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Big Tech is muscling its way into the most sensitive duties of local government, quietly courting police departments with a buffet of AI surveillance tools that promise speed and convenience — and deliver unchecked power to a handful of private corporations. Public records and reporting show Amazon and its AWS division are actively shepherding a growing roster of vendors that offer drone feeds, gun-detection software, license-plate tracking, and real-time crime-center setups to law enforcement agencies nationwide.
Amazon isn’t just selling its own software — it’s building an ecosystem where third-party companies like Flock Safety, ZeroEyes, Nomad Media, and others run on Amazon’s cloud and get Amazon-made introductions to police buyers. That means Amazon profits whether departments buy its products directly or simply use services hosted on AWS, a business play that concentrates surveillance power in a single corporate spine.
The tactics are as familiar as they are troubling: product demos at county sheriff’s offices, private events, and even offers to help agencies snag grant money to pay for modernization. Local public-safety teams have been shown prototypes — including live weapon-detection tools and centralized surveillance projects like one dubbed “Project Sherlock” — that stitch video, license-plate reads, and massive citizen-data stores into a searchable, always-on apparatus.
We support law enforcement, but this is not a debate about being pro-police or anti-police; it’s about safeguarding liberty and stopping corporate giants from running a surveillance state by other means. Amazon’s past missteps with facial-recognition and Ring partnerships show tech companies do not always get the balance right, and when private interests control the channels of policing, mission creep and bias are inevitable unless constrained by law and local oversight.
Patriots who believe in limited government and strong communities should demand transparency and hard rules: no backdoor access, no mass data hoarding without warrants, mandatory audits, and clear local control over what cameras and feeds can be used for policing. If private malls, shipping firms, and cloud monopolies are handing over streams and license-plate databases to cops, Congress and state legislatures must step in to protect citizens from an amalgam of corporate surveillance and government power that threatens our privacy and freedom.
