The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office is expanding its surveillance capabilities, tapping a state fund to purchase a software platform that offers AI-powered data analysis with the stroke of a key.
Promising to use the technology to investigate serious international crimes like human trafficking, the agency netted nearly $1 million to procure software from Peregrine Technologies during the latest round of funding in February from the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
But critics warn that what makes this kind of technology attractive to law enforcement — its ability to rapidly merge and analyze disparate data sources — threatens to erode individuals’ privacy.
Sheriff Kurt Hoffman’s purchase reflects how state funding for immigration enforcement has fueled surveillance and artificial intelligence technology at the local level. During the same round of funding in February, three other sheriffs — in Lee, Osceola and Madison counties – also got funding for Peregrine software, while the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office and Washington County Sheriff’s Office secured funding for eyeball and biometric data scanners.
The acquisition comes as law enforcement agencies across the country have rapidly scaled up their use of artificial intelligence to process voluminous data collected through automated license plate readers, computer-aided dispatch systems and social media monitoring.
The Sarasota County Commission approved the sheriff’s office procuring Flock cameras in 2024, and a Suncoast Searchlight report found the law enforcement office can also tap Flock cameras operated by some local homeowners’ associations. In response to a March public records request for Sheriff’s Office employees’ AI chatbot conversations, the office identified 10,638 matches, suggesting the office has already integrated generative AI into its workflow.
In Florida alone, at least five agencies have already adopted Peregrine software as the company expands its network of contracts nationwide.
Unlike other policing technologies, Peregrine has not drawn widespread public attention. But a recent push by police in Durham, North Carolina, to adopt the software generated backlash from groups focused on privacy and civil liberties. The Durham City Council backed away from a Peregrine contract in February after local organizers raised red flags about the technology during public meetings.
“No one here today can promise that Durham’s policing tools and infrastructure won’t be used against us all in six months,” Durham resident Rayna Rusenko said during a City Council meeting in January. Rusenko warned that the technology could replicate and amplify racial bias in policing and raised concerns about civilians’ data and privacy.
In interviews with Suncoast Searchlight, technologists, cybersecurity experts and criminologists described the tech as a way to “supercharge” already-existing surveillance capabilities.
There’s been no such pushback locally — possibly in part because the funding came not through the county commission but through a separate statewide fund that isn’t subject to local oversight.
In an email, a Peregrine spokesperson said that the company’s software would aid Florida agencies in combatting serious crimes like human trafficking and gang violence and emphasized its commitment to protecting customers’ data.
“Peregrine was built from day one to operate in high-sensitivity, high-security environments. The company maintains a robust security posture with continuous monitoring, regular third-party audits and compliance with CJIS and HIPAA security frameworks.”
According to procurement documents, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said Peregrine would help “modernize its approach to criminal illegal immigration enforcement, reduce investigative delays, and deliver measurable public-safety outcomes through smarter, coordinated, and data driven operations,” noting that the county already collects data from numerous separate systems.
In response to requests for an interview, a spokesperson for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said Hoffman was “not inclined” to participate.
Immigration enforcement fund fuels tech procurement
It’s not the first time the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office has secured funding from the State Board of Immigration Enforcement.
Since the agency was created early last year, it has doled out more than $1.4 million to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office — and the sheriff has in turn proved a willing partner in the state’s immigration crackdown.
Last year, the sheriff’s office sent officers to patrol the Everglades immigration jail known as Alligator Alcatraz. Sarasota also serves as a local transportation hub for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and county jails, and sheriff's deputies transport people accused of immigration violations from Hardee, Sarasota and Manatee counties to Tampa’s larger ICE facility.
During a prior round of state immigration enforcement funding in September, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office obtained more than $280,000 for bonuses for correctional officers and deputies involved with immigration enforcement, a new transport vehicle and additional beds for people held in the local jail for ICE.
The more recent round of funding could go much further.
Although the sheriff’s office vowed to use Peregrine to fight serious cross-border crimes, the technology could be used far beyond immigration enforcement.
Peregrine streamlines and analyzes data collected by agencies across disparate sources, putting “actionable intelligence in the hands of every person in your organization,” according to its website. The company promises to match and link data from sources like public records, court cases, computer-aided dispatch reports and license plate readers.
In its application for the software, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said it would use Peregrine to share data with state agencies including the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The Sheriff’s office also noted it was applying “in conjunction” with the Sarasota, Venice and North Port police departments.
It’s unclear whether the Sheriff’s Office has implemented Peregrine yet, but a Sarasota Police Department spokesperson told Suncoast Searchlight it does not use the technology, and the Venice Police Chief Andy Leisenring said in a statement that the “Sheriff's Office has not reached out to VPD about the program, although I understand it is in the works. Therefore, we have no information to share at this time.”
Cybersecurity and technology experts interviewed by Suncoast Searchlight compared the software to Palantir Technologies, a data analysis and integration software company that has contracted with federal and state agencies and has risen in prominence during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Nick Noone, the CEO of Peregrine, worked at Palantir for five years, leading the company’s U.S. military special operations deployments in the Middle East before striking out on a new venture to bring intelligence platforms to local law enforcement.
Noone developed the technology in the northern California town of San Pablo, where he embedded with local police.
“My co-founder and I went through backgrounds, polygraph tests — we could literally wear a badge as an American police officer at this point,” Noone said during an interview at Italian Tech Week in 2025. “We were going out in police cars, we were expert witnessing during cases in court, and that level of embed is what ultimately led to the software that we built.”
On its website, Peregrine highlights cases local police officers solved using its software. A hit-and-run in Pinellas County. A murder suspect in San Bernardino, California. An abduction in Fairfax County, Virginia.
But comprehensive data on the effectiveness of tools like Peregrine have not been collected, said Julie Brancale, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
“They have not been evaluated yet,” Brancale said. “These tools are so new that the research hasn’t yet shown how effective [they are]. What kind of changes have they actually produced for law enforcement? The hope is that they will help law enforcement be more efficient.”
Privacy and security watchdogs go further, raising concerns about abuses of the technology absent clear safeguards. While an individual might support the use of such intelligence capabilities to catch a murder suspect, experts warn it could be deployed much more broadly and for lower-level offenses.
“As we speak, abortion and access to reproductive rights are being criminalized,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. “Access to documentation, to [identification] that reflects people's gender identity is being not only restricted, but criminalized. There are a whole variety of ways that immigration status is being more heavily criminalized.”
Flock Safety came under fire after ICE tapped into its local camera networks.
Communities reject some surveillance technology
Flock Safety, a company that sells automated license plate readers, has already come under close scrutiny in recent months after researchers revealed the company had allowed local law enforcement agencies to search its networks on behalf of ICE — even in jurisdictions that restrict local police from cooperating with ICE.
In May 2025, the technology-focused independent newsroom 404 Media reported that Texas officials searched more than 83,000 Flock cameras — some of them outside the state — for a woman who had had an abortion.
A Suncoast Searchlight report last year revealed how Florida Highway Patrol had tapped the camera network for immigration purposes, too.
In a video viewed 1.6 million times, YouTuber Benn Jordan and security researchers Jon Gaines and Joshua Michael described in Nov. 2025 vulnerabilities they said they had identified in Flock cameras. Jordan demonstrated how he was able to hack into a Flock camera that he purchased in just seconds; Michael demonstrated how a Google search led him to credentials embedded in Flock Safety’s public-facing code that he said would have allowed a malicious hacker to access the locations of patrol cars and private vehicles across the country.
The researchers said they reported the vulnerabilities to Flock, which maintains its technology is secure.
In the wake of those revelations, civil liberties groups and concerned members of communities across the country have sought to block, or cancel local contracts with Flock.
Residents in Durham also linked concerns about Flock cameras to the city's proposed Peregrine contract, particularly with Peregrine's ability to aggregate and analyze data from Flock cameras and other sources. City Council members there heard community anxieties about the platform and voted in January to block the police department from initiating a contract.
Michael, one of the technologists who highlighted concerns about Flock’s security, said he worries about how centralizing and rapidly analyzing data could erode individual privacy.
“When a platform links everything into one place, you start revealing relationships, routines,” said Michael. “It [reveals] a pattern of life.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
