Two American states are pulling out the cameras that read licence plates: an officer charged on a hundred counts of tracking people

Florida and Texas are turning their backs on Flock - the company whose cameras read vehicle licence plates. Florida's transportation department sent a memo on Monday ending the use of these readers on state highways, citing "concerning reports of misuse, data privacy issues and tracking schemes." The state has 30 days to remove the cameras.

The decision comes days after Florida governor Ron DeSantis called the technology "out of control" at a press conference. Texas made the same move the previous week, ordering state agencies to stop funding the network. Governor Greg Abbott's office cited abuse of the system.

One case explains the whole question. An officer from Lufkin, Texas, has been charged on a hundred counts of serious criminal offences, linked to allegedly searching the Flock database to track people without authorisation. Not an outside hacker. This is a man with legal access who used it as it suited him.

And it is not an isolated case. There have been reports of security lapses, officers using access to track former partners, and recognition errors that ended with innocent drivers being stopped and wrongful arrests. According to more recent reports, the cameras no longer stop at plates - work is under way on recognising and tracking people.

The network runs to around 130,000 readers across the United States. The strangest part of the story is the cities that wanted out: Evanston in Illinois, Cambridge in Massachusetts and Eugene in Oregon reported that cameras were reinstalled or reactivated after local authorities had already terminated the contract. The company did not respond to the question of whether it will allow the two states to remove the devices.

The resistance comes from Republicans and Democrats alike, which in today's America is a rarity worth noting. When two parties that agree on nothing end up on the same side, it usually means the question has stopped being ideological and become practical - the camera records everyone's car, regardless of who the owner voted for.

If anyone is looking for a lesson that travels across the ocean, it is not in the number of cameras but in the order of events. First the system is installed, then it emerges who has access, and only at the end - once somebody has been charged - comes the question of who was actually supervising the surveillance. Would we ask sooner here?