Why Is Austin Trying To Sneak Purchase AI Cameras Without Giving Citizens A Say?
If you live in the City of Austin, today the City Council will be hearing testimony on a sneaky proposal to buy AI-enabled surveillance cameras that they scheduled without giving mere citizens a chance to comment. Louis Rossmann has the details:
“Today, I’m going be making the case for every single one of you who lives in the city of Austin to show up to City Hall September 25th, 10:00AM.”
“In a few videos I’ve done recently, I talked about these AI powered surveillance cameras that are everywhere and why I don’t like them.”
“These AI powered surveillance cameras [have] been going up all over the country. They’ve been used for everything from police officers spying on their exes to people getting pulled over on the side of the highway because the AI powered camera got a seven or a three or seven and a B wrong, and just nonsense like this.”
“And a lot of people signed up for a hearing that was 10:00AM on a Thursday morning.”
“10:00AM on a Thursday morning on a Thursday morning is a really bad time to have a hearing because most people are going to be at work. And many of you were saying, ‘I don’t think they’re going to listen to me anyway.'”
“I did a video, came out and they said, ‘There’s no way in hell these people are actually going to cancel after getting you to take off work at 10:00AM on a Thursday with no notice.’ Unfortunately, that’s what they did. Over 10 years in in lobbying, never seen some shit like this.”
So they bring the item back for September 25th, but do it in a really sneaky way. “I go to check the agenda. I search for LiveView. I notice it’s not in the agenda. However, even though it’s not on the agenda, it shows up in Public Communication General. The only two people that are scheduled to speak are Kevin Rabininoitz and Kohar Ramini…Investment into LiveView Technologies for cameras at Austin Parks. LiveView Technologies Parks and Rec contract for mobile security units. There’s no agenda item.”
“So, I’m not able to sign up to speak, but they are.”
Turns out you have to sign up to speak 21 days before the meeting. The meeting they didn’t announce in advance for the item that’s not listed. “A person who intends to speak during general public communication must register between 9:00AM on the 21st day before the council meeting at which the person intends to speak, and 4:30PM on the 14th day before the council meeting at which the person intends to speak via the online form of the city’s website, by telephone, or in person. And this is a separate form than the form that you use to speak on regular issues.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen on Thursday morning. People who work as the lead salespeople at this company are going to show up and they’re going to speak to the City Council and they’re going to speak to you and they’re going to tell you why it is you’re going to sign a contract for $400,000 to $2 million of AI powered surveillance all over your city and you’re not allowed to say anything back.”
The marketing representative for the company said that they’re not going to use the cameras for facial recognition, but guess what? Their website says “Video analytics is a technology that utilizes artificial intelligence and deep learning algorithms to automatically analyze video content from surveillance cameras, enables functionality such as facial recognition.”
Supposedly the cameras are for crime prevention. Fine. But that makes me wonder why they want to put them in parks rather than, say, crime hot spots like Sixth Street? Because they’re too bulky to locate there?
Though they say customers own all the data, it’s all be fed to LiveView’s own backend servers.
Rossmann is hoping that lots of people show up to express their opposition to the surveillance cameras, and has a page up on when and where to show up today to make your voice heard. (Given that I live outside the boundaries of Austin, I will not be going, though I’d still like to interview Rossmann on a variety of topics one day.)
There’s a case to be made for surveillance cameras in public places in crime hot spots, but not ones using unproven AI technology. And these bulky, solar-powered things aren’t going in crime hot spots, they’re going in public parks. True, there was been a plague of drug-addicted transients living in parks since former mayor Steve Adler invited them into the city, but these expensive, stationary things seem particularly unsuited to combing the parks for illegal campers; you’d be better off hiring more park employees to do that for the same money. Or, better yet, hiring more APD officers, as the city still hasn’t fully recovered from the damage done by the “defund the police” madness.
So there’s a case, but not for these bulky things, at this extravagant price, and not in city parks most days of the year. (I can see a partial exception for things like the gates of big outdoor public concerts, like ACL, or for the entrance to the Zilker trail of lights. Even then, there are better, cheaper alternatives available.) I also see a parallel with gunshot acoustic tracking systems, which were similarly hyped, similarly expensive, and seemed to yield practically no real-world benefits.
Rossmann is right: This thing stinks to high heaven, and it certainly smells like various palms have been greased to get this thing to slide through on the sly. Hopefully there’s enough outcry to put the kibosh on this bad, expensive idea.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2025 at 7:45 AM and is filed under Austin, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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7 Responses to “Why Is Austin Trying To Sneak Purchase AI Cameras Without Giving Citizens A Say?”
I was curious what cameras they were. We put up Flock cameras in our neighborhood, and we love them. I hear people on the internet don’t like them, but the neighbors do, because criminals don’t come into our neighborhood anymore, because police will track them. About a mile down the road, there is a neighborhood with no cameras, and they still get people door checking, porch robbing, and stealing lawn equipment. But you can get in and out of that neighborhood without being picked up by a LPR camera, so it is much harder to track them down.
In a better world, local and regional governments would be required to publicly (like online for the world to see) document each step of the procurement process, including bidding, and it would be a felony to fail to disclose other agreements tantamount to kickbacks or other improper inducements to officials, extended family. This just sounds borderline tyrannical, and smells bad too. Cameras? Why not just hire cops and make them visible in high crime locations??
Not the first (or last) time that unrecognized and marginally-illegal surveillance was used against an unknowing populace. LL at Virtual Mirage (https://www.virtualmirage.org/) recommended the book “Eyes in the Sky”, covering airborne surveillance based on variants of Gorgon Stare. A number of localities contracted for its use without oversight and had their posteriors handed to them for doing so. The ones caught using the systems, that is.
Spooky stuff at a distance. (sorry A. Einstein).
Wandering Neurons
Anybody who favors being watched,even in their own neighborhood,which will turn into surveillance in their own yard,has a rather substantial screw loose.They say the fourth amendment privacy protections don’t apply in public,but that’s only your privacy.Government offices,where the city councilmen and up to federal officials,are public offices,but strangely enough,politicians privacy IS protected.Before you put them up in people’s neighborhoods,put them in politicians offices,so we know who’s buying them off.For that,I can see a proper use for AI powered facial recognition and audio broadcast over public access channels.Anything else is domestic spying.
[…] God Louis Rossmann is paying attention to this stuff. Just like they tried back in September, Austin City Council is trying to sneak AI camera funding into the […]
Have you ever contacted Rossmann to interview or just coffee?
I’ve sent him emails a couple of times, with no reply.
I was curious what cameras they were. We put up Flock cameras in our neighborhood, and we love them. I hear people on the internet don’t like them, but the neighbors do, because criminals don’t come into our neighborhood anymore, because police will track them. About a mile down the road, there is a neighborhood with no cameras, and they still get people door checking, porch robbing, and stealing lawn equipment. But you can get in and out of that neighborhood without being picked up by a LPR camera, so it is much harder to track them down.
In a better world, local and regional governments would be required to publicly (like online for the world to see) document each step of the procurement process, including bidding, and it would be a felony to fail to disclose other agreements tantamount to kickbacks or other improper inducements to officials, extended family. This just sounds borderline tyrannical, and smells bad too. Cameras? Why not just hire cops and make them visible in high crime locations??
Not the first (or last) time that unrecognized and marginally-illegal surveillance was used against an unknowing populace. LL at Virtual Mirage (https://www.virtualmirage.org/) recommended the book “Eyes in the Sky”, covering airborne surveillance based on variants of Gorgon Stare. A number of localities contracted for its use without oversight and had their posteriors handed to them for doing so. The ones caught using the systems, that is.
Spooky stuff at a distance. (sorry A. Einstein).
Wandering Neurons
Anybody who favors being watched,even in their own neighborhood,which will turn into surveillance in their own yard,has a rather substantial screw loose.They say the fourth amendment privacy protections don’t apply in public,but that’s only your privacy.Government offices,where the city councilmen and up to federal officials,are public offices,but strangely enough,politicians privacy IS protected.Before you put them up in people’s neighborhoods,put them in politicians offices,so we know who’s buying them off.For that,I can see a proper use for AI powered facial recognition and audio broadcast over public access channels.Anything else is domestic spying.
[…] God Louis Rossmann is paying attention to this stuff. Just like they tried back in September, Austin City Council is trying to sneak AI camera funding into the […]