Enter the Panopticon with Ian Firstenberg

The government is putting queers on lists and hunting undocumented people at the Home Depot parking lot. Have you ever felt so seen? Sad Francisco Surveillance State Correspondent Ian Firstenberg returns to talk about our current dystopia, but it's not all bad news: people are destroying FLOCK cameras with abandon, protests against data centers are getting bigger, and Garry Tan is freshly single. Ian's recent piece for 48Hills on the death of privacy culture in San Francisco: https://48hills.org/2026/07/what-happened-to-sfs-privacy-culture/ Cydney Hayes for Gazetteer: Why do these Castro gay bars have TSA-style face scanners: https://sf.gazetteer.co/why-do-these-castro-gay-bars-have-tsa-style-face-scanners Matt Wolfinger for Working Mass: The Dungeon Over Lowell: How the Data Center Boom Divided One City's Working People: https://working-mass.com/2026/06/10/the-dungeon-over-lowell-how-the-data-center-boom-has-divided-one-citys-working-people/ ShotSpotter lobbyist's dramatic monologue at an Oakland City Hall hearing (via Jaime Omar Yassin / @hyphy_republic on X): https://x.com/hyphy_republic/status/1846598258308825144 Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner for Wired: "Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities": https://www.wired.com/story/madison-square-garden-celebrity-database-surveillance/ Andy Greenberg and Dhruv Mehrotra for Wired: "A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance": https://www.wired.com/story/sfpd-drone-video-leak-surveillance/ DeFlockSF (IG): https://www.instagram.com/deflocksf/ Have I Been Flocked?: https://haveibeenflocked.com/ Ian's last episode: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/home-sweet-state-158916825 Episode with StopAI: https://www.patreon.com/sadfrancisco/posts/end-agi-before-127632638/ Support the show and get merch on Patreon: https://patreon.com/sadfrancisco