A few years back we found out that organizations were using geo-fencing to advertise to those who took their smart phones to Church with them. The state was using similar tools to see who was or was not at January 6th (or in the general vicinity of).
When it comes to Flock Cameras and other brands of smart surveillance cameras, cutting these things down will only usher in phase 2 of these data-collecting devices, which will be drone versions of the things. If people are cutting them down, why not put them in the sky?
Other arguments for these data-collecting cameras is that you are in a public place and therefore your 4th Amendment right is not being violated.
This is the way that I look at it. Say there was an obsessed ex-boyfriend who wanted to make sure the woman he has sworn to protect was safe from threat. So he tracks her every move in public. He knows who she’s been spending time with. He knows where she’s been and what times she’s been there. It is for her own protection he tells himself. We call this stalking when individuals do it.
Do not trade your freedom for security. It will be a bad deal when the one sworn to protect you becomes the one who tries to suppress you. When you become more than his obsession; you become his possession.
Read “Anatomy of the State” by Murray Rothbard if you would like other examples of how government is allowed to do things that would be illegal if you and I were to do that very thing.
Watch “The Creepy Line” documentary if you want to see how Google has incrementally made you more and more comfortable with the idea of being tracked.
If you think there is already too much anxiety among human beings, just wait until every move is being tracked. Anxiety will go through the roof.
I drive by two different sets of Flock Cameras on my drive to work. It collects what time I travel and where I have been. I liked life better when I did not know that I was being watched (even though I am doing nothing wrong).
Some will say, Well, if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about. That is until you do have something to worry about. What happens when they implement 15-minute cities (which has been talked about) or say politicians want to impairment a carbon tax, base on how far you have driven. These cameras are one way that they could implement and enforce these and other such authoritarian policies.
They are simply setting up the infrastructure to allow such bad things to be done to good people in the future. And guess who will be exempt from such policy (“for their own protection”)? The one’s implementing it. You will be viewed as the threat.
So you see, you go from an innocent bystander, to a victim, to a threat.