On the other hand, the number of public cameras has exploded in the past decade. Even moderately small towns are likely to have Flock cameras on every major road in and out of town and at major intersections, allowing police to track who is coming and going.

We had a bank robbery here recently and the getaway car was captured on the bank's outside cameras, and using Flock the police quickly localized where the car was to within a few square blocks. They found it within hours and arrested a suspect. In this case it was a good ending, but it's not hard to imagine how this could be misused, or mistakenly put an innocent bystander under suspicion.

Combine this with most private businesses and many homes now having cameras watching activity on or about the property, and I'm not sure most people realize the extent to which they are surveilled in 2024.