The New Luddites: Why People Are Destroying Surveillance and AI Infrastructure

Our Take

404 Media's conversation with Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, does something useful: it drags the word 'Luddite' out of the insult bin and puts it back in its real historical context — workers who weren't anti-technology, but anti-being-steamrolled by technology they had no say in. Swap 'textile mill owners' for 'Flock Safety, Waymo, and the politicians fast-tracking data centers,' and the parallel writes itself. We don't cover or endorse property destruction here. But we'd be lying if we said we were surprised that some people have reached for a baseball bat instead of a public comment form.

That's really the point worth sitting with: this isn't happening in a vacuum. Flock cameras get bolted onto utility poles in thousands of towns with zero public vote, zero audit trail most residents ever see, and zero real recourse when the data gets misused or leaked. When the normal channels — city council meetings, open records requests, even state legislation — keep losing to vendor lobbying and 'public safety' talking points, frustration curdles into something uglier. That's not a justification, it's a warning sign for anyone who'd rather see this fought with transparency than with angle grinders.

If you want a legal, durable way to push back, start by finding out what's actually watching your street on our camera map, then use our take-action page to petition your council, file records requests, and make noise the boring, effective way — before more people decide the only language left is a crowbar.