Ed, co-founder of SASSI (Southerners Against Surveillance Systems & Infrastructure), speaks to The Final Straw Radio about the proliferation of surveillance infrastructure in the South (and more broadly in United States). We speak about topics such as the increasing cooperation between the state and corporate surveillance companies, the desire of these companies to extract ever-increasing amounts of data from the public, the way the state uses private databases to sidestep traditional warrant processes, some of the specific technologies that cities in the south have contracts with and their efficacy. We also touch on how folks at SASSI investigate these topics, and what can be done to help with this effort and ways to think about individual and community safety.

• https://www.sassisouth.org/
• https://www.muckrock.com/

Also of interest to listeners may be our prior episode, Pushing Back On Flock Cameras with Kate Bertash, which Ed references during the chat.

The following links provide more information about topics we briefly touch on in the chat.

• https://www.404media.co/were-suing-ice-for-its-2-million-spyware-contract/
• https://www.404media.co/home-depot-and-lowes-share-data-from-hundreds-of-ai-cameras-with-cops/
• https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/ring-cameras-are-about-to-get-increasingly-chummy-with-law-enforcement/
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flocks-gunshot-detection-microphones-will-start-listening-human-voices
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/rise-police-advertiser

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Featured Track:

• Push by Liquid Liquid from Discography (1981-1984)