They Redesigned Surveillance So You Wouldn’t Notice It

 

Hey, it’s me, Buddy Huggins, the Buddha from Mississippi, now living up here in Ozark, Missouri. I sat with this one from Design Theory, “They Redesigned Surveillance So You Wouldn’t Notice It,” and the title is the whole sermon. John Mauriello walks it from the old obvious cameras, the ones you could see and argue with, into CCTV, into that slow public acceptance after fear did the selling, and then into Flock’s design. Around the nine-and-a-half-minute mark he gets to the point that matters. These little roadside boxes were built so you would not notice them. Solar panel, no trench, no big sign that says the government is logging your comings and goings. Plate, make, model, color, time, place, direction, all of it searchable. Not a ticket camera. A memory camera. And then he pushes on the word everybody hides behind, inevitability, like the watching was always coming and a free people just have to get used to it. That is not wisdom. That is a sales pitch.

I bring videos like this to the mayor and the Board of Aldermen here in Ozark on purpose. Not to pick a fight. To keep the question in the room until it gets an answer. Crime is real. Neighbors want to feel safe. I get that. But a private company building a searchable trail of ordinary folks driving to work, church, the grocery store, and back home is not the same thing as a porch light. Being seen is not the same as being searched. Over time I want those Flock cameras taken down, and I want this town to start protecting private rights and public rights with the same energy it puts into “public safety.” A free people do not hand the map of their lives to a subscription service and call it peace. If the watching has to be redesigned so you will not notice it, that is the tell. Notice it. Speak on it. And do not let “inevitable” do the deciding for Ozark.

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