Privacy's Defenders: Cowboys, Cypherpunks and Visionaries

Our Take

EFF's framing is worth sitting with: Flock Safety's cameras didn't appear in a vacuum, they're the newest chapter in a decades-long push to normalize tracking ordinary people's movements. Calling out 'cowboys, cypherpunks and visionaries' is a reminder that resistance to mass surveillance has always come from unlikely coalitions, not just civil liberties lawyers. Ranchers worried about government overreach, coders building encryption tools, and everyday residents who just don't like being logged every time they drive to church or work have more in common than they think.

That coalition framing matters because Flock's pitch to city councils depends on nobody connecting the dots. Each individual camera gets approved as a narrow crime-fighting tool, while the aggregate network quietly becomes something closer to a national location-tracking system, one that law enforcement agencies and private company employees can query with little oversight and that has already been shown to leak into immigration enforcement and other mission creep far outside the original sales pitch.

Credit to EFF for zooming out and giving this fight some historical weight. If you want to see how dense that camera network has gotten in your own neighborhood, check our map, and if you're ready to push back at a council meeting or public records request, our take-action page has concrete steps to start with.