Somebody’s Watching Me

We need a complete and total shutdown of DeKalb County and its municipalities until we can figure out what the hell is going on.

The first thing to know about DeKalb County politics is that the incorporated cities, at least the ones on the north side, basically exist in opposition to the county government. 15 or 20 years ago, the north side of the county was Republican and the south side was Democrat, and cities on the north side were created or expanded to provide for some local control for the residents who would otherwise have their needs outvoted by the Democratic supermajority county government.

The whole county has gotten much bluer in the Trump era, and most city government offices are officially nonpartisan, so it’s not a clean Republican/Democrat divide these days, but the philosophical differences still remain, and both the Dems and the GOP often involve themselves in these local races. Most candidates for city office in north DeKalb will still talk about lower taxes, privatization, and local control, and the county government still tries to maintain as much of its power and tax base as possible when any city tries to expand its footprint or take over a government function from the county.

It’s an oversimplification, but the main point is that north DeKalb cities and DeKalb County don’t agree on anything, and are essentially governed by people with opposing worldviews. So when they do agree on something, it makes those who are paying attention take notice. When they agree on something shockingly contrary to both right-wing views on limited government and left-wing views on individual freedoms, it’s a giant red flag.

Which brings us to a company called Flock, an Atlanta-based corporation that apparently has as its sole guiding principle “What if East Germany…but for profit?” They are very intent on soaking up your tax dollars to implement a network of cameras, license plate readers, audio monitors, militarized drones, and any other intrusive surveillance technology they can come up with, all linked to an AI system to let them spy on and track you, your vehicles, your properties, and your businesses, and of course to both provide that information to any government agency that asks and to monetize it in any way they can.

Modern technology makes this easier than in the days when the Communist regimes had to rely on human spies. Even the most strident mitarbeiter eventually has to sleep, or eat, or take a vacation. But with infinite AI-linked cameras and drones, everyone can be monitored and tracked, 24/7/365, with no rest, no pause, and no escape. (Even a power outage won’t help – many of the cameras are solar-powered, so your totalitarian police state can be carbon-free!)

This is obviously horrifying to anyone with traditional conservative views, or traditional liberal views, or who has ever read 1984, or basically any history book at all. And yet, DeKalb County, with its monolithically liberal government, and north DeKalb municipalities, which tend to be run by politicians who are “conservative-ish” if not actual Republicans, have joined forces to shotgun tax dollars at Flock as fast as they possibly can.

What is going on here? Bribery? Blackmail? Extortion? They all really are just in it for absolute power? I can come up with no coherent political theory that would explain how DeKalb and its cities can’t agree on taxation, provision of services, road maintenance, development, or any other legitimate function of government, but they absolutely can agree that every visitor and resident must be surveilled at all times.

The rush to “totalitarian surveillance as a service” is possibly the biggest political issue in this country that doesn’t get nearly enough public attention. DeKalb sadly isn’t the only jurisdiction in Georgia being victimized by Flock and its fellow for-profit spy agencies. But the divide between more conservative city governments and a more liberal county government is fairly unusual, and those two groups agreeing on nearly any policy is unheard of. Until we can understand who’s behind all this and why, the safest course of action is just to shut the cities and the county down entirely, and perhaps relocate their elected officials to a secure location. For their own safety, of course.