Denver is on a path toward the destruction of individual privacy under the guise of “safety.” Tech companies are seizing on right-wing fear-mongering about immigrants and “crime” to build a surveillance network that touches every part of our lives.
These same tools could be used to deploy militarized ICE on immigrant communities while data centers in our neighborhoods extract, categorize and process it all. The companies that sell “decision support” for war also sell “case management” and tracking to our city. If this still sounds abstract, here’s a story about chickens coming home to roost.
In May, after public backlash, Denver City Council rejected a $666,000 two-year expansion of Denver’s contract with Flock Safety, a $7 billion company that sells license-plate reader cameras that log every car and let police search it later. Johnston’s administration then signed a shorter amendment for about $498,500, just under the $500,000 threshold for Council approval, and later announced a separate five-month “no-cost” bridge that keeps the cameras running through March 31, 2026, again without a Council vote. Nine council members have asked Auditor Timothy O’Brien to review whether this maneuvering violated city contracting rules; he has not yet signed off.
Regardless of what happens with the contract, Flock cameras already operate at about 70 sites across Denver. Johnston would like you to believe this data is tightly controlled and used only for official investigations, but logs analyzed by Colorado Newsline show more than 1,400 immigration-related searches touched Denver’s plate data between June 2024 and April 2025, proof that once a dragnet exists, other agencies will query it. And it’s not just targets of immigration: everyone in the city is subject to unfair searches and privacy violations.
These surveillance systems also require immense computing power, driving a boom in data centers that devour electricity and water. In Elyria-Swansea, CoreSite is building a three-building data-center campus that, once fully built, would consume 60 megawatts and about 805,000 gallons of water a day, roughly a third of the zip code’s daily water use and enough electricity to power 70,000 Colorado homes, more than ten times the number of households in 80216. The last thing our neighborhoods need is another data center, but we will see more of them as Denver and other cities expand automated surveillance tools like Flock.
Mayor Mike Johnston’s office should put the contracts in daylight and add kill-switches. If sharing limits and fines exist, publish the clauses and enforcement triggers. Add public audit logs and funded exit ramps.
If the mayor’s office wants drones, require a public showing with data that shows how information is protected against immigration or other out-of-policy uses. Reverse the burden of proofand then codify it.
Every dollar for bulk tracking is a dollar not spent on ventilation in schools, EMS staffing, frequent transit, and housing stabilization, the things that actually make people safe. Reinvest photo-enforcement windfalls and publish a ledger.
Put the Surveillance Technology Task Force and Council in the room before any extension, pilot, or “no-cost” deal, and heed the Auditor’s findings. Johnston should respect the oversight he created.
Finally, apply the same rules to data centers. No subsidies for high-draw data centers; require a health impact assessment, fenceline air monitoring, water-use transparency, generator runtime caps, noise/light standards, and a community benefits agreement, all published with permits, especially for projects in over-burdened neighborhoods like Elyria-Swansea.
This isn’t anti-technology; it’s pro-democracy. Through its contracts, Denver should define “safety” as affordable homes, healthy food, clean air and water, frequent buses and community health clinics for our most vulnerable neighbors, and write the deals to match. Budgets can move from funding a surveillance dystopia to funding real safety and stability.
Robin Reichhardt is a community organizer who lives in north Denver.
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