‘I think people are right to be concerned’
Page B2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 1 September 2026
Candidate calls license-plate cameras 'invasion of privacy,' Florida orders them ripped off highways days later.
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As it ran on the front
DIED: The automated license-plate camera program along the highways of two states, of a sudden and bipartisan attack of privacy concern. It was young — most of these Flock camera networks were installed within the last several years — but it went quickly, first at the ballot box, where a Pennsylvania Senate candidate called it an invasion of privacy, and then on the road, where Florida's governor ordered the devices removed from state highways days later.
It is survived by several thousand miles of highway that will, for now, go unread. It is preceded in death by nothing in particular — this is a rare case, a surveillance apparatus that did not outlive its own popularity, it simply ran into an election cycle at the wrong moment.…
…(cont) Whippersnappers on the campaign trail will tell you this is a victory for the Fourth Amendment. Maybe. This reporter has watched enough programs get born in the name of safety and buried in the name of freedom to know the timing is the tell. The cameras did not become more invasive between installation and removal. The candidates did. That's not hogwash, that's just the order of operations, and the order of operations is the whole obituary.
No word yet on whether the data already collected — the plates already read, the routes already logged — goes into the ground with the hardware, or whether it's filed somewhere quieter, which would make this less a death and more a shit change of address. This office has asked. This office has not received an answer, which is itself an answer, of a kind we've learned to read.
The family has requested no memorial service. The program was not close with its neighbors — the DMV records it fed, the license plate readers it networked with — and none of them have commented.
In lieu of flowers, the two states are asked to publish what was collected before the cameras came down, so the public can see what it was, briefly, being read for.
“Funny how fast 'invasion of privacy' becomes bipartisan the second the cameras start reading everybody's plates instead of just watching somebody else's block. The program dies the week an election makes privacy popular again — that's not principle, that's polling. Whatever got logged before the cameras came down doesn't un-log itself.”
“This is a genuine constitutional concern about government overreach and unchecked surveillance — look, I know we usually like cameras, but on highways it's different because — it's not actually different, I don't have a version of this that holds together.”
The receipts
EXCLUSIVE — The Republican nominee for governor in Pennsylvania supports a ban on Flock cameras, the latest sign of how unpopular the vehicle tracking technology has become in races across the country. In a statement provided by her…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.