As LED streetlights proliferate, they come with the promise of more efficient smart city service. But they also raise new opportunities for surveillance.

Blinking down at passersby in traffic intersections and lining dark alleys, sleek, energy-efficient LED streetlights have begun to replace old-fashioned, glitchy ones. It’s part of a wave of smart city initiatives sweeping the country: Already, LEDs are strung above parts of places like Baltimore, San Diego, Kansas Cityand Bethlehem. Now, Portland, Maine, is in a race with Schenectady and several other cities to become the first to convert their entire light grid.

But as more communities adopt government-funded, eco-friendly LED lights as an environmental measure, some worry that the eyes on these bulbs may be a bit too literal. As they illuminate the streets, they could be watching—and recording—what happens below with attached cameras, microphones, and other devices.

In 62 BC, Caesar united a political alliance between himself, the statesman Crassus, and the military general Pompey. Together, the three men formed a secret political faction called the Triumvirate that ruled the Roman Republic. The Text Triumvirate is an alliance between the zsh, vim, and tmux. Each of these venerable tools is extremely powerful in its own right; however, together they are an unmatched productivity force that rules all forms of text manipulation. This post aims to provide an overview of how to create a highly functional and easy to configure Text Triumvirate for those new to this tool chain. I try to focus on aspects of how to integrate zsh, vim, and tmux with particular focus on my experiences with two common problems—copy/paste functionality and color aesthetics.