A county government in Florida spent the past three weeks trying to answer a question that sounds trivial and turns out not to be: how many cameras are watching its roads, and who owns them?
It went looking in the only place such a record exists anywhere in this country. Not a database. Not a registry. A stack of right-of-way permits, filed at the same counter that approves driveway culverts and mailbox setbacks.
The stack did not balance…