Available From UC Press

An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at one of America’s most controversial experiments in police surveillance. 
 
In 2020, the Baltimore Police Department had an aerial surveillance plane that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public view. Spy Plane reveals what happened with this controversial policing experiment. Drawing from incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program for Baltimore detectives, sociologist Benjamin H. Snyder recounts real criminal cases as they were worked by police using this untested tool.
 
Deploying aircraft with powerful cameras built by a small company called Persistent Surveillance Systems, the spy plane program promised to help police “solve otherwise unsolvable crimes” by tracking the whereabouts of suspects in violent crime cases. Created for the battlefields of Iraq, it had never been adapted on so large a scale in a U.S. city. This riveting book gives an unprecedented look inside the shadowy world of for-profit law enforcement technology experiments, explaining why police and community leaders place so much faith in unproven technology to fix the problem of urban violence but continually come up short.

Benjamin H. Snyder is Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College. He is the author of The Disrupted Workplace: Time and the Moral Order of Flexible Capitalism.

“Deeply reported and incredibly entertaining, Benjamin Snyder's in-the-room account offers a touching portrait of Baltimore by way of an ensemble of quirky analysts, concerned community members, and desperate homicide detectives. His clear-eyed book reveals that behind surveillance-tech hype and promise are fallible, conflicted people and also gives nuance to conversations about surveillance and crime.”—Brandon Soderberg, coauthor of I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad

"Spy Plane provides a candid look at policing technology in action. Through his observations of Baltimore's use of an experimental surveillance plane, Snyder deftly shows how communities are excluded by the city agencies that, in theory, represent them. Going beyond AI boomer/doomer hype cycles, Snyder emphasizes that what matters is how people make decisions based on whatever powers they ascribe to a technology, whether or not it works as promised."—Tamara Kneese, author of Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond

"An engaging behind-the-scenes account of a controversial police surveillance experiment. Snyder’s unprecedented access and unique insight reveals the fraught ways surveillance tech shapes local policing."—Sarah Brayne, author of Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing