Fast forward to 2019, now out in the civilian world, I found myself dealing with emerging technologies including traffic sensors, interactive public kiosks, autonomous vehicles, and drones as a public servant focused on Smart City initiatives in the City Hall of a major metropolitan area. Once again, I found myself concerned about how little the residents in that municipality knew about the hundreds of sensors surrounding them throughout their city blocks and selling their data to private entities, many to which even the city was unaware. More concerning was my discovery that city and county governments had very little public transparency in their Public Private Partnerships (P3s) and agreements with tech industries, emplacing so many potentially privacy-violating sensors amongst the people… and that was before learning of all the Smart City tech planning to be included in the new local airport! Interrogation of personal cell phones, facial recognition, license plate readers… all intrusive technologies. But the ones that seemed to concern citizens the most were facial recognition and autonomous drones prepositioned to respond to crimes, providing “eyes on” immediately after a crime was detected, through 911 calls or perhaps acoustic triangulation from technologies like ShotSpotter gunshot detection system.

https://orthodoxreflections.com/our-resignation-to-mass-surveillance/