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Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment
An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most controversial experiments in police surveillance.
In 2020, the Baltimore Police Department had an aerial surveillance plane that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public view. Spy Plane reveals what happened with this controversial policing experiment. Drawing from incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program for Baltimore detectives, sociologist Benjamin H. Snyder recounts real criminal cases as they were worked by police using this untested tool.
Deploying aircraft with powerful cameras built by a small company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, the spy plane program promised to help police “solve otherwise unsolvable crimes” by tracking the whereabouts of suspects in violent crime cases. Created for the battlefields of Iraq, it had never been adapted on so large a scale in a U.S. city. This riveting book gives an unprecedented look inside the shadowy world of for-profit law enforcement technology experiments, explaining why police and community leaders place so much faith in unproven technology to fix the problem of urban violence but continually come up short.
In 2020, the Baltimore Police Department had an aerial surveillance plane that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public view. Spy Plane reveals what happened with this controversial policing experiment. Drawing from incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program for Baltimore detectives, sociologist Benjamin H. Snyder recounts real criminal cases as they were worked by police using this untested tool.
Deploying aircraft with powerful cameras built by a small company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, the spy plane program promised to help police “solve otherwise unsolvable crimes” by tracking the whereabouts of suspects in violent crime cases. Created for the battlefields of Iraq, it had never been adapted on so large a scale in a U.S. city. This riveting book gives an unprecedented look inside the shadowy world of for-profit law enforcement technology experiments, explaining why police and community leaders place so much faith in unproven technology to fix the problem of urban violence but continually come up short.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published October 29, 2024
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October 14, 2025
Really enjoyed this ethnography of a tech company start-up contracted to perform advanced surveillance technologies for the Baltimore Police Department! A series of serendipitous events that coagulate into great research.
I find the focus on experimentation, rather than the "boomer/doomer hype cycle" discourse concerning surveillance technologies a compelling way to empirically ground our understanding and opinions regarding the present effects of surveillance technologies *right now*. While I definitely fall into the more doomer part of the discourse, I do appreciate highlighting the speculative character of tech start-ups and their products because it soothes a lot of the uncertainties regarding the development of technology more broadly. If the technology isn't working as advertised, how exactly does it work? And how do these technologies affect the present lives of the communities it experiments on? This really gives a lot more space to think through the logic of tech companies more broadly and how much of that drive towards speculation shapes much of our grasp on it.
I find the focus on experimentation, rather than the "boomer/doomer hype cycle" discourse concerning surveillance technologies a compelling way to empirically ground our understanding and opinions regarding the present effects of surveillance technologies *right now*. While I definitely fall into the more doomer part of the discourse, I do appreciate highlighting the speculative character of tech start-ups and their products because it soothes a lot of the uncertainties regarding the development of technology more broadly. If the technology isn't working as advertised, how exactly does it work? And how do these technologies affect the present lives of the communities it experiments on? This really gives a lot more space to think through the logic of tech companies more broadly and how much of that drive towards speculation shapes much of our grasp on it.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review