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.
These were not hypotheticals. They were failures manifest.
Mike Baker still sat at his laptop. The protests were memories; screens stayed blue.
“I don’t even know what I’m saving anymore,” he said in low light, “but if they ever say it didn’t happen, we’ll still have the feed.”
The cameras didn’t blink. The feed saved itself.
We carry the telescreen now. And we don’t turn it off—we charge it.
Bibliography
1. George Orwell, 1984 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1949).
2. Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, “The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon,” New York Times Magazine, Jan. 28, 2022.
3. Byron Tau, “Federal Agencies Use Smartphone Location Data for Immigration Enforcement,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2020.
4. Interview with public defender Kelly Thomas, New York Civil Liberties Union newsletter, Aug. 2022.
5. Kashmir Hill, “Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm,” New York Times, June 24, 2020.
6. Robert Julian‑Borchak Williams, “I Was Falsely Arrested Because of Facial Recognition…,” Washington Post, June 24, 2020.