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A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong? | WIRED

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Surveillance systems, no matter the intention, will always exist to serve power.

Save this story Save this story There’s a well-known story among surveillance studies scholars and students of Black innovation: that of Marie Van Brittan Brown, a Black woman from Jamaica, Queens, New York who is now recognized as having invented the home security system in 1966. Brown worked long hours as a nurse and often came home late at night. Her husband also worked “irregular hours,” and Brown worried about who might knock on her door if she were home alone at night. Similar versions of Brown’s story can be found at the MIT Lemelson Center and all around the internet, including on Wiki

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