Surveillance And Resistance: Police Use of Technology and Activist Mobilization in the San Francisco Bay Area

While a growing body of literature explores police technologies and their general implications, there is gap in the around empirical study what actually happening on ground how resistance mobilizing. By centering activists as lens to investigate practices, my research captures San Francisco Bay Area are utilizing surveillance have mobilized resist challenge use. I examine state publicly says that should be doing with regard technology usage, media accounts say they doing, organizers reveal them practice, responding. Through analysis, rhetoric “public safety” clashes activist narratives abuse power an increasingly harmful controlling state. Surveillance portrayed “essential” for stopping crime when reality, this framing part utopian techno-solutionist orientation obscures ongoing injustices exacerbated by dragnet surveillance, racial targeting, public-private partnerships. There clear mismatch between claims practices. In response, mobilizing through policy legal channels hold accountable, fight break down power.