The West Virginia Clarity Project

09/28/2026

Jennifer Bias Bryant for the People of House District 32 - Interview
Hey yall, I interviewed Jennifer running in the 32nd District. Check out her interview :)

This video is part of The WV Clarity Project, an independent civic ...

08/28/2026

Flock Research in West Virginia, An Update:

A little over a month ago I announced how I was doing a research article on Flock Safety, and I wanted to give you all a little update and some findings as I know some may be expecting this soon:

Hope you are excited as I am for this to be released, its gonna be a good one.

As I was doing this research and creating the webpage for it, a lot of ideas started flowing on how I can this effective and worth while to put out to the public. I fully intend for this to be fleshed out research that will be updated as I find more, touching on a lot of good points, and including actionable items for anyone to use. So It 100% taking me a while as I want this to be as accurate as possible, and need to make the webpage accessible in plain language, with screen reading for blind people, etc. So here are some ways that made the research just expand and what is taking me so long lol.

1)Tailoring the research to West Virginia to address our lack of laws in regards to ALPR and other AI technologies.

As I was going over every single law enacted in West Virginia, I recognized that none of them are actually protecting our privacy or Fourth Amendment.

5 laws. That is our "framework" for privacy, data collection, and surveillance technologies. None of these laws actually prohibited the use of surveillance technologies, corporate data collection, or even address the loopholes. And even going over bills stalled in committee, I could not find any bills that meaningfully protected.

2)Addressing mass surveillance as a whole, and how Flock is not the end game.

Flock is likely the well-known example of mass surveillance, and they just outright suck as a company. There are documented examples of municipalities across the nation terminating their contracts with Flock or just completely replacing them with Axon. Flock has terrible PR, and In a way I think they are a distraction... Because what does banning one mean, if others are allowed to operate?

Not to mention, mass surveillance has been happening to us for a long time. This is well documented, and very much has the potential to be dangerous if we do not seek to prohibit the usage of data extraction technologies. I shifted the research to really show the scale of this and how the fight is heavy, because it goes way beyond Flock. If anything, Flock is the little guy here and maybe they are taking the beating so other players can slowly move in while we are focused on Flock.

It is 100% worth fighting Flock, but we need to understand that companies like Palantir, Oracle, Motorolla, Axon, AxxonSoft, data brokers are all legally allowed to operate, and consistently violate our privacy. So taking down Flock is like cutting of the head of a Hydra. And breaking this ecosystem will not be a clear cut path that can be simply solved through legislation.

3)Providing meaningful insight on what real privacy would look like, and actionable resources to create this.

First of all, none of these people in our legislation even know what the hell privacy looks like - I just have to take that shot because its absolutely astounding being a tech worker and understanding how the ecosystem works, than seeing how little they care.

Your privacy is violated every single day. By corporations sending data to the manufacturer, data brokers scrubbing information about you online to aggregate into profiles, etc. If I listed everything companies and government do that violate our privacy, I could have a separate research article.

Real privacy would mean you have complete control and autonomy to decide what data of yours is collected, leaves your devices, and under what conditions. This is not the default with the common technology we use. Technology and software can be made private. Corporate software and technology is proprietary and closed source. Meaning there is nothing we will ever be able to enact into law that will force them change their systems. Data extraction is quite literally built into these systems.

Open-Source Software and tools are technology that you can directly see the coding, edit it, and use it yourself. This is a big ecosystem, but not implemented into our tech (because itll never make companies money) but the options are there. We literally have all the answers to create truly private technologies and internet. It just requires us to take down the ecosystem that violates our privacy everyday

08/23/2026

New River Gorge, and the West Virginia State Capitol.

This is the new logo for The West Virginia Clarity Project. A Pixel art photo drawn by Will Polhamus, creator of the project.

08/23/2026

Interviews WV House Of Delegates Candidates - Dave Cantrell (District 3), Cody Cumpston (District 6), Lucia Valentine (District 97)

I have just released 3 new interviews with these candidates on my Youtube and website, where you can find a full transcript and summary if you do not wish to watch their videos. Thank you to all involved here for taking the time to do an interview

Lucia Valentine For WV:
https://youtu.be/_2YpqzoZj6g

Dave Cantrell for Delegate:
https://youtu.be/hMRqySRISTE

Cody4WV2026
https://youtu.be/5QJw_sghtfY

If you wish to watch view the summary instead, please visit the webpage:

https://thewvclarityproject.com/other_interviews.php

08/20/2026

Fed the community in Martinsburg with a free meal today. Veggie and tofu stir fry.

This was awesome, and happy that I got to feed a lot of people a nutritious and tasty meal. Everything was gone by the end of the event.

I will be trying to do more events throughout Martinsburg to get to know the community and provide a good meal to those in need.

07/21/2026

FOIA requests about Flock to 9 WV Sheriff Departments - What is Flock & What is a FOIA request? In depth Research Article Coming Soon

The West Virginia Clarity Project has submitted FOIA requests to 9 Sheriff Department's across WV.

The county's included are:
Wetzel, Ohio, Mercer, Harrison, Brooke, Hampshire, Mineral, Morgan, Marshall

Flock Safety is a private manufacturer and operator of security hardware & software, and the largest surveillance network in the U.S that has over 100,000+ cameras across the nation. Operating in 5000+ police departments, they perform over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the US every month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety

FOIA - Freedom of Information Act.
FOIA allows the public to access records from government bodies, ensuring transparency in government operations. Anyone can request information using FOIA. Please see this guide from Bloodhound Media

https://bloodhound.media/foia-guide/

The West Virginia Clarity Project is doing it's research and our contributions a based in a belief that knowledge should be easily accessible to everyone, especially when there are major concerns about safety, privacy, and whether there is even evidence that proves mass surveillance is effective. Along with these FOIA requests, we will be doing a large, in depth research article about Flock Safety. This will be thorough and include a lot of relevant information that you will need to understand what is happening with Flock Surveillance Network. Please follow and we will be releasing this soon.

In our requests, we asked for public records related to Flock Safety cameras or similar automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance equipment that has been bought, rented, leased, or subscribed to using county funds:

1. The full Flock Safety contract or any contract for similar ALPR surveillance equipment, including its expiration and renewal date.
2. Records indicating whether an elected body voted to approve the contract, or whether an individual official signed without a formal vote.
3. Search audit logs showing how and when the surveillance system has been accessed or queried.
4. Data sharing agreements, settings, or configurations governing how collected data is shared with other agencies, companies, or entities.

07/08/2026

West Virginia needs to focus on a few things make our civic space better:

First of all, thank you to Ashley from WV Utility Impact Project, she has gotten over 11,400 surveys completed and we have a website and report in progress.

1) Holding all of our politicians accountable, no matter the letter besides their name. This means that if we want to do better in our world, we need to remind them who they serve. A politician is vastly different from a public servant. A public servant will speak and advocate constantly for their constituents, not what they think is right.

2) Looking into an officials voting history, and past. Likely if they did something unfavorable within the legislature... itll happen again. This example that Ashley will be sharing is a good one, as politicians from all parties have all taken money from the corporations they say they are against. Remember, they have the ability to turn down donations, but they did not. Being under a specific party does not make you a good public servant.

3) Judge by their actions outside of the legislature. Sure, voting and town halls are mandatory. WV legislature is essentially a part time job. Ask yourself, what services has your official created, provided. How have they engaged within the community (and not just a few grants, are they actively engaged outside of the legislative session?) How do they speak, with conviction and from the heart? Or is it the same practiced lines

4) Ask the deep question of WHY haven't things gotten better. Big examples are the coalfields and many other places in West Virginia with decaying infrastructure and water issues. West Virginia has the money to help our people. The legislature has the abilities to call for special sessions, but guess what? They have not. This goes back to number 3. Do they continually speak about identity politics, or are they actually focused on the issues we face? The difference is astounding when you actually sit back and observe.

We feel so disconnected to our legislators, because we legitimately are disconnected. When you take away the fact that you may agree with them, what do they become to you? An action will always speak louder.

If you're new here, we have 11,400 utility impact surveys to date. We want 15,000 by July 14th to take to the Public Service Commission. And we're looking for 5% of each county's population in the dataset for our final report.

There are several actions pending related to utility infrastructure, rate increase proposals, and the links with utilities to data centers. We will keep you updated as we hear more.

We're fighting back against a proposal that would increase the costs of MonPower and PotomacEdison customers by $500/mo within the next 5 years. We know you can't afford it. Help us build the record that proves it. ⬇️

https://form.jotform.com/260745171610047

06/28/2026

A much needed investment in our civic and community spaces. We deserve better, so I am creating better.

06/24/2026

West Virginia Petition Against Hyperscale AI Data Centers, Including Public Commenting format repost

Sign the petition here - https://c.org/vyhFNdQRYx

Public commenting: (CryptPad does not track users, does not log IP addresses, and cannot access the content of your responses because it is end-to-end encrypted)
https://cryptpad.fr/form/ #/2/form/view/cD9SmnYY50XtWEvcYo91FwenXwEcKejVQoLnDLQJfJU/

We want to properly document public opposition to the AI data centers. The biggest part of this is that we can use the comments, petition and will deliver it to Steve New to use in his cases and battles. This is a long term fight. We need to do all we can on all fronts to fight this.

I am also going to be creating a website for all information in WV in regards to data centers, including information about HB2014, legislators opinions, petitions and efforts across the state, proposed sites and information about projects. Please feel free to send any information you believe is important for us to know.

I have talked with Aubrey Hill and Britta Aguirre- Appalachian ChangeMaker to create legitimate plans on what we can do with these petitions and public commenting.

Our plan of action:

1)Submitting comments and signatures to the PSC during public comment periods

2)Deliver directly to state legislators and county commissioners

3)Provide documentation to attorneys pursuing any legal challenges in relation to data centers

4)Press releases and media campaign to demonstrate the scale of opposition - including national outlets

5)County-specific data packets so individuals can advocate in their own communities

6)Peaceful rallies at the state capital including conferences after during the legislative session

7)Ongoing advocacy regardless of what happens with the petition

This is the few plans we have created as a start. We understand the issues with AI data centers is not short term, and are prepared to fight long-term. It is growing and we will try our best to inform citizens on what they can do to actually stop these from being forced onto our communities.

This is about the hard push for massive AI data-centers being proposed without our say. This is not anti-tech, but rather opposition to the mega data centers that will ruin our land, water, and quality of life

Thank you!