YANKEE TEA NEWS, OP-ED: FIGHTING THE SURVEILLANCE STATE,

Monday, August 31, 2026

The system for spying on Americans is a growth industry.  More computers, more methods of communication, and more databases are integrated into a proliferating network.  Americans are alarmed and complaining loudly about Flock cameras.  That is a start, but politicians are ignoring the public demands.  JD Rucker addresses this in a recent podcast.

Further, enabling legislation is easily confused as protecting Americans from terrorists and criminals,  instead ends up victimizing innocent Americans.  THAT is the nub of the problem.  This expansion of systems of surveillance have the growing ability to victimize innocent Americans.  There are already a number of examples where Flock cameras caused innocent people to be arrested and multiple times.  Call it electronic false arrest. (p.s., later we will go over the Chinese surveillance system overlaid on the American surveillance system.)

Ironically, these efforts to make citizens more safe instead makes them less safe.  More surveillance increases the chances that more innocent citizens will be arrested and even wrongfully prosecuted by the system.  Also, this just becomes one more tool to weaponize against political opponents.

What is the Trade Off?  - Are more innocent people, more accidental shootings, and more unfortunate tragedies the price for a “safer” society?  Where does one outweigh the other. As Benjamin Franklin noted, paraphrasing,  those who will exchange  some liberty for more security, deserve neither.

Flock cameras are just the beginning of a strong public rejection of over-surveillance.  These cameras, in particular, are more than just “license plate readers”.  Instead, there are still unanswered questions about what third parties are accessing this information and with whom they are sharing this information.  Once in the hands of a third party, the rules for Flock cameras do not apply.  There is a claim that, to date, some 500,000 requests by state law enforcement and federal agencies has been made for Flock camera data.

While this is being debated, the national fight over Flock cameras is highly instructive.  There is a new verb, Deflock.  Yes, on the one hand, law enforcement has shown how they solved crimes and apprehended criminals which would not have been possibly by other means.  The problem is that we have no real system or method of analysis which can quantify and assess the relative impacts of solving crimes versus victimizing innocent Americans.

Flock cameras  are still just the smallest part of the America’s massively complex surveillance industry.  Cell tower surveillance, drone surveillance, all assisted by ever improving AI tools for analysis, modeling and prediction that integrate everything into a master synthesis.  There have been plenty of warnings about how AI can get things wrong.  There is still no sense of how AI mistakes would be resolved in a massive and interconnected system.  So….

We Need a Real Surveillance Policy – The key point missing in this whole discussion is the need for a clearly articulated policy that balances the needs of law enforcement with the 4^th Amendment rights of Americans.  This is why the Bill of Rights was created in the first place.  It is a silent message to the state to stay in their lane.  So, while there is a need for the debate, there is also a need for the public to get even louder and remind our leaders that we still live in America.