Highlights from Who's Watching? Safeguarding Our Privacy -- an Indivisible Palo Alto Plus Forum
The short version: A Palo Alto panel of heavyweight privacy advocates — Cindy Cohn, Brian Hofer, Reem Suleiman, moderated by Cyrus Farivar — puts mass surveillance and ALPR networks on trial in plain language.
Our Take
It says something that a church basement forum in Palo Alto can assemble a lineup this credible: the former head of EFF, a veteran municipal surveillance watchdog, and a digital rights campaigner, all moderated by a journalist who's spent years covering this beat. Matt Schlegel's recording of the Indivisible Palo Alto Plus event is worth your time precisely because it isn't activists shouting into a void — it's people who've spent careers inside the machinery of privacy law explaining, calmly, why automated license plate readers and similar tech deserve public scrutiny rather than default trust.
What keeps coming up in rooms like this is the same pattern we track every day: cities quietly sign contracts with vendors like Flock Safety, the cameras go up with little debate, and the resulting database of everyone's movements sits outside any meaningful oversight. Panels like this matter because they translate that abstract risk into something residents can act on locally — pushing councils toward CCOPS-style ordinances, demanding audit logs, asking who else gets access to the data and why.
If this discussion makes you want to know what's actually watching your own commute, check our camera map to see documented ALPR locations near you, and head to our take-action page for concrete steps to push back before your town becomes the next case study.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Matt Schlegel, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.