ICE raids shining a light on mass surveillance, take advantage of it, advises author Cindy Cohn

Our Take

Matt Schlegel's clip from Indivisible Palo Alto Plus' Democracy Forum captures something we've been saying since we started mapping Flock cameras: the surveillance state doesn't get built in the open, it gets built in silence, one quiet city council vote at a time. Cindy Cohn, who spent three decades fighting digital surveillance at EFF, makes the point that ICE's raids have accidentally done organizers a favor — they've dragged the plumbing of mass surveillance into daylight where ordinary people can finally see it. ALPR networks, data-sharing agreements, and fusion centers that used to be background noise are suddenly front-page news.

That's the opening we've been waiting for. Most residents still have no idea their town's Flock cameras are logging every car that passes, or that those logs can be queried by federal agencies with zero local oversight and even less public debate. Cohn's advice — use this moment, don't let it pass — applies directly to the fight against ALPR sprawl. Outrage over ICE is a teachable moment about the infrastructure that makes ICE's reach possible in the first place, and that infrastructure includes the cameras bolted to your neighborhood's telephone poles.

If this clip makes you want to know what's actually watching your street, check our camera map and see how dense the coverage already is near you. And if you're ready to do something with that anger instead of just scrolling past it, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the local level, where these fights are actually won or lost.