President Reagan once said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help." He might have chosen: "We need to do something right now." When a crisis occurs, or a high-profile story captures the public's attention, voters demand action. Politicians tend to comply because the reward for acting quickly exceeds the payoff for getting the policy right. Today, we are watching this story repeat itself in the rapidly escalating debate over police surveillance technology.
By the count of one antisurveillance group, roughly 90 communities cut ties with Flock Safety, the nation's largest vendor of license plate readers, last month alone, a fourfold jump from the month before. Citing fears of a "surveillance state," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) ordered the removal of all license plate readers from state highways, and Texas halted state funding for the cameras, putting Republican governors in the same "De-Flock" camp as a number of progressive city councils.
To be clear, hitting the pause button to evaluate a contract with a tech provider might be prudent. But preemptive bans, vows to oppose cameras under any circumstances, and calls to prohibit the use of federal funds to purchase this technology are panic moves that shut the door on careful policymaking before the work has even begun.
Public policy is littered with the wreckage of legislative panic attacks. In 1986, public outcry following the overdose death of college basketball star Len Bias led a bipartisan Congress to rush into law draconian mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the now infamous 100:1 crack-powder sentencing disparity. In 2001, the trauma of 9/11 gave us the Patriot Act, signed into law before most lawmakers even had time to read it. And within months after George Floyd's murder in 2020, at least 20 major cities had cut police budgets by a combined $840 million.
Lawmakers were not wrong to respond to these real problems. The mistake was conflating the reasonable conclusion that "something should be done" with the pernicious demand that "something must be done right now." Crises force lawmakers to make critical policy decisions when they are under the greatest pressure to act and have the least space to think. That's exactly the trap the current surveillance debate has fallen into.
As before, the concerns are valid. New technologies that can deter crime and catch criminals can also create serious risks to privacy and due process. The Patriot Act is a case study of the dangers of unchecked surveillance power. But it also demonstrates the danger of making rash decisions about government authority under conditions of fear and misplaced urgency. The lesson of 2001 should not be to repeat the mistake in reverse, but to deliberate carefully about which uses are legitimate and what safeguards they require.
Even when lawmakers revisit rushed policy decisions, the damage is often already done. Congress waited nearly a quarter century before reducing the crack-powder sentencing disparity; thousands of people had served sentences policymakers later acknowledged made little sense. The retreat from "defund the police" came faster, thankfully. Within a year or two, many cities had restored their budgets as violent crime surged. Governments can reverse course, but they cannot return what was lost in the meantime.
There is one more reason to resist turning today's fears into permanent law. Technology is constantly evolving. These tools will improve in accuracy and capability, and a framework that can evolve alongside them is worth far more than a categorical ban based on today's relatively crude versions.
Law enforcement surveillance poses difficult questions. Good answers won't come out of ideological food fights on social media. They will be found in the unglamorous work of developing reasonable regulations in light of costs and benefits. What legitimate public safety problem does a given technology address? What specific risks does it pose, and to whom? How do those risks compare with the benefits? And what, if any, safeguards can tilt the balance favorably? When politicians trade careful deliberation for instant gratification, they all but guarantee major missteps that will need correction later. In the debate over police surveillance, governing well requires the courage to slow down.
Greg Newburn is director of criminal justice at the Niskanen Center. His work focuses on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of criminal justice systems with the goal of reducing crime and punishment.
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