Part of the Fun of Ruston, Washington is Knowing You’re Being Watched
The short version: A satirical look at tiny Ruston, Washington shows how even a one-square-mile town has bought into blanket ALPR coverage, proving surveillance creep knows no size limit.
Our Take
Ryan Ortgiesen's title says it all: in Ruston, Washington, getting watched isn't a bug, it's apparently part of the charm. That's the kind of dark humor this moment calls for, because Ruston is about as small as towns get — and yet it's found room in the budget and the public imagination for automated license plate readers. If a town you could walk across in twenty minutes thinks it needs Flock cameras clocking every car, that tells you everything about how normalized this technology has become.
This is the pattern we keep flagging: surveillance infrastructure doesn't scale with population or crime stats, it scales with vendor sales pitches and neighboring jurisdictions keeping up with each other. Small police departments get the same blanket coverage pitch as major metros, and nobody asks whether a town this size actually generates enough car theft or amber alerts to justify a permanent log of every vehicle that passes through.
Credit to Ortgiesen for turning a camera lens back on the cameras and making viewers sit with the absurdity of it. If you want to see whether your own small town has quietly joined the list, check our camera map, and if you find one, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at the local level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Ryan Ortgiesen, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.