Florida orders license plate readers off state roads while Coral Springs keeps its 56 cameras
Coral Springs, Florida – A new Florida Department of Transportation order is requiring some automated license plate readers to be removed from state roads, but Coral Springs police say the directive does not affect the city’s own cameras.
The Coral Springs Police Department addressed the issue Wednesday, Sept. 2, following an Aug. 31 memo from the Florida Department of Transportation. The memo revoked permits for license plate readers located within state road rights of way and gave local agencies 30 days to remove affected equipment.
According to the memo, that deadline is Sept. 30.
For Coral Springs, however, police say there is no need to take down any of the city’s cameras. The department operates 56 automated license plate readers at 34 locations, and officials said none of those cameras are positioned on a state road.
As a result, the department said its license plate reader program will continue. The cameras will remain in place, and police are not suspending or removing the system because of the FDOT order.
Will Watts, the transportation department’s chief operating officer, said in the memo that the state took action because of what he described as a growing number of deployments and concerns surrounding their use.
Watts wrote that the department acted on what he called “the recent exponential increase in deployments along our roadways, coupled with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes.”
The issue had already attracted considerable attention in Coral Springs before the state issued its memo. A July 13 post about the city’s license plate readers on the Coral Springs Police Department’s Facebook page received 24,700 comments.
The large response led Police Chief Brad Mock to provide city commissioners with more information about what the cameras record and how the department uses the data.
Mock explained that the cameras photograph a vehicle’s license plate and the rear of the vehicle where the plate is attached. According to the chief, that is the extent of the information captured by the system.
“It does not capture any identifying marks of the drivers, the passengers,” Mock said. “We do not know how many passengers in there, who’s driving, the race, the sex.”
The department has also described safeguards surrounding searches of the license plate database. Mock said detectives generally search the system after a crime has been reported.
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Each search is connected to a user login, a timestamp and a reason associated with a case, according to Mock.
“We don’t just randomly go in and search tags,” Mock said.
The distinction between Coral Springs’ cameras and those affected by the FDOT directive means the city’s program can continue for now. Police said the 56 cameras are not located on state roads and therefore are not covered by the order to remove readers from state rights of way.
The department said it will continue monitoring developments related to the FDOT memo. If the situation changes, police said they will take action based on the new circumstances.
For now, Coral Springs residents can expect the city’s automated license plate reader program to remain in operation, even as other agencies face a Sept. 30 deadline to remove affected cameras from state road rights of way.
