Who the Fuck Authorized This?

This morning, at an ungodly hour designed for mice and cockroaches, I find myself awake and thinking about the surveillance state that we’re creating. And frankly, it bugs the ever-loving fuck out of me.

Every fucking day, I see more cameras. They’re going up at intersections. They’re going up along major streets. They’re watching traffic. They’re reading license plates. They’re appearing on poles where there weren’t fucking cameras before. I ride through other cities and see the same goddamned thing. So I keep coming back to a question that I genuinely want answered: Is there some sort of national program being implemented here? Is there federal money behind this? Federal grants? Some national initiative pushing cities toward automated surveillance? Why the fuck does it seem like every city in America has suddenly decided it needs cameras watching every major fucking street?

And before somebody tells me I’m imagining the broader push, the federal government is absolutely funding surveillance technology for local law enforcement. The Justice Department announced a nearly $300 million Model Cities Initiative this year that specifically lists license plate readers, real-time crime centers, artificial intelligence systems, drones, body cameras, and other technology among eligible uses of federal money. That doesn’t prove there’s one secret national program responsible for every fucking camera I see. It does prove that federal money is being made available to help cities buy exactly this kind of shit. 

So who the fuck authorized this?

And I don’t mean which bureaucrat signed the fucking purchase order. Who authorized the fundamental change in the relationship between the American citizen and government where government now feels entitled to watch us as we move through our daily lives?

Because I sure as fuck didn’t.

I don’t remember voting for a surveillance state. I don’t remember consenting to government monitoring my movements as I ride to work, go to the grocery store, meet somebody for dinner, or simply move from one fucking place to another. I don’t remember Americans getting together and deciding that constant government observation was compatible with the concept of individual liberty.

And no, I’m not interested in asking city hall whether it has a really good fucking reason.

There is no legitimate reason for mass government surveillance in a free society supposedly founded on the preservation of individual liberty. None. I don’t give a fuck whether the justification is crime, speeding, noise, stolen cars, public safety, efficiency, convenience, or whatever other benevolent-sounding bullshit gets attached to the camera. The fundamental question comes before all of that: What fucking right does government have to watch free citizens who are suspected of absolutely nothing?

Apparently, we’ve stopped asking.

And that scares the fucking shit out of me.

This is reminiscent of postwar East Germany, when a Soviet-backed government progressively locked its people down, built walls and fences to keep them in, and implemented mass surveillance of its own population. Think about that for a fucking second. The Berlin Wall wasn’t built to keep an invading army out. It was built to keep their own fucking people from leaving. People attempting to escape were imprisoned, shot, and killed trying to get across the fucking thing. 

We look back at that now and wonder how the fuck a society gets there.

Maybe this is how.

Not because somebody wakes up one morning and announces, “Congratulations, motherfuckers, you now live in a police state.” It happens because people stop giving a fuck. Government claims another power and everybody shrugs. Another camera goes up and everybody shrugs. Another database gets built and everybody shrugs. Another piece of your life becomes observable, searchable, recordable, trackable, and everybody fucking shrugs.

“What can I do?”

I hear people say that shit all the fucking time, as though they’re helpless. As though government is some independent organism that crawled out of the fucking ocean and took control of us.

You’re not helpless.

Call, write, or email your idiot representatives, the people we elected to supposedly look after the greater good, and demand that this shit stop. Show up. Make noise. Demand accountability. Demand repeal. Demand the cameras come the fuck down.

Because I don’t remember authorizing a fucking police state.

The Declaration of Independence, the OG of our founding fucking documents, says that governments exist to secure our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It says governments derive their “just powers from the consent of the governed.” And when government becomes destructive of those ends, it says the people have the right to “alter or to abolish it.”

That isn’t a fucking suggestion that we politely ask government to explain itself.

That is a declaration about who possesses the power.

We fucking do.

Government does not grant me liberty. Government does not own my liberty. Government does not get to decide how much liberty I require and then graciously permit me to keep that amount. The entire fucking purpose of the American experiment was supposed to be the opposite: liberty belongs to the individual, and government exists under restraints imposed upon it by the people.

Somewhere along the way, we completely fucked up that arrangement.

Our government is no longer obsessed with preserving personal liberty. It is obsessed with managing people. Measuring people. Regulating people. Tracking people. Watching people.

And the fucking cameras are the physical manifestation of that change.

Here in Santa Fe, this isn’t imaginary. The city has an automated traffic-enforcement program that includes camera enforcement, and SFPD has an official automated-license-plate-reader policy. These systems exist. They are being implemented. 

Every fucking day, on my ride home, I notice more cameras going up at intersections. I actually fucking see them. They weren’t there. Now they are. Infrastructure is being erected for the express purpose of observing people moving through public space, and somehow this has become so fucking normal that most people barely seem to notice.

I notice.

And I want the fucking things gone.

Not better regulated.

Not accompanied by a nice privacy policy.

Not subject to an oversight committee staffed by seven bureaucrats who promise they'll only use the surveillance system responsibly.

Gone.

Because liberty cannot coexist with the premise that government is entitled to continuously observe its citizens.

You cannot tell me I am free while constructing a network designed to watch where I go.

You cannot tell me I possess liberty while recording my movements when I have done absolutely nothing to warrant government suspicion.

You cannot tell me government derives its authority from my consent while simultaneously building the machinery to observe me without ever bothering to fucking ask for that consent.

And you sure as fuck cannot call that freedom simply because the cameras are mounted on poles instead of guard towers.

We aren’t supposed to be a fucking police state.

We aren’t supposed to be a nation that yields to Big fucking Brother every time somebody whispers public safety.

And we sure as fuck aren’t supposed to finance our own surveillance.

That's another part that pisses me off. They are using our fucking money to build it. Money taken from our paychecks and our purchases and our property is being used to purchase and install the machinery that watches us. We are literally paying government to diminish the liberty government was created to fucking protect.

How completely fucking backward is that?

And still, people shrug.

“What can I do?”

For fuck’s sake.

You are the governed.

Your consent is the fucking source of their authority.

Withdraw it.

Tell your city councilor you don't consent to being surveilled. Tell your mayor. Tell your state representative. Tell your congressperson. Demand legislation prohibiting government surveillance of ordinary citizens absent individualized suspicion and due process. Demand that your local government stop buying the fucking equipment. Demand that the equipment already installed come down.

And if they tell you it's for your own safety, remind them that safety was never the fucking promise.

Liberty was.

That's the thing we seem to have forgotten. Liberty isn't government keeping you perfectly safe. Liberty isn't government eliminating every risk. Liberty isn't government watching everyone just in case one of them does something wrong.

Liberty is being left the fuck alone.

I shouldn't have to explain why I rode down a particular street. I shouldn't have to wonder whether a government database recorded my motorcycle passing an intersection. I shouldn't have to trust that today's mayor, tomorrow's police chief, or some fucking government contractor will behave honorably with information government never should have collected in the first fucking place.

Government shouldn't have it.

Period.

So why the fuck aren't we demanding answers from our government? Better yet, why aren't we demanding that it stop?

Why aren't Americans furious?

Why aren't we telling every politician who authorized this shit that they either dismantle it or we'll find somebody else who fucking will?

Because the wall doesn't have to come first.

The surveillance doesn't have to culminate in something worse before we decide it violates the principles of a free society.

We already know what happens when citizens become subjects and government decides that watching them is simply part of governing them.

History already fucking showed us.

We don't need to repeat the experiment.

Take the fucking cameras down.