AI cameras are spreading across American cities faster than the rules governing them. The debate has focused largely on privacy and policing in the United States, but we have seen similar stories elsewhere, including Iran, where surveillance cameras have been used to identify women accused of violating mandatory hijab rules.
Safety and privacy aside, there is another question hiding behind all those cameras: what is the environmental cost of watching everything?
That debate is playing out in Virginia around Flock Safety, whose automated license plate recognition cameras, or ALPRs, are used by police departments across the United States. According to a 2025 Virginia State Police report cited by the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO, at least 159 Virginia law enforcement agencies used ALPRs, including 139 using Flock Safety.
The cameras can help police locate vehicles associated with crimes. But they also create searchable records of vehicles moving through communities.
What happens when an officer uses that power for personal reasons? What happens if enormous collections of location data are retained or shared far beyond their original purpose?
Just because we can collect all this data, should we?
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism obtained thousands of public records revealing confusion among residents, police departments and elected officials about how Flock information was collected, shared and stored.
In Bridgewater, data from just five Flock cameras had been accessed more than seven million times nationwide before Virginia banned out-of-state sharing, VCIJ reported.
Attorney Michael Soyfer of the Institute for Justice told VCIJ that police departments sometimes acquire new surveillance technology with little scrutiny.
“Oftentimes, the department vetting is very minimal,” he said.
In Williamsburg, when a resident asked William & Mary police how its Flock data was shared, Police Chief Don Butler turned to Flock for help answering the question.
Flock vice president Chris Colwell sent talking points that could be forwarded to residents. According to VCIJ, the response did not directly answer Butler’s original question.
Flock itself acknowledges the political challenge. One company training document obtained by VCIJ tells police: “Don’t avoid the concept of mass surveillance because you are not going to convince opponents that it’s not.”
Flock says customers control their data and sharing permissions, searches are logged, access is role-based and data is encrypted. The company says its ALPR technology does not use facial recognition.
There are also legitimate public-safety uses. Norfolk police told VCIJ that Flock cameras had assisted investigations into two shootings since March.
But anti-surveillance advocate Clayton Tye argues cities should demonstrate that benefit.
“If you claim that this has been solving crime, then prove it,” he told VCIJ.
If cities are exchanging some privacy for increased security, shouldn’t they measure exactly what they are getting in return?
The environmental cost of surveillance
Then there is a cost almost nobody discusses.
Every image captured, analyzed, transmitted and stored requires physical infrastructure: cameras, telecommunications networks, servers, data centers, electricity and cooling.
Surveillance isn’t driving the AI boom, but it belongs to the same larger question: how much information do we actually need to collect, move and store?
This is where privacy and sustainability unexpectedly meet.
The greener surveillance system may also be the more private one.
Process information locally when possible. Transmit only useful information. Delete unnecessary data quickly. Restrict sharing and duplication.
The greenest byte may be the one we never send to a data center.
Cities should establish retention limits, audit searches and publish evidence showing how often cameras actually help solve crimes. They should also ask vendors where information is processed, how much is transmitted, how long it is stored and what computing infrastructure is required.
Before we build cities that see everything, perhaps we should decide what is actually worth seeing — and worth storing.
And the people living underneath those cameras should get a say.surveill
