Of all the states in the union, Florida has the most toll roads. The Sunshine State has 719 kilometres of toll highways as of June 2022. We now know why, and it has nothing to do with money. Actually, the police are gathering information on you at toll booths that conceal covert surveillance equipment that allow them to track both you and your vehicle in addition to the fact that it is for the money. And it appears that the majority of Floridians aren’t even aware of this.
Who invented the surveillance system for Florida’s toll roads?
USA Today has been tracking reports of the secret surveillance program for over six months. In that time, it found that there is a database collecting vehicle and driver information. Both the SunPass and EZ Pass toll networks are doing it. Florida’s Law Enforcement Notification System gathers information through those convenient transponders.
On the surface, having anything like this would be beneficial for police enforcement. Tracking Amber Alert suspects, stolen cars, and vehicles used in criminal activity is made much simpler by this. For these reasons and others, Florida Police are able to request information from the database.
Who has access to the personal data of drivers?
And therein lies the issue. Regardless of whether a crime was committed, police can make information requests and add any vehicles they so want to the database. There are no restrictions on police information requests from a legal standpoint. The fact that Florida is keeping quiet about the system in general is the other, more ominous problem. It doesn’t want information about its tracking system to be made public.
All requests for information from USA Today to the Florida Department of Transportation were denied. It even justified not disclosing anything about the tracking by citing a public records law in the books. But the specific law has never been provided, and multiple attorneys said that this type of law if it even exists, doesn’t apply in this circumstance.
So all of this reeks of privacy concerns for all of Florida, and its tourism industry. Any and all traveling on toll roads now have private information stored in Florida’s surveillance system. But Lee Tien, a California attorney for the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation had a much more ominous concern.
