Flock Safety cameras photograph and log the license plate of every driver who passes them in Brevard County. No warrant is required to search those records, no resident was asked for consent, and the list of agencies that can query the data is not public.
On August 31, 2026, the Florida Department of Transportation issued a memorandum revoking every existing permit for automated license plate readers installed in the right of way of the State Highway System. Agencies have 30 days to remove the devices. After that, FDOT says it will remove them itself. The department also stopped approving new installations.
FDOT wrote that the rapid growth in deployments, together with reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes, required immediate action to protect the sovereignty and quality of life of Floridians. Governor Ron DeSantis had called the spread of the readers out of control days earlier, saying he did not want Florida to become a surveillance state.
Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced on August 31 that the Brevard County Sheriff's Office has terminated its use of Flock cameras effective immediately. Every camera assigned to the agency, all of them along thoroughfares such as Interstate 95 and State Road 528, is to be physically removed.
He went further than the state required. BCSO also suspended its access to the wider Flock database across Brevard County, including cameras installed by private property owners, which the FDOT order does not touch.
Sheriffs responded within hours. Jacksonville, Putnam, Nassau, Clay, Liberty, Franklin, Volusia, and Flagler counties announced shutdowns or suspensions. Pasco County had already moved to end its program. Oviedo's council voted before a standing room only crowd to pull all eight of the city's cameras, and Lake County voted to revoke its permits.
Not everyone was pleased. Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood said he felt blindsided and that the blanket order threw the baby out with the bathwater.
The order reaches state highway rights of way. It does not reach cameras on city streets, county roads, or private property, and roughly nine in ten readers in Florida sit somewhere other than a state road.
Nothing about the order is permanent. No statute was passed. A memo that revoked these permits can be revised by the agency that wrote it, and the sheriff has framed the shutdown as a pause pending action by the Legislature.
Private cameras keep running. Flock's contracts with homeowner associations, shopping centers, and businesses are untouched, and that data still flows into the same searchable network.
A pause is not a policy. The cameras came down because the state pulled a permit, not because anyone established a right. Turning this into something durable takes three things:
Sheriff Ivey says his agency had strong policies protecting privacy: restricted access, retention limits, a required case number, and an audit system. Brevard County has already run the experiment on whether those policies stop abuse.
Fultz was hired in 2024 and named Deputy of the Year in 2025. On the day of that honor in March, his ex-girlfriend sent the sheriff's office a letter detailing his conduct. The internal affairs investigation that followed ran 43 pages. He resigned before he could be terminated.
Among the findings reported by News 6, which obtained the records, and by 404 Media, which obtained the investigation:
Ivey wrote to Fultz that the nature and severity of his misconduct had irreparably damaged the trust required to perform the duties of a deputy sheriff. That is the correct judgment. It arrived only because the woman he targeted wrote a letter.
Coverage: News 6, 404 Media, The Space Coast Rocket
Sheriff, you have said the pause will end when Tallahassee writes stronger controls, and that your office already had strong policies protecting the privacy of Brevard residents. Your own agency is the reason that argument fails.
Your Deputy of the Year ran your ex-girlfriend surveillance through the system you are defending. He typed the word "investigation" in the box and your audit trail let him through. The audit did not stop him. It recorded him, and only after a woman he had terrorized sat down and wrote you a letter. Everything you list as a safeguard was in place while he did it.
Please do not talk about stronger policies and reintroduction when your own department produced the exact abuse we are objecting to. The problem was never that the rules were written poorly. The problem is that a database of everywhere your neighbors drive should not exist for anyone to misuse, no matter how carefully the manual is worded.
The privacy of Floridians should not be traded for the convenience of any agency. Invest in your people, your training, and your presence in the community. Do not invest in watching the people you were elected to serve.
Deflock Brevard
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
DeFlock.org maintains a crowdsourced map of Flock Safety and other automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras across the United States. See where cameras are logging your movements in Brevard County and beyond.
Brevard's five county commissioners control whether county funds go toward these programs and whether the current shutdown becomes permanent. Email them, call them, and speak at their meetings. Contact details below come from the county's own district pages.
Phone: (321) 607-6901
Email: D1.Commissioner@BrevardFL.gov
Office: 400 South St., 4th Floor, Titusville, FL 32780
Phone: (321) 454-6601
Email: D2.Commissioner@BrevardFL.gov
Office: Merritt Island Service Complex, 2575 N. Courtenay Pkwy, Suite 200, Merritt Island, FL 32953
Phone: (321) 633-2075
Fax: (321) 633-2196
Email: D3.Commissioner@BrevardFL.gov
Office: 1311 E. New Haven Ave., Melbourne, FL 32901
Phone: (321) 633-2044
Email: D4.Commissioner@BrevardFL.gov
Office: 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Bldg. C, Suite 214, Viera, FL 32940
Phone: (321) 253-6611
Fax: (321) 253-6620
Email: D5.Commissioner@BrevardFL.gov
Office: 150 5th Ave., Suite D, Indialantic, FL 32903
Not sure which district you live in? Check the county's Find Your District map, or write to all five at once.
The cameras are down and the pressure should not come off. These templates ask officials to make the pause permanent instead of waiting for it to expire. Copy one, fill in the bracketed parts, and send it. Both are written to be edited, and a note that sounds like you will always land harder than one that sounds like everybody else.
Before you send: change a few sentences to your own. Mention the intersection near your house, the drive you make every day, or why this matters to your family. Offices tally identical form letters as one message. A short email in your own words is read as one person, which is what you are.
Location: Commission Chambers, Brevard County Government Center
2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way, Building C, First Floor, Viera, FL 32940
Schedule: Regular meetings are held on Tuesdays. Agendas are posted to the county website five days before each meeting.
General info line: (321) 633-2000 | Agenda coordinator: (321) 633-2010
Upcoming dates and agendas: brevardfl.gov/PublicMeetings | Meeting calendar on Legistar
Emails matter, and bodies in a room matter more. Here is what is happening locally and how to join it.
The sign wave held on August 19 at Wickham and Lake Washington has come and gone. FLDR Brevard schedules new demonstrations and flyer handouts on a rolling basis, and dates are announced in their Signal group chat before they are posted anywhere else.
FLDR Brevard is committing to public comment at every Melbourne City Council meeting until the city cancels its Flock contract. Consistency is the point. A council that hears from residents once forgets. A council that hears from residents every session does not.
Flock contracts get approved by county commissions, city councils, and sometimes by boards most people have never heard of. The county keeps one calendar of all of it, and items are usually posted several days ahead.
DeFlock's map is built by people who spotted a camera and reported it. If you know of an ALPR in Brevard that is not on the map yet, add it. Accurate local data is what makes the rest of this work possible.
Coverage of how these systems fail, how they get misused, and how communities are getting out from under them. Updated September 2026.
Track contracts and cancellations yourself: DeFlock.org maps cameras nationwide, Finding Flock keeps a running cancellation list, and Who Approved This tracks which officials voted for each contract and when it comes up for renewal.