If you've paid attention to policing over the last decade, you've probably noticed that local police departments have quietly transformed into something that looks much closer to a miniature NSA than the neighborhood departments most Americans imagine. As surveillance technologies become cheaper and easier to deploy, police departments continue purchasing them while local legislatures, state legislatures, and Congress struggle to keep pace. At the same time, private companies have built billion-dollar businesses around convincing governments that more surveillance automatically means more public safety. Flock Safety is one of the clearest examples of this trend. The company has rapidly expanded across the country by selling automated license plate reader systems to local governments, backed by investors who see surveillance technology as an enormous growth industry. As these systems continue to spread into cities and counties, it's easy to look at where things are headed and conclude that the surveillance state is simply inevitable. I understand why people feel that way. But accepting that conclusion guarantees the very outcome we fear. If we decide these technologies can't be stopped, then we stop trying to stop them. Fortunately, the last year in Wisconsin has demonstrated that organized communities can still influence surveillance policy. Wave of Surveillance Tech Local law enforcement has access to technologies that allow them to collect extraordinary amounts of information about ordinary people, often with very little public awareness. Unlike federal intelligence agencies, however, these technologies aren't operating somewhere far away in Washington. They're sitting in our own cities and counties. Many departments now use cell site simulators, often called Stingrays, that impersonate cell towers and force every nearby phone to connect, whether or not the owner is suspected of a crime. Others purchase software that scrapes social media accounts for enormous amounts of personal information. Many have access to