Turning Scattered Local Resistance into a Coordinated National Movement
A civic engagement platform that scans every city council agenda in America, surfaces surveillance technology decisions, and gives organizers the tools to show up and push back.
1,000+
Government Agendas Monitored
Automated scanning across the country
Free
Released as Open Source
Available to civic orgs nationwide
8 weeks
MVP to Production
Rapid iterative delivery
The Challenge
Across the United States, local governments are quietly approving contracts with Flock AI, a surveillance technology company that deploys license plate readers and integrates with facial recognition systems, building vast databases that track citizens' movements. Opposition to these systems is growing, with privacy advocates, civil liberties groups, and concerned residents pushing back in city council meetings from coast to coast.
These decisions happen in thousands of towns, often buried in lengthy meeting agendas with little public notice. By the time residents learn their city is considering Flock AI, the contract is already signed. Organizers had no way to see the full picture: where the discussions were happening, when votes were scheduled, or how to coordinate a response across jurisdictions.
Our client wanted a platform that could scan every city council agenda in the country, surface the ones discussing surveillance technology, and give organizers the tools to mobilize locally while coordinating nationally, turning scattered local resistance into a coordinated movement.
Our Solution
Murmur is a civic engagement platform that surfaces local government activity and turns it into coordinated action. Here is what we built.
Agenda Intelligence We developed a crawler that continuously scans government websites and public meeting portals, extracting agendas and identifying discussions related to surveillance technology. Moderators also review community-submitted tips, so the platform catches what the crawler misses.
Campaign Coordination When a relevant meeting is identified, organizers can create a campaign around it. The platform includes an integrated calendar and RSVP system, letting supporters signal their intent to attend and helping organizers gauge turnout before the meeting happens.
Passwordless Access To lower the barrier to signing up, we implemented passwordless authentication via magic links. There is no account to create: enter your email, click the link, and you're in.
Location-Aware Alerts A geo-fencing system notifies users when relevant meetings are scheduled in their area, matching events to their stated interests and location so they don't miss a chance to show up.
Platform Infrastructure Under the hood, we built a permission system with configurable roles, a public-facing API for integrations, and admin tooling to manage the platform at scale.
Our Approach
We started with the simplest possible version: a basic system for manually creating and tracking events. This let us validate the core concept quickly and get real feedback from organizers in the field.
From there, we built iteratively. Each sprint added a layer of capability: first the moderation tools, then the crawler, then geo-fencing. What went in next was decided by what organizers actually needed rather than by our assumptions, and regular releases kept them engaged while giving us a continuous read on what was working.
Starting small and scaling up kept us from over-engineering early, and the platform matched real-world workflows from the first release.
Results & Outcomes
Rapid MVP Delivery We delivered a production-ready platform, and a full team began running coordinated civic campaigns on it immediately.
Concept to Working Product Working closely with the founding team, we iterated through problems with data synchronization, notification timing, and user workflows until the product held up in practice.
Open Source Release The software has been released as open source, making it freely available to civic organizations, advocacy groups, and communities nationwide who want to bring transparency to their local government.
Client Testimonial
“Before Murmur, we'd find out about a Flock AI contract after it was signed. Now we know about it before the vote happens, and we can get people in the room. That changes everything.”
Project
Engagement
End-to-end product team, from research through open source release
Technologies
Services
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