In a BBC Future article, Thomas Germain goes looking for surveillance cameras in his own Brooklyn neighborhood and finds far more than he expected.
A walk through the network
Germain takes a surveillance tour with Michelle Dahl of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
- Dahl points out two small NYPD cameras hidden in black domes on a lamppost. They are easy to miss unless you are looking.
- They belong to the Domain Awareness System, which links more than 80,000 cameras with drones, social media data and systems that follow cars across state lines.
- Within a few steps, Germain counts 16 more cameras owned by businesses and buildings. Dahl says police often just ask owners for footage during investigations.
- Germain has covered privacy for ten years. Even so, he says the scale stunned him.
The backlash against Flock
Germain then turns to the company that has become the face of the issue.
- Flock Safety says it runs more than 100,000 cameras across 6,000 American communities, scanning cars 20 billion times a month.
- One Texas sheriff reportedly searched more than 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide while pursuing a woman in an abortion case.
- In at least 46 reported cases, officers used the system for unauthorized purposes, including stalking. Flock calls the misuse unacceptable and has added safeguards.
- Over 50 cities cut ties with Flock this year. Germain notes some quietly hired other firms instead.
How to see what watches you
Germain closes with practical tools and a warning.
- The EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance lets you search by city, state, agency or vendor.
- DeFlock is a crowdsourced map. It is less reliable, but it found four AI cameras within walking distance of his door.
- Rindala Alajaji of the EFF argues the safety claim is an excuse, citing innocent people stopped at gunpoint over a misread license plate.
- Dahl’s advice is simple: notice where you are watched, learn where the data goes, then push for change locally.
Germain writes his walk ends in an elevator, face to face with one more camera. That is the lesson of his whole afternoon. The cameras were always there. He just started looking.
Acknowledgement: This summary was generated using AI writing tools as part of my AI exploration process. For more information, check out the original article listed below.