Defending American Liberty: The Surveillance Architecture Coming For All Of Us

At the May Liberty in Action meeting we laid out a clear and sobering picture: a coordinated architecture of control is being built around us one piece at a time and it is already reaching rural Texas. What is sold to the public as “safety,” “protecting the kids,” or “modern convenience” is in reality a growing system of digital IDs, biometric tracking, movement surveillance, programmable money, and warrantless spying.

Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle, said it plainly: citizens will be on their “best behavior” because everything is being recorded and reported. That future is not science fiction. It is being constructed right now, and we as liberty minded conservatives must recognize it, reject it, and fight it at the local level before it becomes permanent.

A recent example of this attack on personal privacy passed in Utah. The claim is always “protect the kids.” But the real result is mandatory government ID for more and more of the internet, attacks on VPNs, and the normalization of digital ID.

Utah’s SB 73 holds websites liable if Utah users access adult content via a VPN or proxy that masks location. It prohibits sites from sharing instructions on bypassing age checks with privacy tools and effectively treats any Utah VPN connection as physically in-state for government verification. The model is now spreading to social media, apps, and broader internet content in multiple states. Porn sites are already forcing users to upload driver’s licenses or passports through third-party verification companies, and some have simply blocked access from entire states rather than comply.

As conservatives, we are obviously and strongly opposed to children accessing inappropriate or explicit materials. That is not in dispute. We also hold that protecting our kids is the job of parents and not the federal or state government, not Big Tech, and not some faceless third-party verification company.

This is a classic Trojan horse. What begins as forced ID checks for adult content will not stop there. Once the infrastructure and databases are built, it becomes very easy to expand the requirement to anything deemed “controversial” such as political speech, alternative viewpoints, or topics the government or tech companies decide are harmful and then eventually to anything the government simply doesn’t like. “Protecting children” is the pretext to normalize mandatory age verification and destroy online anonymity for all Americans. We should defend parental authority and privacy instead of handing control to government and tech companies. A federal lawsuit has paused enforcement for now, but the precedent threatens liberty nationwide. We can be assured that this will be considered model legislation for other states.

Government ID is now being pushed for things as basic as phone service, while biometric facial recognition is being rolled out for air travel.

An FCC proposal currently in the works would require every voice provider whether cell carriers, landline companies, or VoIP services to collect full government-issued ID before activating service. That means your name, physical street address, driver’s license or passport number, and even an alternate phone number must be verified and stored in a centralized database before you can make or receive a single call.

The stated goal is to cut down on fraud and robocalls, but this heavy-handed approach won’t actually solve the problem. The overwhelming majority of robocalls and scam calls originate from offshore call centers in places like India, using spoofed numbers and foreign VoIP systems that operate completely outside U.S. jurisdiction. Criminals already use stolen or fake identities and will simply continue to do so. All this rule does is burden law-abiding Americans with more government paperwork while creating yet another massive government-linked database of our personal information that can be searched, shared, or accessed by other agencies at any time.

At the same time, the TSA is rapidly expanding its “Touchless ID” biometric program. Facial recognition is replacing or supplementing physical ID checks at 65 or more major airports in 2026. While showing a driver’s license or passport to board a plane has long been standard, this is something far more invasive: your face itself becomes your government ID. It is scanned in real time, matched against federal databases, and permanently logged every time you fly. You can still opt out for now, but the clear direction is to make facial recognition the default method of identification and tracking.

Phone service and air travel are not luxuries or government privileges in 2026. Reliable phone service is essential for calling the vet when livestock are sick, coordinating with family during emergencies, ordering parts for farm equipment, or staying in touch with distant loved ones. Air travel is often necessary for family events or business. When the government conditions these everyday necessities on handing over ID and submitting to routine biometric facial scanning and database matching, the administrative state is inserting itself into ordinary American life in ways our predecessors would have found alarming and unacceptable.

This is dangerous mission creep. It builds ever-larger centralized databases of our personal information and normalizes the idea that you must enroll in a government biometric identity system just to communicate or travel. Once your face is permanently linked to your movements in a national database for flying, expanding the same requirement to other forms of transportation, public events, or even everyday activities becomes far easier.

We must oppose this expansion of the surveillance state. The proper role of government is to protect our rights and not to turn basic freedoms like communication and travel into opportunities for biometric tracking and control.

Senator Hawley’s GUARD Act (Guidelines for User Age-verification and Responsible Dialogue Act) may sound reasonable on the surface: protect kids from harmful content. Instead it pushes mandatory, AI-powered age verification for artificial intelligence chatbots and companion systems, with language that opens the door to broader online platforms.

The bill requires platforms to verify users’ age and identity before allowing access. It explicitly rejects simple self-attestation or “I’m over 18” checkboxes. Instead, it demands real-world identifiers: government-issued ID, financial records, or other “commercially reasonable” methods that reliably tie your real identity to your account. Providers must create user accounts for every person and periodically re-verify them. For “AI companions” such as chatbots designed for emotional, interpersonal, or therapeutic-style interaction the bill goes further and bans anyone under 18 entirely, with new criminal penalties for companies that allow minors access to systems that can produce sexual content.

This creates massive new databases that link your real-world identity to your online speech and activity, including the deeply personal conversations people have with AI systems. Combined with the state-level age verification laws we just discussed and the TSA’s expanding facial recognition program, this normalizes the dangerous idea that you must prove who you are to the government or its corporate partners just to participate in modern digital life.

Government and Big Tech gain unprecedented visibility into private communications and associations. Every AI interaction, every question, every sensitive topic you explore becomes permanently tied to your government-verified identity. This is another Trojan horse for control. Digital ID is the key that unlocks the entire surveillance architecture.

As liberty minded conservatives, we must reject it outright. Creating nationwide systems that force every American to upload government ID or submit to identity-linked checks doesn’t strengthen families, it weakens them by handing control over identity and access to the state and its corporate allies.

Once these databases and verification systems are built, expanding the requirement to other “controversial” content, political speech, or anything the government or tech companies decide is harmful becomes far too easy. We cannot allow this architecture of control to take root. Liberty minded conservatives must draw a firm line here.

These are textbook Trojan horses. “Gun safety” and “public safety” are the excuses used to justify government-mandated surveillance on personal property and the mass tracking of law-abiding citizens.

In New York’s 2026 budget, every 3D printer sold or used in the state must now include built-in surveillance software that scans designs and blocks firearm-related prints. It is now a crime to sell, distribute, or possess certain digital design files without a government license. This puts government monitoring directly inside tools you own in your own home or workshop and criminalizes digital speech.

We are already seeing the real-world consequences. In March 2026, two brothers in Staten Island, New York, Brandon and Justin Nudelman, were convicted of running an illegal ghost-gun factory that used 3D printers to manufacture untraceable firearms. They now face sentencing that could send them to prison for years simply for printing and distributing parts the government decided were unacceptable. Other recent cases across the country show law-abiding citizens and hobbyists being arrested and jailed for nothing more than possessing or sharing digital files or printing firearm-related components. What starts as a “reasonable” restriction on one type of design quickly turns into criminal penalties for anyone who dares to manufacture something the government doesn’t like.

Flock Safety automated license plate readers create 24/7 records of vehicle movements across entire counties. Originally sold as simple public-safety tools to help recover stolen cars and solve hit-and-runs, these cameras have quietly evolved into something far more invasive. They now include AI-powered updates that allow them to record and analyze conversations, the so-called “Distress Detection” and “Raven” features that listen for screams, fights, crashes, and other “human distress” sounds. Once installed, these systems log every vehicle that drives past: where you went, when you went there, and how often. Documented abuses are already piling up. The Institute for Justice has identified multiple cases nationwide of police officers using Flock data to stalk romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers. In Milwaukee, an officer allegedly used the network to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner nearly 180 times over two months. In Louisville, another officer was charged with multiple felonies after tracking an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times. Data from these cameras has also been shared with federal agencies without a warrant and local departments’ knowledge or approval.

Right here in Kerrville and Kerr County, these systems are already in active use. The Kerrville Police Department has been operating automated license plate readers since 2021, and at least three Flock-style cameras are now installed at key intersections: TX-173 and Loop 534, SH-16 and TX-27, and SH-16 south of IH-10. Yet the community was never given meaningful notice or a public hearing about who has access to this data, how long it is stored, or how it might be shared. Our own Commissioners Court approved additional Flock-style technology in December 2025 and again in March 2026. It was quietly slipped into routine business as a sole-source contract under a federal Stonegarden grant and presented simply as a “renewal.” There was no meaningful public discussion about placing a system on our roads that tracks every vehicle, and is now gaining the ability to listen to conversations in real time. We bear the local costs of the national surveillance state while these capabilities quietly expand.

The NHTSA is pushing a mandate that would require all new vehicles to have “impaired driving prevention technology”. This is effectively a kill switch that can remotely disable your vehicle. This requirement was quietly tucked into Section 24220 of the 2021 Biden Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and is now moving forward through federal rulemaking. The technology is designed to monitor the driver through breath sensors, blood-alcohol detection, cameras, or other means and then actively prevent the car from starting or even shut it down while it is already on the road if the system decides the driver is impaired.

Once that remote-disable capability is built into every new vehicle, it gives both government agencies and manufacturers the power to turn off your car with the push of a button. In practice, it will often not even be a person making the decision; it will be a computer algorithm acting as judge, jury, and executioner. That algorithm will be subject to faulty software, glitches, false positives, and hacking. One software bug, one sensor malfunction, or one successful cyber attack could leave you stranded on a remote road with no way to restart your own vehicle.

This is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Founders wrote the Fourth Amendment to protect the right of the people to be secure in their “persons, houses, papers, and effects” against unreasonable searches and seizures. A government-mandated backdoor that allows remote control or disablement of your privately owned vehicle is exactly the kind of unreasonable government intrusion the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.

At the same time, the EPA’s recent nationwide E15 ethanol waiver makes the problem even worse. E15 fuel – gasoline with 15% ethanol – is now approved for widespread use, but it is well-known to damage engines built before 2001. The higher ethanol content degrades rubber seals, gaskets, fuel lines, and plastic components that older vehicles were never designed to handle. For millions of pre-2001 trucks and cars still on the road, this means accelerated wear, leaks, and eventual engine failure.

Rural families and ranchers who rely on older, reliable trucks and work vehicles now face a brutal, no-win choice: hunt for increasingly expensive and hard-to-find ethanol-free gas (which is becoming rarer at the pump), or scrap their current vehicle and buy a new one that comes with the government-mandated kill switch built in. Many of these older trucks are not luxuries, they are essential tools for hauling feed, checking livestock, getting to remote job sites, or simply getting around. Replacing them with a new, compliant vehicle often means tens of thousands of dollars that working families and seniors on fixed incomes simply don’t have.

Within Texas Republican circles there has been notable pushback. The Texas Republican Party and conservative activists have publicly criticized Senator Ted Cruz for what they see as insufficient action to repeal or block this federal mandate, urging stronger leadership to protect property rights and Texas independence from Washington overreach.

Our own Terri Hall has been on the front lines of this fight for years. As a leading voice for property rights and limited government, she has traveled to Washington, D.C., lobbied members of Congress, briefed Texas lawmakers, and worked tirelessly to expose the kill switch mandate and rally opposition against it. Her relentless work has helped keep this issue in the spotlight and has mobilized conservatives across the state to demand real action.

This is not safety policy. It is forced obsolescence and direct control over personal transportation. Your car or truck is an extension of your freedom: the freedom to work, to worship, to care for family, to respond to emergencies, and to maintain independence without asking permission from the government. When the state builds a backdoor into the vehicle you own, it turns private property into something the government (or a glitchy algorithm) can disable at will.

As liberty minded conservatives, we defend the right to own and use our property without government backdoors. We reject the idea that bureaucrats in Washington get to decide when and where you are allowed to drive. This combination of policies is designed to push Americans out of affordable, independent transportation and into newer, surveilled, and controllable vehicles.

This threat is not abstract. It is coming straight to our doorstep. In many cases literally.

Data centers and the massive infrastructure needed to power them are reaching our own backyard right now. These facilities devour enormous amounts of electricity, straining the ERCOT grid and driving up utility bills for the rest of us while the data centers themselves often receive priority service and special incentives. Evaporative cooling alone can consume millions of gallons of water per day, competing directly with homes, farms, and draining the aquifer.

These facilities run 24/7 with massive industrial fans and backup generators, flooding rural nights with constant noise, blinding security lighting, and low-frequency subsonic/infrasound vibrations that you feel more than you hear. Families living near similar operations in Central Texas, such as those around Granbury in Hood County, have described a living nightmare: chronic sleep disruption, headaches, nausea, anxiety, vertigo, and a constant feeling of pressure in the body that never goes away. Some residents say it feels like “living in hell.”

These projects also require sprawling new high-voltage transmission lines and massive Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS). Much of that infrastructure is being forced onto private land through eminent domain, taking or threatening ranches and family properties to benefit corporate data centers. In 2023, Governor Abbott signed HB5, handing these companies massive tax abatements: 100% during construction and 50% for the next ten years while local taxpayers are left footing the bill for the roads, power upgrades, and water infrastructure they demand. Many of the promised jobs end up going to H1B visa holders instead of local workers.

Here is the part that ties everything together: these data centers will house the very servers that process and store the data for digital IDs, biometric databases, age verification systems, and government surveillance programs. We are being asked to accept higher bills, constant noise, serious health impacts, and the loss of private land so that the physical backbone of the national surveillance state can be built in our own counties.

Other rural Texas counties are already fighting back. Just this week, on May 12, 2026, Hill County commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a one-year moratorium on new data center construction in unincorporated areas which is the first such county-level pause in Texas. They acted after hours of public testimony about the same concerns we face here: water scarcity, power strain, noise pollution, and threats to quality of life. Hill County’s stand shows that rural communities do not have to roll over and accept this.

Closer to hom we still have time to lead. This is crony capitalism at its worst: Big Tech and data center operators get the tax breaks and the grid priority while local families, ranchers, and taxpayers carry the real costs. As liberty minded conservatives, we believe in protecting property rights, local control, and the right of communities to decide what happens in their own backyard and not surrendering those things to benefit large corporations and the expansion of the surveillance state.

President Trump has already taken decisive action by signing an executive order in January 2025 that bans federal agencies from promoting or developing a Central Bank Digital Currency. That was an important first step, but an executive order can be reversed by the next president. We must lock that ban into permanent legislation with a statutory prohibition that no future administration can undo. Anything less leaves the door wide open for the surveillance state to return.

A CBDC would let the government create programmable money which allows deciding not just whether you can spend it, but where, when, and on what you’re allowed to spend it. Every transaction would be tracked in real time. Accounts could be frozen, limited, or even given expiration dates with the click of a button or by alghorithm. Financial privacy is the foundation of all other privacy. If the government can see and control every dollar you spend, they control everything about you, your speech, your associations, your ability to resist.

Does anyone remember what happened to the Canadian truckers during the Freedom Convoy? The government froze their bank accounts without due process or charges simply for protesting mandates. That is exactly what a CBDC makes possible on a national scale.

This is not theoretical. China is already using its digital yuan as a tool of social control, punishing citizens for “wrongthink” by restricting what they can buy and where they can go.

None of this would be possible without the Federal Reserve itself. The Fed is an unconstitutional agency that was never authorized by the Constitution. The Founders deliberately left central banking out of our founding document because they understood the dangers of concentrated monetary power. What we got instead was a private banking cartel granted the power to create money out of thin air, manipulate interest rates, and enable endless government spending through inflation. The Fed is not just unconstitutional, it is evil in its effects. It has repeatedly engineered boom-and-bust cycles that wipe out the savings of working families while enriching those closest to the money printer. It has fueled the explosion of federal debt and turned inflation into a hidden tax that quietly steals from every paycheck and every retirement account. Now, with CBDC, the Fed and its allies want the ultimate weapon: total visibility and total control over every dollar in the American economy.

As liberty minded conservatives, we understand that sound money and financial privacy are not optional. They are essential to a free people. We must demand a permanent statutory ban on CBDC in this country and recognize that the Federal Reserve itself is incompatible with a constitutional republic. The power to create and control money should never be centralized in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and bankers. We must reject programmable government money and reclaim the monetary freedom the Founders intended for us.

FISA 702 is sold to the public as a vital tool against foreign terrorists and spies. On paper, it allows the government to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States. In practice, it has become a massive backdoor for warrantless spying on Americans.

Here’s how it works: the government can vacuum up emails, texts, phone calls, and internet traffic involving foreign targets. Since so much modern communication crosses borders, Americans’ private conversations are routinely swept up in the process. Once collected, the FBI and other agencies can search through that database using the names, email addresses, or phone numbers of U.S. citizens, all without ever obtaining a warrant or showing probable cause.

The FBI’s own Inspector General has repeatedly documented millions of these improper “backdoor” searches. Targets have included members of Congress, journalists, political figures, protesters, and even 19,000 donors to a single congressional campaign. These pattern shows these were not one-off mistakes: they were widespread, repeated violations that the FISA Court itself has described as “persistent and widespread.”

This did not happen in a vacuum. Much of the legal and cultural groundwork for this kind of warrantless domestic surveillance was laid by the Patriot Act, passed in the panic after 9/11. What was sold to the American people as a temporary emergency measure has become a permanent fixture of the surveillance state. The “temporary” powers were renewed again and again, each time with more mission creep and fewer real safeguards.

As reauthorization fights continue in 2026, we are once again hearing the same tired arguments: “Just a few tweaks and it will be fine.” Liberty minded conservatives know better. We do not need minor reforms to a system that allows the government to rifle through Americans’ private communications without a warrant. We need real, meaningful reform. Specifically, we need a requirement that the government obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching the data of any U.S. person.

This is not a fringe issue. This is fundamental to the Fourth Amendment and the Bill of Rights. The Founders understood that government power must be limited, and that the right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures is essential to liberty. FISA 702, as currently written and used, along with the surveillance powers expanded by the Patriot Act, violates that principle in the most direct way possible.

We cannot keep pretending this is only about foreign threats when the evidence clearly shows it has become a tool for domestic surveillance. If we allow this to continue without real reform, we are surrendering one of the most important protections in our Constitution. Real reform means warrants for U.S. persons’ data. Anything less is surrender to the surveillance state.

These issues are not partisan. They are foundational to a free society.

As liberty minded conservatives, we defend four bedrock principles above all else: the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, individual rights, parental authority, and property rights. The surveillance state now being built threatens every single one of them.

It threatens the Constitution by turning the Fourth Amendment into a dead letter. When government can track your movements with Flock cameras, scan your face at airports, monitor your communications through FISA 702, and remotely disable your vehicle, the right to be secure in your “persons, houses, papers, and effects” becomes meaningless.

It threatens individual rights by destroying the privacy and anonymity that have always been essential to free speech, free association, and the right to be left alone. Once your real identity is permanently linked to your online activity, your financial transactions, your travel, and your everyday movements, true liberty evaporates.

It threatens parental authority by inserting the state, and its corporate partners, between parents and their children. Age verification laws, digital ID mandates, and AI-powered content controls take the sacred responsibility of raising and protecting our kids out of the hands of mothers and fathers and place it in the hands of bureaucrats and algorithms.

It threatens property rights by turning the things we own, our phones, our cars, our tools, our land, into devices that the government can monitor, restrict, or disable at will. Eminent domain for data center power lines, kill switches in vehicles, and surveillance software baked into 3D printers are all attacks on the fundamental right to own and control what is yours.

Here is the most dangerous truth: once the cameras are up, the databases are built, the kill switches are installed, and the money becomes programmable, these tools will not disappear when the other party takes power. They will be used by whoever holds power next whether Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive. That is why we must oppose this entire architecture on principle, not on politics.

We are not here because we want bigger government or more regulation. We are here because we see the steady, relentless expansion of government and corporate control over our lives, and we know it must be stopped. The surveillance state is incompatible with the America our forefathers secured and with the Texas we are trying to preserve for our children and grandchildren.

That is why liberty minded conservatives must draw a firm line and say, with one voice: Not here. Not now. Not ever.

We are not powerless. The surveillance state is being built one local contract, one state law, and one federal mandate at a time. It can be stopped the same way: by informed, determined citizens acting in their own communities.

Start right here at home. Demand full transparency from your county commissioners on every deal involving Flock cameras, data centers, transmission lines, battery storage systems, or federal grants. No secret deals with NDAs. Show up to Commissioners Court and city council meetings. Speak out during public comment. Share real stories of health impacts from noise and subsonic vibrations, property rights violations through eminent domain, and privacy risks from surveillance technology. Build a broad coalition of landowners, ranchers, families, small business owners, and patriots who refuse to let their communities become data centers for the surveillance state.

Contact your state representatives and senators in Austin. Urge them to support county-level moratoriums on new data centers and the infrastructure that powers them. Demand strong local control over zoning, water use, and eminent domain. Push them to repeal tax abatements like HB5 that subsidize Big Tech at the expense of rural taxpayers and to block any further expansion of digital ID mandates or age-verification schemes.

Protect your own privacy and property today. Use VPNs and open-source tools. Resist digital ID and biometric enrollment wherever possible. Document and report any health effects from noise or subsonic issues near proposed industrial sites.

We can also take practical steps to reduce our dependence on Big Tech by using local AI models. Run open-source AI and productivity tools on your own hardware or small community servers. This way we take power away from the big entities feeding the surveillance grid while still increasing our own productivity and self-reliance.

Most importantly, vote like your liberty depends on it, because it does. Support candidates at every level who will defend rural Texas land, water, peace, and privacy against Big Tech and Big Government overreach. Elect commissioners, legislators, and officials who understand that property rights, parental authority, and the Constitution are not negotiable.

We’ve covered a lot in this article, but every issue touches the same core principles: the Constitution, individual liberty, parental authority, and property rights. If we hold the line on those principles, we can push back against the entire architecture of control.

If you missed the meeting or want to review the material, download the full slide deck.

Liberty in Action meets regularly in Kerr County to defend property rights, parental authority, and constitutional liberty at the local level. Join us. Stay informed. Speak up.

The fight starts at home.