Surveillance Camera Controversy Blows Up This Week

Ed. Note: The below story appears in our print edition this week, and includes information known through press deadline Tuesday evening. Since then, several updates have been provided: 1) The company installing the cameras appears to be registered to do business in Florida, 2) The sheriff's office, through a July 2 post on social media, appears to have received grant funding to place at least some of the cameras around the county, 3) The sheriff's office has yet to provide the paper an update on its exact relationship with the cameras, though County Commissioner Josh Blake on Wednesday afternoon said he had been told the sheriff's office had terminated the company's contract.

    Hiding in plain sight but not addressed until this week, 98 illegally installed surveillance cameras will be removed from throughout Lake County. The Lake County Commission on Tuesday moved to immediately remove cameras that had been installed by a company reportedly called Flock Security without any permits.
    “I could not believe it. It’s like a dystopian novel,” said Lake County Commissioner Josh Blake, who went to work on the issue on Monday after first discovering one of the cameras over the weekend.
    “The first time I noticed one was Sunday,” Blake said. “They are tag readers.”
    According to Blake, the company installs cameras to track people’s movements, and then contracts out to people who want to find or follow an individual.
    The cameras, all 98 of them, appear to be on either county or state right of way, but not for long.
    “We directed staff to take them all down,” Blake said, with no shortage of anger about the situation.
    “This is a private company that was surveilling all of Lake County without approval.”
    The cameras were found throughout the county.
    According to Blake, any such project would have to be permitted, and even though the company had been in talks with the Lake County Sheriff's Office about their program, no go-ahead had been given.
    Beyond the commission issuing calls for an immediate cease and desist order on the company, Blake and fellow commissioner Leslie Campione asked county legal staff to bring back to the board language that would require any such program proposed in the future to have commission approval, so at least the public would know when new surveillance is proposed. But Blake would like to go even further.
    “I would like to have them banned altogether,” said Blake. “Surveillance data can be abused, we’ve all seen that.”
    Blake said the county will inform the company it can come to get its cameras once they are removed.