By Michael Moline | Editor in Chief
“If they can make a dossier on your movement, they will be able to make a fortune in selling that to companies for advertising and for product placement and all of these other things.” — Ron DeSantis regarding Flock cameras
Flock camera (from Flock Safety’s website)
The backlash against Flock cameras is gaining momentum in Florida, where Liberty County Sheriff Dusty Arnold, Clay County Sheriff Michelle Cook, Duval County Sheriff T.K. Waters, and Putnam County Sheriff H.D. “Gator” DeLoach have ordered discontinuation of the system in their counties. This after Gov. DeSantis last week expressed concern about the surveillance danger. He said it again Monday, noting that the Florida House rejected his AI Bill of rights this year. He suggests the Legislature could take up the measure when members return for the organizational session following the November elections.
A task force is burrowing into details of the state’s administration of applied behavior analysis, a therapy common in the treatment of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, traumatic brain injuries, intellectual and developmental disabilities. Florida in the past two years has spent more money than any other state in the nation on this therapy and the feds are pressing to get that under control.
Forest managers out West are using prescribed burns to mitigate the risk of wildfires to their forests and neighborhoods, sometimes over opposition from residents. The idea is to emulate natural burn patters to avoid the conflagrations seen in cities like Spokane and Paradise, Calif. “Historically, it would have been easier to burn those areas when there weren’t property lines and structures in the way,” said Kyle Lapham, who runs Washington’s Certified Prescribed Burn Manager program. “These places should be burning multiple times in our lifetime, and we’re not even scratching the surface with that first burn on tens of thousands of acres.” Florida faces the same opposition from out-of-state transplants who don’t understand our ecosystems.
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