Thank 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 budget.
“Remember when we protested AI surveillance being installed in the city? Remember when we went to the mayor’s office? Remember when we had like a hundred people show up and say that they’re against this over and over again and it kept getting pushed off?”
“One of the things that I said that I was afraid of having happen was it just showing up again a few months later. And here it is. If you take a look on Austin City Government’s website, regular meeting of the Austin City Council, February 5th, 2026 agenda. And when you click on it, item number three, authorize a contract for the rental of a mobile security trailer and monitoring services for various Parkland areas for Austin Parks and Recreation with Live View Technologies doing business as LVT for an initial term of three years with an up to one-year extension options in an
amount not to exceed $2 million.”
“One of the things to understand is that Austin as a city does have a budget crisis. They tried to fix that with Prop Q where they were going to increase taxes and it was one of the very few tax increases in the last decade, from what I’ve done research on, that actually failed at the polls and it failed overwhelmingly. Over 66% were just, like, screw this, we don’t want this.”
“So, in the middle of that budget crisis, we are going to be spending hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to have AI surveillance cameras installed in our parks that watch us while we’re taking part in our business. And that’s just something that I find offensive for a number of reasons.”
Plus there are numerous instance of abuse and poor service.
“Let’s go over what some of Live View’s records since the last time we protested this in September of 2025. From the Denver Post, they were taken down due to what state officials deemed poor performance. Live View cameras failed to operate 24/7 as required. Seller said many cameras were down for extended periods, sometimes months, and CDOT could not directly troubleshoot or repair them since they were owned and operated by an outside vendor. She said that created major gaps in coverage when they needed it most.”
“‘Please tell me how Agentic AI is, quote, “recognizing numerous objects, behaviors, and context and will automatically perform a series of actions, audio and visual, to stop would be bad actors,” but is somehow not going to eventually use biometric indicators to identify people.’ Very good question.”
“If you live in Austin and you want this crap the fuck out of your community, what I would suggest you do is you sign up to speak against that agenda item. I’ll leave a link down below now for the regular meeting of the Austin City Council.”
“Speaker registration for February 5th, 2026, Austin City Council will open Monday, February 2nd at 10:00 AM. So, what’s going to happen is you are going to go to this website, February 2nd at 10 AM, and you are going to sign up to speak on this agenda item. The agenda item is going to be item number three.”
“And then you’re going to show up and say you don’t want this in your city. If you’re unable to show up because you can’t show up in person, you can also register to talk remotely.”
“Here’s the thing that I think is really important for all of you to understand. The MMO of all of these companies is to wait a few months until the opposition has gone away, hope that you don’t notice it anymore, and then just kind of sneak the stuff in and get the money. That’s the way this has worked around the country. They get a lot of opposition, they leave for three to six months, and then they rush it through when nobody’s looking.”
And here’s how Rossmann is paying attention: “we’re going to notice it is because we have a system called alpr.watch that is specifically designed to scan every single one of the municipal government websites across the entire United States of America and inform us of when this is happening.” Smart. The right should create a tool to track and alert when municipal governments try to pass social justice initiatives.
“All of these little dots over here are when this has been proposed before.”
“I understand the way these companies work. They hope that the opposition will just go away because most people don’t have the time to show up on a weekday at 9 or 10 AM. Then spend one or two or three hours of their time opposing something because they have to go to school. They have to go to work. They have to deal with their everyday life. But that’s the purpose of this website. We set this up several months ago so that they won’t be able to sneak stuff like this through.”
The question I have is whose palms have been greased to keep getting these things to show up on the agenda. As I noted before, there’s no real use case for spending so much money to put these bulky things in parks, so why do it? Austin’s crime hotspots aren’t in parks, they’re downtown, near public housing, and near homeless shelters and encampments.
And why are so many cities interested in doing it? This seems more like a sneaky bid to roll out nationwide AI surveillance, or a stalking horse for something else.
