{"id":5234,"date":"2026-04-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=5234"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:27:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T02:27:38","slug":"two-weeks-in-the-life-april-19-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=5234","title":{"rendered":"Two Weeks in the Life: April 19, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello, friends and enemies. Last week, I made my debut appearance at the Elk Grove city council. They were voting to expand the city’s use of Flock<\/a>, a company that operates automated license plate readers. Elk Grove already has a lot of Flock cameras<\/a>, but the city wants to add more, even though Flock has been found to share data with federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security (that is, ICE). In the previous city council meeting, the council was discussing an audit of Flock, but in this meeting, they voted on moving forward with expanding Flock without waiting for the audit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the DeFlock Elk Grove group<\/a> on Instagram and saw that they were calling for people to show up to the meeting and ask that the city council wait to vote on this until after an audit by the California Department of Justice, which is a very reasonable request. Seven people came to speak out against expanding the surveillance system, which is a lot for a weeknight city council meeting! Unfortunately, the city council looked uninterested and like they already had their mind made up on this issue, despite appeals from a variety of angles. After the public comments, the council invited the chief of police (the same man who is currently being sued<\/a> for being inappropriate at work) to make a rebuttal. He said that Elk Grove does not share information with federal agencies, and maybe other cities do but we aren’t them, so our data are safe. This is, at best, an incredibly naive response. I don’t think that the company that built a nationwide surveillance machine really gives a shit about whatever security protocols you think you have. Just say you don’t know how computers work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The city council voted on expanding Flock, which sucks but is unsurprising. I wrote out my comments before the meeting, and I’m publishing them here too. I didn’t share the citations when speaking in the meeting for obvious reasons, but you know your girl always has a citation, and I’ve included them here. I made sure to look them in the eye on that last paragraph. The mayor and city council may be in denial but I refuse to mince words about what these cameras are ultimately being used for. There’s also a video of the meeting online<\/a>. You can see me beginning around the 52 minute mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am against the city expanding the Flock contract and I am asking you to pull this item from Consent and wait to continue it until after the California DOJ has completed an independent audit of the data to verify no federal agency access has occurred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Please suspend the Flock Safety ALPR contact pending that investigation and research alternative ALPR vendors with proven local control and a record of complying with California law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although California Senate Bill 34 prohibits state law enforcement agencies from sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state public agencies or federal entities, and Flock itself claims it does not share data<\/a> with ICE, many California cities have shared information<\/a> with federal agents. Whether or not Elk Grove intends<\/strong> to share data is irrelevant; our data become part of a national database that has proven to be highly insecure. Flock maintains a national lookup tool<\/a> for law enforcement agencies to reference and they typically don’t even need a warrant to search. Additionally, many federal agencies have access to Flock, and there is evidence of ICE and the Secret Service<\/a> accessing the camera network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flock has been used to wrongfully accuse people of theft<\/a>, Flock has left livestreams of its AI-powered cameras exposed to the open internet<\/a>, and other police departments have failed to redact searches when responding to FOIA requests, inadvertently releasing data about surveillance targets. Flock has claimed that case studies show installing Flock cameras decreases crime, but independent analysis found that crime stayed flat or increased<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is reckless to increase surveillance during this era of expanding authoritarianism. Surveillance does not make us safer, although it may provide the illusion of safety. Expanding Flock in our current political climate sends the message that only white people have the right to be in public. Our family, friends, and neighbors are afraid of being disappeared by ICE. There is no reason to invest in a tool that makes it easier for DHS to surveil us. Elk Grove can and should do better.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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Giving the city council hell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The next day I was surprised to learn that the local news covered this story<\/a> (I was also surprised to learn that Elk Grove has a local news outlet). They quoted me in the article’s lede and again in the body of the article. A few friends have told me, in response to all this, that I should run for office. To which I say: no I shouldn’t. People in a political office can’t get on the internet and say whatever they want. I would lose my jester’s privilege!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books and Other Words<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"book<\/a>
Against World Literature<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability<\/a> by Emily Apter made me think and I mean that literally. I saw the title and I guess focused more on the “untranslatability” and less on the “politics of.” I did appreciate this book but it was a somewhat outside of my typical academic milieu, so I was really fighting for my life through some chapters. Apter also assumes readers are familiar with French and German and my three years of college French are not all that firmly fixed in my mind, to say nothing of how little German I know, so that was hard. Although I did note that the author did not <\/em>assume familiarity with Spanish or Arabic, both of which I have and did come up at various points. All that said, this book was interesting, especially in chapters that were a little more in my wheelhouse. I was particularly intrigued by the chapter Kilito’s Injunction: “Thou Shalt Not Translate Me”<\/em>, which refers to a lecture by Abdelfattah Kilito who discusses the strangeness of hearing foreigners speak his mother tongue, Arabic, using phrases like wallahila<\/em>, which do technically refer to god but Arabic learners just pick up as a way to season their speech (consider people online lately saying inshallah<\/a><\/em>). Apter discusses how, despite the “apparent neutrality of translation,” there are always power differentials at play that “complicat[e] the politics of ethical translation and bilingualism.” I took some good bits of information from the book but I, unfortunately, would have a hard time tell you what it’s about on the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, on the internet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n