A look at the rise of Fusus, controversial police tech that merges public and private cameras with predictive policing, used in 60+ US cities across 12+ states
The spread of Fusus, a police technology platform that merges public and private cameras with predictive policing and other surveillance tools … Mastodon: @thomasapowell@fosstodon.org and @yo_bj@glammr.us Tweets: @aaschapiro , @mguariglia , @anncavoukian , @davidicdoc , @anniejacobsen , @paleofuture , and @aaschapiro Mastodon: ThomasAPowell / @thomasapowell@fosstodon.org : Techmeme posts about a tech platform using #AI that does “predictive policing”!?! What the heck...such a nice euphemism. How about we give that concept a better description like — * Guessing You're Guilty … Becky Yoose / @yo_bj@glammr.us : “Pat Fowler, a member of the city council who voted against adopting Fusus, said she was not convinced that more surveillance would lead to greater public safety. — 'We asked Fusus: exactly what kind of crime are you trying to solve with this? … Tweets: Avi Asher-Schapiro / @aaschapiro : Here's my investigation into Fusus, a police surveillance firm that's quietly expanding into smaller towns & suburbs across the US. Their goal? To give small town cops big-city-style surveillance—including live access to private cameras around town.https://www.context.news/ ... Matthew Guariglia / @mguariglia : Even if cities were to push back against blanket police surveillance, in comes a new company which gives police access to private security cameras on homes and businesses. It's mass surveillance, but on other people's dime! https://twitter.com/... Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D. / @anncavoukian : Once again, they don't get it! It can't be either/or! You must have both: “Privacy or safety? U.S. brings ‘surveillance city to the suburbs’ https://www.context.news/... @davidicdoc : “If you put surveillance tech like this in the hands of police, they will turn it on protests, on political activity,” he said. “That's what history shows us - and that has a tremendous chilling effect on democratic activities.” https://www.context.news/... Annie Jacobsen / @anniejacobsen : Biometric data is the new oil. https://www.context.news/... Matt Novak / @paleofuture : “In Rialto, the police have access to over 150 livestreams across restaurants, gas stations, and private residential developments...” https://twitter.com/... Avi Asher-Schapiro / @aaschapiro : To get a building permit for a commercial property in Rialto, CA you must grant police live-view access to surveillance cameras onsite. This is made possible by Fusus, a police tech firm that's expanding rapidly across the US. Here's my investigation: https://www.context.news/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This profile lands at the end of an arc The Intercept opened in January 2020 with [[a:950007|its look at AI-enabled video networks that let businesses and homes feed police HQs directly]], followed weeks later by VICE's report on Banjo, the Utah-linked platform flagging emergencies from surveillance data. Fusus is the same playbook scaled up — now in 60+ US cities across 12+ states, and by late 2023 running across 2,400 US locations from a single central camera hub.
What makes Fusus distinctive in this corpus is how it locks itself in locally: in Rialto, CA, granting police live-view access to commercial surveillance cameras via the platform is a condition of building permits — turning zoning power into a surveillance acquisition tool. Critics including Matthew Guariglia and Ann Cavoukian frame the result as mass surveillance with chilling effects on protest activity.
First-order effects
- Police departments in the 60+ adopting cities gain real-time fusion of public and private camera feeds plus predictive policing analytics, while residents and protesters in those jurisdictions are subject to monitoring they did not opt into.
- Rialto business owners face a new condition on building permits: live police access to their cameras through Fusus, making surveillance participation a cost of doing construction there.
Second-order effects
- The Rialto permit requirement gives other cash-strapped municipalities a template for acquiring camera access without new budgets — expect copycat conditions tied to licenses and approvals if criticism doesn't stop them.
- New Orleans' secret deployment of 200+ facial recognition street scanners despite a 2022 ordinance (the two-year violation investigation) shows city-level bans can be quietly bypassed, which pressures state regulators and pushes privacy advocates toward litigation rather than ordinance-writing alone.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US urban policing restructures around privately owned sensors fused by third-party platforms — police departments no longer own their surveillance grid, they rent it, and accountability shifts to procurement contracts rather than public debate.
- The gap between local ordinances and actual deployments points toward regulation moving up a level: the more Fusus-style networks cross municipal lines, the likelier oversight becomes a state or federal question instead of a city council vote.
The trend: US policing is shifting from department-owned equipment to rented surveillance infrastructure built on private cameras and AI analysis, with local law consistently trailing deployments.