‘All we see is dots’: Aerial Objectivity and Mass Surveillance in Baltimore

Abstract

In 2020, the Baltimore Police Department used aerial surveillance camera technology, dubbed the ‘spy plane’, that recorded the movements of nearly every citizen from above. Based on direct observation inside the programme’s operations centre, this article shows how a ‘grainy truth’ aesthetic, created by engineers to combat criticisms of the programme’s invasiveness, also influenced the actual labour of surveillance. An obsession in the public debate and within the operations centre about how the imagery looks, however, overshadowed the most worrisome aspect of the programme: its infrastructure of representation. City officials are now saddled with managing a massive database of citizen location data owned by a private company, prompting difficult questions about the privatisation of policing.