https://blog.monsterzero.org/categories/surveillance/Recent content in Surveillance on Monster ZeroHugoen-usWed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/dallas-trash-truck-surveillance/Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/dallas-trash-truck-surveillance/Dallas sold AI cameras on sanitation trucks as a voluntary beautification tool. Six months in, the system has flagged 21,000 properties with blight scores feeding a code enforcement pipeline. A look at how the pitch and the outcome diverged, and who&#39;s actually catching the scores.https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-axon-vendor-switch/Mon, 31 Aug 2026 16:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-axon-vendor-switch/More than 50 cities have canceled their Flock Safety contracts as a privacy win. Months later, Axon installs a comparable system on the same poles. A look at why that&#39;s a vendor swap, not a solution.https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/signaltrace-alpr-device-tracking/Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/signaltrace-alpr-device-tracking/A defense contractor is bolting Bluetooth, WiFi, and RFID tracking onto license plate cameras already installed across the country. Here&#39;s what SignalTrace actually does.https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/zencity-community-trust-surveillance/Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/zencity-community-trust-surveillance/<p>If you&rsquo;ve followed the Flock Safety license plate reader posts on this blog, you already know the pattern: a private company sells local government a tool framed as public safety or civic improvement, the contract gets signed with little or no public vote, and residents find out what they&rsquo;re actually paying for only after someone starts asking questions. Zencity follows the same playbook, but it&rsquo;s dressed up differently. Instead of cameras on the roadway, it&rsquo;s software that reads what you post online.</p>https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/microsoft-ai-data-integrity/Fri, 31 Jul 2026 11:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/microsoft-ai-data-integrity/<p>Microsoft has been on a real push lately to position itself as the company that will keep your data safe as AI takes over the workplace. It has a name for the pitch, the Secure Future Initiative, a growing suite of products to sell under it, Purview, Entra, Defender, and a fresh annual report, the Data Security Index, built to convince you the problem is real and Microsoft is the fix.</p>https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-drone-surveillance/Fri, 31 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-drone-surveillance/<p>Everything covered on this blog about Flock so far has been about fixed cameras, bolted to a pole, reading plates as cars drive past. That&rsquo;s a real privacy concern on its own. But Flock has spent the last two years building something that goes further than a stationary camera ever could: a fleet of autonomous drones that launch themselves, fly beyond where any human operator can see them, and follow whatever the system decides is worth following.</p>https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/axon-surveillance-streetlights/Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/axon-surveillance-streetlights/<p>If you&rsquo;ve followed the backlash against Flock Safety&rsquo;s license plate readers, you&rsquo;ve probably heard a pitch that sounds like relief: some cities are ditching Flock for a company called Axon instead. Before you treat that as good news, you should know who Axon is, what it&rsquo;s building, and why privacy advocates say the switch changes almost nothing.</p> <h2 id="who-axon-actually-is">Who Axon actually is</h2> <p>Axon Enterprise trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker AXON. It&rsquo;s headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it used to go by a different name you&rsquo;ll recognize: TASER International. The company rebranded in 2017 as it expanded from stun guns into a much broader law enforcement technology business — body cameras, dash cameras, drones, virtual reality training tools, and now a fast-growing license plate reader division.</p>https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-cameras/Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0500https://blog.monsterzero.org/posts/flock-cameras/<p>Drive through most Texas towns now and you will pass at least one Flock Safety camera without knowing it. No blinking light, no sign, nothing that marks it as different from a traffic light or a road sign. It reads every license plate that passes, logs the time, the location, and details like bumper stickers or roof racks, and sends all of it to a searchable database. Cooke County has cameras like this too, installed without public notice, which is what got me looking into the company behind them.</p>