The Illusion of Rising Crime and the Surveillance Tech Promising to Fix It
A profound disconnect defines the modern American experience with crime. For three decades, statistical reality has shown a consistent and drastic decline in crime rates across the United States. Yet, the average citizen operates under the firm belief that the opposite is true, a misconception fueled by a potent combination of sensationalist media coverage and inflammatory political rhetoric.
Barreling headfirst into this gap between perception and reality is a 38-year-old tech entrepreneur who believes his startup holds the definitive solution. Garrett Langley, CEO and cofounder of Flock Safety, is pitching a vision of total security through pervasive surveillance. His company, now valued at a staggering 7.5 billion dollars, has rapidly constructed a vast network of over 80,000 artificial intelligence-powered cameras.
These are not simple security cameras. Flock’s systems are designed to automatically read license plates, identify vehicle types, colors, and even specific features like roof racks or bumper stickers. This data is fed into a centralized system that allows law enforcement and thousands of private communities to track the movement of vehicles in near real-time, creating a searchable database of everyday life.
The company’s proposition is seductively simple. By automating the tedious work of evidence gathering, Flock claims it helps solve crimes faster and acts as a powerful deterrent. They present a world where a stolen car is located in minutes and a suspect’s path is traced with digital precision. For communities anxious about safety, it offers a tangible, technological answer to an amorphous fear.
However, this promise comes with a formidable set of ethical and societal questions that are often glossed over in the rush toward a crime-free utopia. Privacy advocates and civil liberties organizations sound a loud alarm, warning that Flock is building a permanent, searchable record of our movements without public oversight or clear data retention policies. The network creates a system of mass surveillance that is operated by a private corporation, fundamentally altering the relationship between citizen and state.
The danger, critics argue, is not just the erosion of privacy but the normalization of constant monitoring. This technology risks creating a society where everyone is perpetually treated as a potential suspect. Furthermore, the deployment of such powerful tools within a justice system known for its biases raises the specter of enhanced and automated discrimination.
The rise of Flock Safety is a story for our time. It is a tale of a technological solutionism meeting a deep-seated societal anxiety, real or perceived. A young tech bro, backed by billions in venture capital, is offering to fix a complex problem with a simple array of cameras and algorithms. But the core issue may not be a lack of surveillance, but a surplus of fear. The question remains whether we are solving a crime wave that does not exist by constructing a surveillance state that does.
