About 20 students led chants of phrases like “Big brother, we don’t want you” on Turlington Plaza Wednesday to protest the use of Flock Safety cameras on campus and around Gainesville.
The protest follows a Sept. 1 decision by the Florida Department of Transportation to ban automated license plate readers, including Flock Safety cameras, from all state roads and highways.
Automated license plate readers, like those produced by Flock Safety, record license plate and vehicle information, such as make and model, as they pass. Flock Safety partners with law enforcement agencies and universities to contract cameras and software.
The private surveillance company has over 100,000 cameras across the country and 61 in the Gainesville area, according to crowdsourced ALPR surveillance map Deflock.me.
The Gainesville Police Department suspended its use of Flock Safety cameras two days after the FDOT memo. But UF continues to use automated license plate readers on campus, controlled by UFPD. While these cameras are found throughout campus, they are centralized around Sorority Row, Midtown and the northeast part of campus.
Flock Safety’s national expansion in law enforcement has spurred privacy concerns. The company has previously granted data access to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol, and its technology has faced questions about data retention and ease of access.
Flock Safety cameras operate 24 hours a day, but they’re not always recording, GPD Detective Sgt. Nicholas Ferrara previously told The Alligator. Flock Safety’s ethics and guidelines also state customers have full autonomy over data sharing, and private contractors may not access law enforcement records.
Students speak out
Wednesday’s protest was organized by Solidarity Gainesville, a libertarian socialist organization of UF students and Gainesville residents with a non-hierarchical structure, meaning it holds no executive board and views all members as equal.
Dimitris Liveris, a 20-year-old sociology junior and member of Solidarity Gainesville, said the group has protested Flock Safety cameras since the organization’s founding last Spring.
The main goal of Wednesday’s protest was to draw attention to the number of students against Flock Safety cameras, he said.
“We hope that UF will see student voices and then we will see some kind of concession or change to the use of license plate readers,” Liveris said.
Last Spring, Solidarity Gainesville led a petition signed by over 2,000 undergraduate students calling for the removal of Flock Safety cameras from campus, but the effort was not acknowledged by university officials, Liveris said.
Hannah Letzelter, a 21-year-old statistics senior, said she hopes the protest informed passersby about the use of automated license plate readers. She wants students to be aware of surveillance around campus, residence halls and Midtown Gainesville, she said.
“I just hope they can start researching and being able to really see how much the police departments and state use this kind of information,” Letzelter said.
Flock Safety’s data is regulated by state and local law enforcement policies. Florida requires a retention schedule for data and images recorded by the cameras. This means that the Flock Safety camera system is required to delete footage and data after a certain period of time.
Giovanni Cornejo, a 25-year-old electrical and computer engineering master’s alumnus who’s part of Solidarity Gainesville, said the issues of automated license plate readers extend beyond the campus. Solidarity Gainesville’s protest efforts specifically target Flock Safety cameras, the largest ALPR company, because it believes they lead to a greater trend of mass surveillance and government defense programs.
“It all leads into the same channel of oppression from the state against students,” Cornejo said. ”That is what we are against.”
Contact Ellia Mytsa at emytsa@alligator.org. Follow her on X @elliamytsa.
Ellia Mytsa is a second-year Journalism major at the University of Florida and the Fall 2026 University Administration reporter. In her free time, you can find her singing karaoke, spending time with friends, at a farmer's market, or laying in the sun.
