police chief with stalking/harassment and multiple counts of misuse of ALPR systems.
Reporting describes a Kansas police chief using Flock cameras to track an ex-girlfriend’s vehicle 228 times.
Audit logs don’t stop harm. They record harm after it happens.

6) Security risk: stolen logins, exposed cameras, and physical tampering
This is not paranoia—credential theft and exposure are normal features of the modern internet.

Cybersecurity reporting and research describe compromised police and government email accounts being sold on underground markets, sometimes for as little as $40—creating a pathway to impersonation and access to sensitive systems.
404 Media reported that Flock logins appeared in infostealer malware infections, and a U.S. senator asked the FTC to investigate the company over account security and MFA enforcement issues.
404 Media also reported Flock left at least 60 of its Condor cameras exposed to the open internet; follow-up coverage notes the company said it was remediated.
CISA has issued advisories for license plate recognition camera products where security weaknesses (including default credentials or missing authentication) could enable unauthorized access.
Bottom line: if you build a countywide tracking grid, you build a target. If a bad actor gets access—through stolen credentials, insider misuse, misconfiguration, or weak security—location data becomes a gold mine for stalking, burglary planning, and targeted crime.

7) The cost: taxpayers are on the hook—forever
Flock operates on an ongoing subscription model. Public documents from other jurisdictions describe pricing around $2,500 per camera per year, and also show that price hikes have occurred (e.g., a documented $500 per-camera increase announcement in one municipal renewal document).

Okaloosa has 79 cameras deployed.

Even using the commonly cited ~$2,500/year figure, that’s about $197,500 per year (~$200,000/year) in subscription costs alone (not counting installation, replacements, staff time, maintenance, legal overhead, or future expansions).

And because this is subscription-based, costs can rise year over year while taxpayers remain locked into funding surveillance infrastructure.

 
What we’re asking for:

Option A (preferred): A ban + removal
Remove Flock ALPR cameras from Okaloosa County and prohibit future county ALPR deployments unless approved by voters.

Option B (minimum): Moratorium + enforceable safeguards
Pause expansion immediately until these protections are adopted in writing:

A public vote (or formal public approval process) before continuation/expansion
Full contract transparency: total costs, renewals, and price-increase terms
Independent audits (not self-audits) of searches, access logs, and deletion practices
MFA required for every user + least-privilege permissions
Public annual reporting: scans, searches, hits, false positives, misuse incidents, discipline outcomes
Strict limits on sharing outside Okaloosa and clear rules for who can access the data
A public incident disclosure policy for exposures, credential compromises, or misuse
 
Call to action
Okaloosa residents never voted for a surveillance grid—and even some officials were surprised it was being installed. 
That alone is enough to demand a public vote.

Please sign and share this petition so Okaloosa County residents—not vendors, not quiet approvals, and not “trust us”—decide the future of privacy, safety, and freedom of movement here.