Who's Watching the "Watchers"?

Those in “authority” have been watching us for years. The latest method is the use of Flock cameras which scan license plates of all vehicles as they pass by. Some even accuse the cameras of doing much more. So what happens when the tables are turned and the “watchers” are being watched? Let’s just say… the watchers don’t like it.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) centers have started monitoring anti-surveillance activists, even calling some of them terrorists, according to records gathered by Reason. An intelligence report compiled in Massachusetts, and redistributed by a Wisconsin center, shows the government is tracking online critics of automated license plate readers - such as those used by Flock Safety. Perhaps the government is “watching” my website and Facebook page this very minute. If so, please ‘like’ and ‘follow’.

Included among the critics is a website, SparrowMap, that uses ALPR technology to track… wait for it… police vehicles in real time. As the old saying goes, “what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander”. Nothing like giving them a taste of their own medicine.

"Recent social media and forum users have called for the surveillance of government vehicle movement, [including] law enforcement vehicles," the Massachusetts intelligence product states. "Users have mapped the movement of government vehicles across the United States through SparrowMap. The Commonwealth Fusion Center is providing this information for situational awareness. The CFC has no indication threat actors within the Commonwealth intend to leverage this information for criminal or nefarious purposes."

Even better, there is nothing illegal about SparrowMap. It processes publicly available live streams from municipal cameras, as well as footage provided by volunteers using everyday cameras. Out of the 300,000 vehicles picked up by the network's 14,196 cameras every day, only a few dozen are police vehicles. Non-police vehicles are quickly deleted.

When I checked, sharing video on SparrowMap required no account, no login, and no permission. Recognition happens on the contributor's own machine, so no video is ever uploaded. The organization's code is publicly available on Github.

Just last month, Reddit users encouraged the collection of government vehicle information and uploading it into SparrowMap. One user suggested surveilling the movement of government officials as retaliation for purported government surveillance. Excellent! Everyone should be watching the watchers as much as possible. It helps guarantee our freedoms.

The federal government created 80 centers around the country in the wake of 9/11, as an effort to eliminate the intelligence gaps which led to the deadliest terror attack in American history. In recent years, both federal law enforcement and states have increasingly described activists who oppose mass surveillance, as well as AI and data centers, by using language usually reserved for domestic terrorists.

The facts are simple: It’s becoming “us against them”. Actually, it has been for a long time, but it continues to get worse. If we don’t stand up for our constitutional rights every day, we will lose them. We are not anti-surveillance terrorists. You are not our Overlords. We’re simply people who want our privacy to be maintained as written in the U.S. Constitution.

Source used: Reason

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