Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Proper Flock’d: What This Cop Did Raises Major Red Flags…

A Naperville police officer turned a statewide camera grid into a personal tracking app, ran a man’s plate about 150 times, and then retired like the file never existed.

The story serves as yet another example of how the burgeoning mass surveillance grid is being abused on a regular basis.

Patrick Dowhen was not a suspect. He was the ex. After Officer Oscar Maldonado started a relationship with Dowhen’s fiancée, Flock became the shortcut. No warrant. No case number that mattered. Just a badge, a login, and a national lattice of plate readers that can reconstruct where you went, when you went, and how often you go there.

“Anywhere I went in the country, I was being tracked,” Dowhen told ABC7 Chicago’s I-Team. “It was scary, it was really scary.”

Internal records obtained by the I-Team show the pattern started after Maldonado’s relationship with Dowhen’s then-fiancée began. Investigators found evidence he searched Flock for Dowhen’s vehicle approximately 150 times over a three-month stretch last year.

Chicago Tribune reporting, from a separate FOIA haul, put the plate runs between June 18 and Sept. 15, 2025, and said Maldonado tracked plates for non-police reasons hundreds of times.

Dowhen said the surveillance was not abstract. “My ex-fiancée would tell me where I was at, or what I was doing, and he [Maldonado] was feeding her information,” he said. “He’s an officer, feeding a civilian, you know, inside information.” He tore his truck apart looking for a tracker. Then he went to Naperville Police Chief Jason Arres. That complaint opened the internal case last September.

Maldonado’s story to interrogators was protection: the woman, himself, his family. Naperville investigators did not buy it. They wrote that the “evidence contradicts Maldonado’s explanation that he only used Flock for the safety of himself, his family,” and Dowhen’s ex-fiancée.

The report also concluded there was “a preponderance of the evidence that shows Maldonado did commit the crime of Official Misconduct,” adding that he “admitted to using FLOCK for personal reasons.”

Then on May 1, 2026, Maldonado retired. Department spokesman Rick Krakow said the internal case was complete but not closed because discipline had not been imposed. “However, the officer resigned before his disciplinary meeting with the chief, which essentially closed the case.”

No arrest. No plate charges. A referral to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Will County prosecutors would not confirm or deny a criminal review. Dowhen later obtained a stalking no-contact order that noted Maldonado “was tracking my plate since 06/2025.” That order was dropped after both men agreed to a two-year mutual no-contact deal.

“He could very well get a job as a police officer again and have, you know, all these same electronic things available to him at any time and stalk anybody you want,” Dowhen said, “because at this point he has no criminal record.”

ABC7 chief legal analyst Gil Soffer laid out the gap that let a 150-search campaign end in a retirement party. “It’s not enough to say that a police officer violated internal laws, you’d have to show that a police officer knowingly violated a law, a statute, a constitutional provision,” he said.

He added, “An official misconduct statute in Illinois won’t necessarily cover the simple situation where a police officer accesses license plate information for an improper purpose.”

Maldonado’s own lawyer, Jeff Tomczak, made the same point from the other side of the table. “I’m a defense attorney. It should be a crime. It should absolutely be a crime. The legislature should act, create the crime of misuse of Flock. Don’t require the state’s attorneys to be creative.”

A private company sold cities a warrantless movement database. Departments wrote policy memos. The statute book never caught up. When an officer treated the grid like a jealous-ex app, the fallback was an employee manual and a quiet exit.

The I-Team says this is not one suburban rogue. It identified 14 Chicago-area cases of officers accused of misusing Flock, with at least five sent to prosecutors. Berwyn’s mayor, Robert Lovero, issued an executive order this week suspending the city’s cameras.

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HORROR: Pediatric ICU Doctor Who Cared for Critically Ill Children Stabbed to Death in His Bed While His Children Slept — Suspect Was Out on Non-Monetary Bail in Felony Burglary Case

A respected pediatric critical-care doctor who dedicated his career to treating gravely ill children was stabbed to death inside his Pennsylvania home early Thursday morning while his own two children were sleeping nearby.

And the man accused of the horrific attack was reportedly already facing felony burglary charges, and had been released on non-monetary bail.

Dr. Idris V.R. Evans, 46, served as co-medical director of the Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and as an assistant professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, according to his profile on the University of Pittsburgh.

Colleagues described him as a dedicated caregiver whose work focused on the sickest kids, pediatric sepsis, critical care transport, and keeping children alive when they arrived at the hospital in the worst possible shape.

That life ended around 12:30 a.m. Thursday in the family’s Edgewood home on Linden Avenue, KDKA reported.

According to WPXI, citing Allegheny County police and court documents, 32-year-old Elijah Hemingway of Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood entered the home through a window, went to the third-floor bedroom, and attacked Evans and his wife with a kitchen knife while they slept.

Hemingway was wearing only underwear and reportedly talked about “being God” during the assault.

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Russian Plot to Infiltrate Department of War and Secret Service During Biden Administration Busted – US Tech CEO Charged

Federal prosecutors have charged an American tech CEO and a Russian national over a plot to hide their company’s ownership and access federal databases through contracts awarded under Biden. 

Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber, 55, of Boise, Idaho, and Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, 52, of Moscow, Russia, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The two are accused of “concealing from U.S. government agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and that its software was developed in Russia,” the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.

Reiber and Davydov allegedly concealed from federal agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and “conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies” to analyze data from US agencies.

The agencies affected included the Department of War and the Department of Homeland Security, including the “Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.”

According to the DOJ:

Reiber allegedly represented to the government that the company had no foreign ownership or control and that its software was developed in the United States, when in fact five Russian nationals, including Davydov, owned and controlled the company and its software was developed in Russia.

The complaint does not allege that the software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to any customer’s computer systems or data.

In a separate proceeding, a federal magistrate judge in the Central District of California on September 19 issued a warrant authorizing the seizure of corporate bank accounts, approximately 57 domains, and other cyberinfrastructure used in furtherance of the alleged acts. The domains and related infrastructure were seized on September 20.

According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, from March 2022 to the present, Reiber, Davydov, and others conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies through Oxygen Forensics Inc., a digital forensics company based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Digital forensic software is used to recover, preserve, and analyze electronic data from digital devices while keeping the original files unchanged.

The affidavit identifies the affected agencies as the U.S. Department of War and three components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These components include the U.S. Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.

According to the affidavit, Oxygen Forensics held itself out to the U.S. government as being an independent, U.S.-based company. In fact, Davydov and four other Russian nationals owned and controlled the company through a holding company based in Cyprus.

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This Group Made Tech to Protect Users’ Privacy. Trump Labeled Them Terrorists.

When the government puts a target on your back, every corner of online organizing becomes a puzzle. How do you ensure that your emails are private, when Google will hand over the contents of your emails to prosecutors, sometimes without ever notifying you? How do you keep your comrades informed, when maintaining an email list poses a security risk? How do you share information online without compromising the security of your web visitors?

Until September 6, the Autistici/Inventati (A/I) Collective provided privacy-focused digital infrastructure that allowed aligned groups around the world to evade government surveillance. Under siege, groups from Hamas to the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair sought refuge from the prying eyes of three-letter agencies through the use of A/I Collective email addresses, websites, mailing lists, and blogs. The users of A/I Collective technology were no strangers to the United States counterterrorism apparatus, but on August 26, 2026, the Trump administration took the unusual escalatory step of listing the technology provider itself as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist organization.

Legal uncertainty and disruption ensued immediately after the designation. The sanctions framework maps far more cleanly onto groups directly engaged in violence than it does onto a group providing anti-surveillance technology. Under the post-9/11 executive order establishing the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list, fundraising for ISIS or holding joint press conferences with al-Qaeda is verboten. But could posting on blogs hosted by the A/I Collective trigger a $1 million fine and 20 years of imprisonment? Official communications provide little assistance; the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control FAQ unhelpfully states that the exchange of information may be either blocked or exempt.

In a press release, the State Department pointed to the A/I Collective’s vetting of users for “ideological affinity,” folding the targeting of the organization into the enforcement of Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which has initiated a crackdown on the global left. Civil society groups immediately noted the escalation into targeting not only those accused of violence, but their purported backers. “The designation of A/I Collective is significant because Treasury is applying counterterrorism sanctions not only to organizations it alleges engage directly in violence, but also to entities it characterizes as providing enabling infrastructure to designated or terrorist-linked groups…[G]roups and individuals that rely on the A/I Collective’s infrastructure may now need to assess whether continued use creates sanctions exposure,” wrote the Charity & Security Network, a coalition that has helped nonprofits navigate sanctions risk since 2009.

While users of A/I Collective services struggled to interpret the sanctions, the hammer came down immediately on the volunteer collective. Within 48 hours of the designation, the United States-based holder of the autistici.org domain shuttered the website, leaving A/I Collective to flee to an alternate domain. The Italian Banca Etica suspended the bank account the volunteer collective used to collect donations, citing sanctions risk. Backed into a corner, with no way to protect users and collect the donations needed to fund its €13,000 annual budget, the A/I Collective announced the shutdown of all of its services on September 6, 2026. In a statement, the A/I Collective wrote: “The possibility that our work may cause legal and financial consequences to those who are close to us — or even only have something to do with us — leaves us no choice.” On September 20, an estimated 10,000 NoBlogs sites went dark, stranding the radical activists who used the A/I Collective-hosted blogging platform to share everything from zines to direct-action tactical communiques.

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‘MAGA? Nope’: Kitten adoption agency won’t place homeless cats with conservatives

A New York cat adoption agency’s policy not to approve any placements to “MAGA” people who may want to help is so extreme that the traditionally leftist PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is calling the organization out.

Not the Bee reported on a Facebook post by Itty Bitty City Kitties, a nonprofit in Rockaway Beach that specializes in neonatal kittens and feral cat welfare.

Stated the post: “MAGA? Nope. Conservative? Nope. ‘I’m not political’? Nice loophole. Still nope.”

Noted Not the Bee: “Discriminating against people based on who they vote for is actually super illegal. But this is New York, so they can get away with it as long as they’re being hateful against Republicans.”

Another online statement from the adoption group said, “Important Adoption Policy Update: No. F**king. MAGA.”

Yet another post explained the policy further, saying, “If your politics involve racism, bigotry, dehumanizing immigrants, or cheering on cruelty toward vulnerable people, please kindly f**k right off.”

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Democratic megadonor who gave to Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris linked to murky honeypot spy saga

A California family who has injected millions of dollars into Democratic campaigns are facing renewed scrutiny over their connections to people and organizations tied to suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang.

The Yin family, who made a fortune operating McDonald’s franchises in the state, has donated more than $4.4 million to state and federal political causes — including hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats, according to campaign records, CBS News reported.

The family’s political connections have drawn attention following the release of FBI files concerning Fang, also known as Christine Fang, whose relationship with disgraced former California Rep. Eric Swalwell became the subject of a major national-security controversy.

The documents released by the White House in August describe a working relationship between Fang and CC Yin, the 89-year-old patriarch of the Yin family, through the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs (APAPA) organization, which he helped establish.

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Sunny Hostin Lied About Being Holdout Juror Who Kept Cannibal Out of Prison

Sunny Hostin bragged on Tuesday’s episode of The View that she was the lone holdout who kept Daniel Rakowitz, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park, out of prison, but it appears that she lied.

People who sat in that room and the papers that quoted them in 1991 describe an unemployed man who liked the $15 a day and the free meals as the lone holdout in the case.

The Post reports:

But 35 years ago, jurors told The Post, Newsday, the Daily News and the Associated Press that the actual holdout was an unemployed man who wanted to keep the trial going so he could continue getting paid by the court for his civic duty.

A law enforcement source from the time also told The Post this week that the holdout was a man.

“He was unemployed and liked the $15 a day and the three free meals,” juror Valerie Holmes told Newsday in the aftermath of the verdict.

“He liked that we were arguing on and on.”

Holmes reiterated the claim to The Post and The Daily News, describing the holdout as being “very determined” and “manipulative” man determined to get his way.

“From day one, this particular person was determined that the jury was going to find Rakowitz not guilty by reason of mental disease,” jury forewoman Lois Markle told the AP at the time.

Meanwhile, Hostin was quoted as a juror on the case in multiple news clips at the time — but she did not identify herself as the holdout, nor did any of the fellow jurors who talked to the press after the trial.

In a statement to Newsday at the time, under her legal name Asunción Cummings, Hostin also contradicted her current claim.

“We had to compromise. But it is obvious to me he butchered the body and he literally got away with murder. He attempted to commit the perfect crime,” Hostin told the paper.

Hostin claimed she was the holdout during a discussion on The View about the Lindsay Clancy mistrial in Massachusetts, where one juror refused an insanity verdict in the case of the mother who brutally strangled her three children to death.

Hostin said she wanted Clancy to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

“The reason I felt so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don’t know if people remember it, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” Hostin said.

Joy Behar asked, “The guy who ate the victims?”

Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “You got this guy off?!”

“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense. He fed her body parts to the unhoused,” Hostin explained.

“All that being said, it was so clear to me in the jury room. We were sequestered for nine days. One juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me. But, one by one, I picked them off. I said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ We ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible on reason of insanity. He is still in a mental institution being treated. That’s a different type of prison, and he’s being treated because he’s sick.”

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Report: U.S. Voters Turning to Chatbots for Election-Related Information

American voters are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and AI-generated search summaries for election-related information in growing numbers, according to research published in 2026 by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the AI firms Orchestra and Anthropic.

According to a report by The Hill, the trend spans both dedicated chatbots and AI overviews embedded in search engines. U.S. adult chatbot usage rose from about one-third of adults in 2024 to about 50% in 2026, per a study commissioned by Orchestra [1]. About 650,000 chatbot prompts reviewed by the firm related to politics, the study found, with ChatGPT and Google AI tools the most frequently used sources, according to the research [1].

The shift is drawing scrutiny from election officials and researchers because AI systems can generate answers that are incomplete, outdated or inaccurate, the reports stated. The findings arrive as the 2026 midterm elections approach, with state and local offices preparing for voters who may arrive at the polls with information assembled by automated tools [2].

Use of AI for Political Questions Grows

An analysis by the Anthropic Economic Index found that politics ranked No. 66 out of 189 topics, a level the researchers described as “modest, but still meaningful,” according to the report. In states holding May primaries, political conversations on the platform rose about 20%, according to Anthropic’s Andy Hall and UCLA’s Dan Thompson, who authored the analysis.

“If primaries can lift political AI use this much, November’s midterm elections will likely bring the biggest wave of political AI use on record,” Hall and Thompson wrote. The projection suggests that general-election traffic will exceed the primary-season increase, according to the report.

Max Read of the ISD said AI outputs “are going to be playing an increasing role” as a primary information source and in subtler ways, according to The Hill [2]. The Associated Press reported in a May investigation that AI “can not only rapidly produce targeted campaign emails, texts or videos; it also could be used to mislead voters, impersonate candidates and undermine elections on a scale and at a speed not yet seen,” according to the report [2]. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report ranked misinformation and disinformation as the foremost threat to humanity in its 19th edition, ahead of climate change, the report stated.

Accuracy and Completeness Concerns Persist

An ISD report found that 29% of election-related chatbot replies were incomplete, inaccurate or outdated, according to the report. Errors included misidentifying Election Day dates and citing outdated requirements, the report stated. Another 16% of responses answered correctly but omitted useful details such as deadlines or ID requirements, according to the findings.

Accuracy dropped 16 percentage points when prompts were submitted in Spanish, the report stated. The language gap raises questions about whether AI tools serve voters with limited English proficiency as reliably as English-speaking users, according to the researchers.

Ben Worthen of Orchestra said the growth in people turning to these tools for information questions has been “staggering,” and that Google AI overviews now answer much of what users type into Google. Independent researchers have documented similar patterns across other domains, including public health, where chatbots have generated flawed medical advice according to independent research [3]. A study by the Digital Media Research Center found that AI chatbots often fail to debunk conspiracy theories, instead presenting them as plausible alternatives and engaging in “bothsidesing” by offering false narratives alongside facts without clear refutation [3].

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Trump EPA rolls back PFAS protections as 176 million Americans face contaminated tap water

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew Biden-era guidance in August 2026 that had encouraged states to use existing Clean Water Act authority to prevent toxic PFAS chemicals from entering drinking water supplies. The move comes as new EPA data reveals 176 million Americans—4 million more than previously known—drink tap water contaminated by these “forever chemicals.” The rollback affects guidance that directed regulators to require industrial facilities like chemical manufacturers to test wastewater for PFAS and implement cleanup technology. This reversal has alarmed public health advocates, who argue that without federal pressure, many facilities will simply halt voluntary testing and discharge reduction efforts. The guidance withdrawal also removes a critical tool for states trying to curb pollution at its source, before it reaches rivers and reservoirs used for drinking water. Experts warn that this decision effectively shifts the burden of proof and cleanup costs onto local water utilities and taxpayers, rather than the industries that produce and release these persistent toxins.

The scale of contamination

Independent research from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) estimated in 2020 that more than 200 million Americans could have PFAS in their drinking water at concentrations of 1 part per trillion (ppt) or higher—a level that independent scientists and EWG consider the maximum safe threshold. The new EPA data confirms contamination is worsening, with 2,230 locations across 49 states now known to have PFAS contamination. The chemicals have been detected in major metropolitan areas including Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans. Furthermore, a peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters analyzed data from the EPA, U.S. Geological Survey and multiple states, concluding that PFAS are likely detectable in all major U.S. water supplies, especially those using surface water. The study’s lead author emphasized that drinking water remains a significant source of exposure, and that the new findings show PFAS pollution affects even more Americans than previously estimated.

A pattern of regulatory reversal

The August memo represents the third major PFAS rollback under the current administration. In May 2026, the EPA proposed rescinding federal limits for four PFAS chemicals—GenX, PFBS, PFNA and PFHxS—that the Biden administration had set in 2024. The agency also abandoned a risk assessment of PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge used as fertilizer, despite its own 2026 analysis finding that even low levels of PFOA and PFOS in sludge could elevate cancer risk. Critics note a troubling disconnect: While the EPA’s own interim safety levels previously acknowledged that “new science” indicates negative health effects may occur with PFOA or PFOS concentrations “near zero,” the agency’s current regulations propose limits considerably higher than what its own scientists deemed safe. This shift, according to advocacy groups like EWG, reflects undue influence from the chemical industry, which continues to fight stringent regulation of the 12,000 PFAS chemicals in commercial use.

Health costs of inaction

PFAS, used since the 1940s in nonstick cookware, food packaging, firefighting foam and countless industrial applications, never break down in the environment—earning them the name “forever chemicals.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found these chemicals in the blood of virtually every American, including newborns. Peer-reviewed studies link very low doses—even below 1 ppt—to suppressed immune systems, elevated cancer risk, reproductive and developmental harm, and reduced effectiveness of medications in children. A 2018 CDC review challenged the EPA’s earlier safety determinations, finding health threats at levels far below what the agency had considered safe. Despite this growing body of evidence, the EPA has only issued an inadequate lifetime health advisory of 70 ppt for PFOA and PFOS, a level many scientists consider dangerously high. With no national drinking water standard currently enforceable, communities remain exposed to a cocktail of toxic chemicals that accumulate in their bodies over a lifetime.

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