I didn’t just hear about AI facial recognition on the news — I acted on it.
After a string of auto break-ins in my gated townhouse parking lot, I went door to door talking to my neighbors. We didn’t have a tenants’ association, so I started one. Named myself secretary, since no one else was stepping up, and got to work. Our meetings were by phone, our decisions made by signatures on petitions I carried from door to door.
One of the first things I proposed was installing facial recognition cameras — and even offered in writing that we’d pay for them ourselves, on top of our regular rent. I thought I was being proactive. Protecting my neighbors.
But while I was organizing that petition, more stories hit the news — Black men wrongfully arrested because a machine decided they “looked like” a suspect (ACLU, 2020; Hill, 2020). The technology I was fighting for was the same one breaking lives apart.
Around that same time, I noticed no one had filed to run for the Board of Police Commissioners in my district. That piqued my curiosity. I started looking into the board’s role and found out it’s the one body with civilian oversight of the Detroit Police Department — and therefore oversight of AI surveillance.
What I found next disturbed me. The board was supposed to be a check on police power. Instead, it looked like it was being co-opted — if not outright controlled — by the mayor and city council, pushing through their agenda instead of protecting the public. The same political machinery that was supposed to guard our gates was swinging them wide open.
The Trojan Horse Called “Security”
Under the Trump administration, it didn’t help matters when the U.S. military began courting Silicon Valley executives for direct involvement in defense operations — a path that would later result in the creation of an Army unit commissioning tech leaders into military service, such as Palantir executives, to “drive tech transformation” in national security initiatives (U.S. Army, 2025).
Then there’s Palantir — a company that’s made billions spying on Americans — with founders who don’t even bother hiding their intentions. Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, bragged that his company’s mission is to “disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them” (Wired, 2025).
In Trumpworld, “enemies” doesn’t just mean foreign powers. It means foreign and domestic — and the stress is on domestic. That means you. That means me. That means anyone the powers-that-be decide is inconvenient, dangerous, or simply in the way.
I call it what it is: invasive, immoral, and illegal.
I don’t care what the Patriot Act says. I don’t care that “Sneak and Peek” is still on the books. Spying on your own citizens is wrong, period. Benjamin Franklin said it over 200 years ago: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
And yet here we are — watching the same old trick dressed up in new technology.
I’ve Seen This Movie Before
The tools change, but the spirit behind them doesn’t. I’ve spent fifty years preaching and forty years working in the law, in courts from coast to coast. I’ve seen COINTELPRO, stop-and-frisk, “predictive policing” software — all rolled out in the name of safety, all targeting the same people over and over again (The Guardian, 2024).
Facial recognition fits the same pattern. It might catch some real criminals, but it will also misidentify the innocent, especially if you’re Black or Brown. And once the footage is collected, you don’t control where it goes.
The Ethiopian Bible says, “Be diligent to know the state of your flocks” (Proverbs 27:23). But shepherding means care, not control.
When the Gatekeeper Forgets the Covenant
If we let these tools in, who holds the keys? What happens when police request the footage? What happens when it’s hacked? What happens when a neighbor’s teenage son is pulled out of his car because an algorithm decided he “fit the profile”?
As a patriarch in my family and my community, I’ve always seen my role as keeping the gate. Making sure what comes in is good for the people inside. Saying no when something looks helpful but is actually harmful.
AI surveillance is a Trojan horse. Once it’s inside, you don’t get to decide how it’s used.
What Keeping the Gate Looks Like Now
It’s not enough to be suspicious. We have to act:
- Push for true civilian control over any tech the city uses — the hardware, the software, and the data.
- Practice digital fasting — reclaim our time and our privacy.
- Support open-source tools that serve the people, not corporations or government agencies.
- Organize for legal protections that treat privacy as a right, not a privilege.
We’ve got to be the watchmen Ezekiel describes — the ones who see danger coming and sound the alarm. If we don’t, the blood is on our hands too.
When the Next Generation Asks
One day, a grandchild might ask me, “What did you do when the machines began to watch?”
I want to be able to answer: We stayed awake. We built our own watchtowers. We kept the gates. We refused to trade our freedom for a false sense of safety.
Psalm 68 says, “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered… a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows.” That’s the safety worth fighting for — the safety of justice, dignity, and community covenant.
That’s why I’m running as a write-in candidate for the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners. Not because I wanted another title, but because the gate is under attack, and too many folks in power have stopped guarding it.
Because when the gate falls, we all fall. And I, for one, intend to keep it standing.
Rev. Lucious Conway is a Detroit minister, legal advocate, and community organizer running for the Board of Police Commissioners to protect justice, dignity, and community from invasive surveillance.
- U.S. Army. Army Launches Detachment 201 Executive Innovation Corps to Drive Tech Transformation. June 14, 2025. https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment_201_executive_innovation_corps_to_drive_tech_transformation.
- Brodkin, Jon. Palantir CEO Says His Software Can Be Used to Kill People. Wired. February 13, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-earnings-alex-karp-remarks.
- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Detroit Police Over Wrongful Arrest Caused by Facial Recognition Technology. June 24, 2020. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-files-lawsuit-against-detroit-police-over-wrongful-arrest-caused-facial.
- Hill, Kashmir. Another Arrest, and Jail Time, Due to a Bad Facial Recognition Match. The New York Times. December 29, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recognition-misidentify-jail.html.
- The Guardian. Facial Recognition Wrongly Arrested Six Black People Before First White Victim, Study Finds. May 22, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/22/facial-recognition-wrongful-arrest-race-bias.
