Gods Eye Given to Stalkers, Funded by You

Being 34 years old, born in 1992, I was able to grow up without cell phones, still in the era when my father kicked me and my brothers out of the house until dinnertime. The distance we could travel was amplified by our bikes and the hills we could sail away down. Nothing was tracking us, unlike today, where I see children wearing watches and carrying “kid phones" which tell parents exactly where their kiddos are. Now bosses can call you anytime, anywhere after your shift, ‘telling’ you what work to do and how fast to do it – whereas in my early jobs after work my bosses had no way to contact me. Once I was out the door, I was proverbially ‘gone’ as fast as my bike could take me down whichever hills my brothers or friends were on. Personally, I didn't have my first cellphone until I was sixteen. 

Around the year 2015, I recall communicating often with my friends on Facebook Messenger. Around that time, it had a feature which, unless turned off manually, would reveal your location to everyone else on your Facebook friends list who also had Messenger. Eventually, it was that feature which convinced me to delete the app and find new ways to chat with others. 

How strange, though, that as a society in the span of just ten years (from 2005 to 2015) the culture of the United States moved from one of adoring privacy and integrity to a surveillance state. A parent today might have their feelings assuaged by being able to check their phone to see where their child is at any given moment. But unless a chip is physically inserted into a child as if they were a pet, a failed battery or a smartwatch torn off by an attacker would reduce the value, and, if a stalker were much more tech-savvy than the parent, tracking could turn harmful.

Pre 2006, stalking consisted of telephone calls, following people home from work, letters in the mail, and staring through windows. In the 1990s, the National Institute for Justice found that about 8% of American women experienced stalking during their lifetime. In any single year, 1% of American women experienced being stalked, and about 80% of stalking victims were women. These percentages of women who received the type of physical stalking remained rather consistent until around 2006. Cellphones with cameras, instant messaging, emails, and early GPS began to change the way women were stalked, with electronic routes available to stalkers only increasing as the years moved on.

The technology upgraded to smartphones, instant messengers with exact coordinate location-sharing data (like Facebook Messenger), and micro hidden cameras, up to Apple AirTags and their contemporaries. While some phones try to detect if you are being tracked, sometimes you cannot find specific trackers unless you have a specific app for that specific brand. A 2013 survey by Pew Research showed that 30% of all social media users they found had their settings configured (by default or choice) to share their location alongside each post or even tied to a picture. The Congressional Research Service found that between 2016 and 2019, electronic tracking of stalking victims increased by 39%. 

Let’s backtrack just a bit: when you were in high school, if you struck up a conversation with someone and found that they liked the same music as you, or even just “adore going to old record shops,” then you both had something in common. But what if you have a whole lot in common with the other person? It turns out that you both love the same band – you did go to a concert recently. And that they took their nephew to the zoo – just like you!! They also love jogging to church on days that they can’t make it to the gym! I think it is neat and reasonable to enjoy talking to people with whom one shares mutual interests and hobbies. 

The very recent present: A nationwide review conducted by the Institute for Justice noted that as of the 25th of July 2026, at least 28 cases in which police officers “allegedly" utilized Flock Safety Cameras (and other near-peer cameras) to watch, follow, track, and otherwise stalk romantic interests. Almost all of these cases occurred since 2024. A Guardian report and investigation found that at least fifty officers have been accused of using roadside cameras to stalk romantic interests, exes, or even the romantic partners that their romantic interest is interested in or talking to.  

The roadside cameras, like Flock, use A.I. to take hundreds of pictures a minute all throughout a city of not just license plates, but also nicks and bumper stickers to track exactly where each car is going and what the habit of a driver is; it also photographs anyone caught in the picture of the car that is taken. The cameras record what street the girl turns on at what time, what time the car leaves home, and what time they arrive, and even who visits what street at what regular intervals. And if you, a man, are pursuing the interests of a girl who is being stalked by someone with access to the roadside cameras, you are now being stalked too.

Wild. You don't even have to imagine a world now where stalking has gone so far that everyone in a girl’s life is being stalked; that the stalker now has better information with which to isolate the girl from her friends, family, romantic interests, or even attack her. In a single city, Savannah, Georgia, a police audit found 127 “inappropriate” searches by police officers in their city over the last year. That is a single city in the United States and one audit. 

Published in the Library of Congress, Finklea and Hason wrote in Stalking Concerns Raised by Bluetooth Tracking Technologies:

“There is a well-established connection between stalking and domestic violence.”

On the home front here in Omaha, Nebraska, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office operates at least twenty-five such cameras, as per the ‘Atlas of Surveillance.’ 

Legally? What warrants, by what government agency, allow the State government to continually surveil its citizens? And ICE is using the system nationwide too, so the Federal Government is also building and tracking the patterns of every car in every state. 

Man, I’m still stuck on “127 inappropriate searches" by the police in just one U.S. city, and the data that 3 million residents in the U.S. are victims of stalking, and that 80% of them are women. Air tags are truly horrible and atrocious items, but these roadside cameras are on a whole different level. 

Now, the stalking of one girl and all the people in her life- her romantic partners and daily routine is funded by you, the taxpayer. 

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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