texts via radio

Our Take

We'll be upfront: the video's title and description give us little to go on beyond the channel's broader mission of flagging surveillance and digital-control creep that mainstream outlets tend to skip. Whatever the specific mechanics of texting over radio turn out to be, the pattern is familiar — new communication and tracking capabilities tend to arrive quietly, get framed as convenience or emergency preparedness, and only later reveal their surveillance potential.

That's exactly the trajectory we've watched play out with ALPR networks like Flock Safety. Marketed as a tool for solving car break-ins, Flock cameras have quietly become a nationwide tracking grid that logs the movements of ordinary drivers with zero warrant requirement in most places. A video about obscure radio-based texting might seem unrelated, but it's part of the same larger story: technologies built for one stated purpose that end up feeding bigger, less accountable surveillance systems once the data starts flowing somewhere.

Credit to the Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency channel for continuing to dig into corners of this story that get ignored elsewhere. If you want to see how this plays out concretely in your own neighborhood, check our camera map to find Flock installations near you, and visit our take-action page if you're ready to push back on surveillance infrastructure in your community.