The Surveillance Economy, and How Capitalism Can Fix Poverty

The surveillance economy has reached a tipping point. There are now more than 90,000 Flock cameras across the U.S., roughly one in five American households owns a video-enabled doorbell, and the Flock network alone scans more than 20 billion license plates per month. At the same time, 2024–2025 marked the single largest decrease in violent crime and murder in the U.S. since 1937 — violent crime down 9%, property crime down 12.4%, and motor vehicle theft down 23%. Galloway argues that the two trends are connected, and that the real question is not whether surveillance will expand, but what legal guardrails should contain it.

The Safety–Privacy Tradeoff Is Already Being Resolved by Markets

Galloway frames the issue as a Fourth Amendment problem that the Fourth Amendment cannot fully solve. The amendment protects against government surveillance, but it does not constrain private companies or individual citizens. A Ring doorbell owner can voluntarily share footage with law enforcement without the consent of anyone captured on camera, and even when owners decline to share, the data is subject to subpoena. The result is a de facto surveillance infrastructure built by consumer purchases, not government mandate.