Expectation vs. Reality: How HOAs Fund the Surveillance State

Our Take

Thomas Gaume's report cuts through the sci-fi imagery people associate with 'surveillance state' and shows what it actually looks like: a gray box zip-tied to a utility pole, purchased not by some shadowy federal agency but by your own homeowners association. That's the uncomfortable truth about Flock Safety's business model — it doesn't need to convince governments to build a surveillance network when it can convince a volunteer HOA board to sign a subscription agreement instead.

This matters because HOA-funded cameras often skip the public scrutiny that a city council vote would require. Residents who never got a real say in the decision end up having every car that enters or leaves their neighborhood logged, time-stamped, and routed into a police-accessible database. There's no referendum, no open meeting law, just a line item in an HOA budget that most homeowners never read closely.

Credit to Gaume for making the banality of this system so visible — it's not Minority Report, it's a Tuesday board meeting. If you want to see how many of these boxes have already gone up in your area, check our camera map, and if your neighborhood is next on the list, our take-action guide walks you through pushing back before the contract gets signed.