This ambient sense of being watched wasn’t isolated. In 2021, the DOJ subpoenaed Apple for metadata on Reps. Schiff and Swalwell—and their families’ emails and calls⁷. At the same time, Washington Post journalists discovered their call logs had been seized without consent⁸. “This profoundly undermines press freedom,” said The New York Times editor Dean Baquet.⁹
Inside DHS, an analyst spoke to a Senate staffer in confidence: “We weren’t targeting threats. We were building a searchable archive of dissent.”
Not all embraced that view.
“We’re not trying to profile citizens,” said Chief Alan Garber of the Dallas Police Department. “We’re trying to prevent the next Uvalde. These systems save seconds. Seconds save lives.”¹⁰
But prevention had bled into prediction.
A 2021 GAO report found thirteen federal agencies couldn’t identify the surveillance software their staff used¹¹. In New Orleans, police circumvented a citywide ban by partnering with a private nonprofit to install over 200 facial-recognition cameras—streams feeding live alerts directly to officers¹².
In 2024, the MTA began piloting AI-powered subway cameras to flag “pre-criminal behavior”—loitering, clustering—before it became incident. Officials said they didn’t identify individuals. But footage went to private analytics firms¹³.
At a congressional hearing, civil rights attorney Maya Benson warned, “Predictive surveillance doesn’t just anticipate behavior. It invents it. The algorithm becomes both oracle and accuser.”
Local adoption followed quietly.
Flock Safety deployed license plate readers in thousands of communities, promising to flag pattern-based alerts. In rural Georgia, Patrolman Reed sifted daily notifications. One morning a station wagon was flagged for “suspicious loopback.” He tailed it for miles—only to watch a grandmother unload groceries. “Sometimes the system knows something you don’t,” he said. “Sometimes it’s just noise.”
Then came the consequences.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias found Flock had shared license plate data with CBP, violating his state’s law that protects abortion seekers’ privacy. In response, he barred CBP access and launched audits¹⁴. Flock paused federal projects and added filters to deny queries referencing abortion or immigration-related terms¹⁵.
Meanwhile, NYC’s AI ticketing failed in public view. The system mistook legal parking setups for bus-lane violations—issuing 3,800 wrongful tickets. Each recipient received a photo “evidence” of misbehavior¹⁶.