I drove 300 miles, then asked police to send me surveillance footage of my car.

Two police officers walked into a doughnut shop. It’s not the opening line of a joke; it’s what I saw as I was working on an early draft of this story in March at the Staunton Dunkin’, about a quarter mile from where my vehicle was captured on a Flock camera in January and February coming back from my trips to Cardinal’s Roanoke office. Their eyes may have strayed to the racks of Boston creme, lemon-filled and coconut-covered doughnuts as they strode to the counter with purpose, but they were here for something else. Surveillance footage. The research for State of Surveillance showed that you can’t drive anywhere without going through a town, city or county that’s using public surveillance of some kind, mostly license plate reading cameras. I wondered how often I might be captured on camera just driving around to meet my reporters. Would the data over time display patterns that would make my behavior predictable to anyone looking at it? So I took a daylong drive across Cardinal Co ... Read full article.