Government surveillance isn’t new, but new wide-ranging technologies that can detect our faces and track our movements are making it ubiquitous.
While the tools have changed, the purpose remains the same: to chill independent thought, free speech and dissent, bringing our country closer to the events in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
Millions of Americans are being watched as the U.S. ramps up mass surveillance with help from artificial intelligence, data brokers and partnerships with private tech companies. Tech like Flock cameras has brought the issue into communities across the country.
That includes people in Atlanta — the most heavily surveilled city in the country. And the debate over these cameras in Atlanta, which has drawn significant interest from locals as well as officials, reflects growing concerns nationally.
Error rate, wrongful arrests are alarming
Credit: Other
Credit: Other
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, police departments have increasingly deployed automated license plate readers powered by AI to track drivers “without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.” And they’re doing this with little to no oversight or regulation.
Flock Safety is one of the largest license plate reader vendors in the U.S. Its solar-powered, teardrop-shaped cameras capture images of all passing vehicles, storing the car’s make, model and other identifying features. Any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can access the company’s nationwide database without a warrant.
Flock cameras also track people. Its “FreeForm search” feature has allowed police departments to search the database using phrases like “male with tattoos” and “person on skateboard,” according to data reviewed by 404 Media, an online, independent news site focused on technology and internet reporting.
DeFlock, an open-source project that maps license plate readers, has identified over 132,000 in the U.S. Even my small town of around 20,000 people in Southern California has at least 35 readers, most of them Flock cameras.
No independent research has shown that automated license plate readers can reduce crime. But there’s mounting evidence of the technology’s alarmingly high error rate. An analysis by the Roseville, California, police department found that 71% of Flock’s alerts to the Roseville police about vehicles stolen or used in a felony were incorrect.
Far from promoting “public safety,” the tech has led to wrongful arrests, profiling and countless other abuses.
Flock reportedly has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Among other cities, Los Angeles recently suspended its use of Flock cameras amid mounting privacy concerns over who controls the data and how it’s shared.
More communities are rejecting mass surveillance
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world, show that Texas deputies searched 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide to track a Texas woman across state lines because she allegedly “had an abortion.” In Dunwoody, a public records request revealed Flock employees accessing cameras in children’s spaces at a community center as part of sales demonstrations.
Other reporting has found cops repeatedly misusing the Flock system to stalk exes.
More communities are organizing and fighting back against this unregulated AI technology. As a result, at least 100 cities have now rejected automatied license plate readers, most of them Flock cameras.
But Flock is only one cog in the machine. Cities can easily replace their Flock cameras with those from competitors like Axon, Motorola Solutions or Genetec, as some have already done.
Mass surveillance remains the fundamental problem. Ever more companies collect our data through cellular networks, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and license plate readers, among other sources.
The U.S. government, in turn, purchases massive amounts of our data from commercial data brokers without obtaining warrants — bypassing our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
In tandem, multiple federal agencies now have sweeping access to Americans’ sensitive personal data through systems built by Big Tech company Palantir, following President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order that expanded data sharing across agencies.
This metastasizing mass surveillance state — what Orwell called “Big Brother” in 1984 — is eroding our privacy, freedom and Constitution.
As more communities wake up to the danger, the solution isn’t trading one brand of camera for another. We need oversight and regulation of the entire surveillance industry, as well as the government agencies that rely on it.
OtherWords columnist Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and educator. This op-ed was distributed by otherwords.org, an editorial service published by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C
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