Ex-Sheriff Daniels Laid the Groundwork for Today's County Surveillance Network

Tested Mobile System on Drivers Who Came to the Fair

Clay County fairgoers in 2018 had their license plates scanned by police, former Sheriff Darryl Daniels told a television reporter.

Former Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels set the precedent for the installation of 95 surveillance cameras across the county when his department purchased a mobile version of the automatic license plate readers and tried it out at the county fair in secret five years ago.

Clay Sheriff Implements $1.3 Million Surveillance Camera Network

“During a five-hour period, there were probably about 500 hits,” Daniels told a News4Jax reporter doing a story about surveillance technology. News4Jax has given Clay News & Views permission to republish its May 2018 report, a shortened version of which can be viewed below.

The story suggested the new technology could become so invasive that it would be almost as if everyone’s car came with a GPS tracker monitored by police. The story quoted the American Civil Liberties Union:

It leaves a breadcrumb trail of every place you visit and when. A federal appeals court said in a 2010 ruling on GPS tracking, “A person who knows all of another’s travels can determine whether he is a weekly churchgoer, a heavy drinker, a regular at the gym, an unfaithful husband, an outpatient receiving medical treatment, an associate of particular persons or political groups’.”