Community Story Submissions Open
In Which: The Herald asks for your stories, and I speak at length about surveillance culture.
Submit A Story About Your Neighborhood
We’re a pretty lean operation here at the Hayward Herald and there’s only so much that can be accomplished in a day. But Hayward is a big city—at least geographically—and I know there’s a lot going on out there that I can’t keep up on. That’s where you come in.
If you have a story from around Hayward that you’re eager to tell, we want to publish it! It can be about anything: a human interest story on a longtime resident, a write-up of an event that happened in your neighborhood, a story on the interaction you had with the police, or even some memory you have from high school. If it happened in Hayward, we’re open to it.
But I’m Not A Good Writer
You’re almost certainly a better writer than you think. All it takes is some practice—the important part is to make it sound like you. You’re a part of this city, and we want to lift up your voice.
We’ll edit your story for clarity—maybe length—and make sure your voice stays in tact. We promise, you’ll get the chance to OK your story in case something went off course—that’s part of the editing process.
You can even post the same story somewhere else later, you get to keep full ownership of your story. The story will be posted with your name on it, so you can share it with those close to you—you’ve earned it.
How Do I Submit A Story?
I’m so glad you asked. There are two different ways you can submit a story:
Just email me! Send me an email saying you’re interested, and we’ll talk it out together.
Fill out a form! No email? No problem! Just fill out the form with some method of contact—phone, text, coordinates, date/time/location—and we’ll reach out to you. We’ll try to get back to you within a day or two, but it may take more time sometimes.
Tell Your Story
If you have a story to tell and want people to hear it, let us know! If you have any questions, just ask! We’re looking to expand our content and want you, the community, to help. It’s a win-win for both of us.
This week kicked my butt, fam. Just too much going on and not enough happening, if you catch my drift. I’ll have more local stories next week, but in the meantime, enjoy the story below. It was originally published in the East Bay Echo.
Toto, We’re Not In 1984 Anymore
When my child turned six months old, my wife and I were eager to put her in her own room. She’d been a noisy sleeper and, thankfully, it was the best sleep any of us had gotten in six months. We checked the monitor regularly—getting audio and night-vision video whenever we wanted. It brought us peace of mind to be able to check on our little baby whenever we wanted.
It’s a common refrain when it comes to surveillance: we’re trading privacy for safety. It’s a line out of the intelligence services and parroted by state and local police departments, security services, and private companies to reassure us that any loss of privacy is worth the gain in safety. But in a post-PATRIOT Act world where surveillance by someone—whether a private company or a government agency—is the norm rather than the exception, we should question what “safety” actually means.
Federal Surveillance
After 9/11, the USA PATRIOT Act was passed by a terrified Congress and a warmongering administration. It opened the door to unprecedented surveillance that would have made J. Edgar Hoover blush. In the name of combating terrorism, the Federal Government got expansive leeway to surveil US Residents with almost no pretense. Government agencies could tap phone lines across all carriers, delay notification of search warrants until after the search had happened, and get any and all physical documents that anyone has touched.
Though many of the provisions have been struck down in the last 23 years, that kind of mindset doesn’t just disappear. The practices and technological advances made by the Federal Government’s surveillance spree normalized the idea that preventing terrorism—in all its nebulousness—was enough of a reason to strip the US population of any pretense of privacy. George Orwell was only 17 years late.
The so-called War on Terror also let these technologies trickle down into local police departments. In much the same way that surplus military equipment fell into the hands of local PD’s at bargain prices, so did the surveillance technologies. All it takes is a small spike in crime for someone in power to wonder if maybe a few cameras or drones could solve the problem.
Local Surveillance
Local PD’s are on the front lines of surveillance efforts in our communities. They and their supporters frequently push for less privacy in an effort to increase safety. Asking for cameras on buildings, in patrol cars, and at intersections, local law enforcement tends to gravitate toward more recording and more oversight in the name of more safety.
But we should question just how safe this makes us. While there’s long been a market for fake security cameras as a deterrent to crime, aside from intimidation—which targets everyone—more surveillance can’t be said to noticeably lower crime rates. If your window gets broken, the only difference that having video proof makes is how your insurance will react.
When a Hayward pool hall wanted to start selling canned beer, HPD pushed them to install outward-facing cameras that monitor the sidewalk. And you can bet that HPD will be asking for that footage if anything happens even remotely nearby. Nevermind that it’s on the corner of the busiest street in the City and the establishment walls are mostly windows.
And it gets increasingly problematic when you look at what police are spending their own money on. In June of 2023, HPD outlined their military equipment use to City Council. In a 6 months, they had used their 4 drones a total of 70 times—more than 10 times a month. And while their original justification leaned heavily into search and rescue operations, they were mostly used as flying cameras to follow suspects around.
Despite concerns the public raised around too much surveillance, HPD has used money from their 40+ vacant officer positions to buy 8 more drones. Two of them include infrared cameras, lidar, lights, encrypted communication, and a “glass breaking attachment.” This last one is allegedly for “de-escalation”, though I have to question how breaking windows de-escalates anything.
Tech Surveillance
Technology companies have been monitoring people’s online actions for decades, at this point. Free programs, like Facebook, Google, and Instagram, monitor your behavior to sell you to advertisers. From there it’s only been a small leap from tracking your online life to your real life.
Innumerable companies sell online wireless security cameras to the general consumer. From stand-alone cameras to the ever-popular Ring systems, if these cameras are accessible online, you can be certain that the company has access to the feed and may be storing the footage. Amazon-owned Ring was the worst offender, allowing local police departments to purchase access to video feeds from entire neighborhoods. And while that feature has allegedly been cancelled, it’s telling that this was ever a thing in the first place.
On top of that, video cameras have spiked anxiety and fear in residents to seemingly new heights. For anyone who’s active on Nextdoor, you’ve doubtless read borderline racist and anti-homeless screeds from residents who label someone suspicious for wearing a hoodie on a sunny day. And these anxieties can have real-world consequences.
Imagine that a package is stolen from a porch in a single-family home neighborhood. Their Ring device records someone wearing a black hoodie and jeans—but no defining features. Overactive Nextdoor posters say that there’s been someone matching that description in the neighborhood—they’ve always thought the way they shuffle around has been creepy.
Then the police show up to look for a very generic person and find the local unhoused neighbor in similar enough clothes that they assume it’s him. He has a mental breakdown after being held at gunpoint for no reason and the police kill him. Then it turns out he was the wrong person, and the package is never recovered.
This is not a stretch and I have no doubt something similar has happened at least once in our country. And knowing that this kind of surveillance hysteria can put innocent lives at risk makes me feel a lot less safe.
Moving On
Eventually the baby monitor broke—technology these days isn’t meant to last more than a few years. At first it was difficult to let it go: what if something happened and I missed it? I had grown so used to being able to peek in whenever I wanted—it was addicting.
But after a while, I remembered that my parents only had audio monitoring and our house isn’t so big that I can’t hear a preschooler cry out from any room. I stopped wanting to check on her because I trusted her more. On top of that, I was a lot less anxious—the not-knowing was liberating. And over a year later, I don’t miss it.
Maybe it’s time we recognize that being surveilled has been a replacement for the community that our capitalist society has taken from us. Instead of saying Hello to someone walking by, we stare at them through the camera. The camera isn’t going to keep you safe, we keep us safe. The sooner we remember that, the safer we’ll all be.