Tag: police state

Was It a Coincidental Traffic Stop or AI-Powered Surveillance?

Seth Ferranti was driving his Ford pickup on a southeastern Nebraska stretch of the interstate in November 2024 when law enforcement pulled him over, claiming that he had wobbled onto the hard shoulder.

As the Seward County sheriff’s deputies questioned Ferranti, a filmmaker who had spent 21 years in prison for distributing LSD, they allegedly smelled cannabis. Declaring this probable cause for a search, they searched the vehicle and discovered more than 400 pounds of marijuana.

But were those the actual reasons for the stop and search? When Ferranti went on trial, his attorneys presented a license plate reader report produced by the security communications company Motorola Solutions. It revealed Ferranti had been consistently monitored prior to his arrest, including by the local sheriff on the day he was apprehended. (Neither the sheriff’s office nor Motorola responded to Reason‘s requests for comment.)

Ferranti’s legal team argued that it was unconstitutional to surveil somebody based on his previous crimes. The argument did not carry the day: Last month their client was sentenced to up to two and a half years for possession of cannabis with intent to distribute. But the case still raises substantial moral and constitutional questions about both the scale of these public-private surveillance partnerships and the ways they’re being used.

Ferranti had long been a celebrity in the drug-reform world, going back to that LSD arrest in the early ’90s. After that first bust, he jumped bail, went on the lam, landed on the U.S. Marshals’ 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list, and even staged his own drowning to evade the authorities. After he started serving his sentence in 1993, he became a prolific prison journalist, writing the “I’m Busted” column for Vice. The New Jersey native always insisted that his crimes were nonviolent and that the drugs he sold, LSD and cannabis, had medicinal or therapeutic benefits.

After Ferranti came out of prison, his 2017 documentary White Boy—the true story of a teenage FBI informant who became a major cocaine trafficker—was a success on Netflix. He produced a number of further films, including 2023’s Secret History of the LSD Trade. And apparently, the government kept watching him.

It’s been watching a lot of people—and Motorola isn’t the only company helping it. Flock Safety was founded in 2017, and within five years it had tens of thousands of cameras operational. As the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has warned, Flock’s AI-assisted automated license plate recognition (ALPR) system has been undergoing an “insidious expansion” beyond its supposed purposes of identifying vehicles of interest, such as stolen cars and hit-and-run suspects. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has used it to locate illegal migrants, and law enforcement in Texas used it to investigate a self-administered abortion, foreshadowing its potential use as a predictive policing tool for all Americans. Lee Schmidt, a veteran in Virginia, recently learned that the system logged him more than 500 times in four months. 

“I don’t know whether law enforcement officers are using [ALPRs] to do predictive policing,” says Joshua Windham of the Institute of Justice, a public interest law firm that is campaigning to stop the warrantless use of license plate reader cameras. “We know that [Customs and Border Patrol] is using ALPRs generally to stop cars with what they deem ‘suspicious’ travel patterns.”

After reviewing the document cataloguing the Ferranti’s vehicle monitoring, Windham adds: “The records are consistent with an officer either looking up a car in his system to see where else that car was captured by ALPRs, or that car showing up as a ‘hot list’ alert in the Motorola system. But it’s hard to tell, from the records alone, whether the stop was a ‘predictive policing’ stop.”

Ferranti is convinced it was. “There were no warrants, investigations, informants, state police, DEA, or FBI involvement, just Seward County Sheriff’s office [and an] AI-assisted license plate tracking service to perpetuate their outdated War on Drugs mission,” he said in an Instagram post published by his family following his sentencing. “Traveling the highways as a person with a record is now considered [suspicious] activity by the AI.”

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Arizona Senators Take Up Bills To Criminalize ‘Excessive’ Marijuana Smoke, Even On Private Property

Arizona lawmakers are considering at a pair of measures that would make the act of creating “excessive” amounts of marijuana smoke a nuisance crime punishable by jail time, even if the person is using cannabis in compliance with state law in their own homes.

Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R) is sponsoring the two proposals—one that would amend state statute legislatively that would put the issue before voters at the ballot. Members of the Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee are set to consider the proposals this week.

The lawmaker said he decided to push the issue due to the smell of marijuana in his own neighborhood.

Both versions of Mesnard’s legislation stipulate that “it is presumed that a person who creates excessive marijuana smoke and odor causes a condition that endangers the safety or health of others.”

The reason behind having both a proposed bill and resolution is related to the potential legal challenges of lawmakers changing the voter-approved marijuana legalization law.

The legislation would establish “a presumption that the creation of excessive marijuana smoke and odor is injurious to health, indecent, offensive to the senses and an obstruction to the free use of property that interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property,” a summary of the proposal says.

If enacted, the loosely defined offense of creating “excessive” marijuana smoke under the bill and resolution would be considered a class 3 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail, a maximum $500 fine and up to one year of probation.

“I’m hearing from some people that, depending on their neighbor situation, they may not be able to have their kids go outside because the marijuana smoke is so potent,” Mesnard, the sponsor, said. “It can even creep into your own house or, in my case, into my garage.”

“But experiencing now what’s happened, even in my own neighborhood, is a pretty frustrating situation,” he told The Arizona Daily Star. “You should be responsible neighbors if you’re going to smoke pot… It can be a real issue for families, especially with kids.”

Asked about the seeming double standard given that no such nuisance offenses exist for smoking cigarettes or cigars on a private property, the senator said, “I’ll concede I hadn’t thought about it.”

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ProtonMail Logs Activist’s IP Address With Authorities After Swiss Court Order

End-to-end encrypted email service provider ProtonMail has drawn criticism after it ceded to a legal request and shared the IP address of anti-gentrification activists with law enforcement authorities, leading to their arrests in France.

The Switzerland-based company said it received a “legally binding order from the Swiss Federal Department of Justice” related to a collective called Youth for Climate, which it was “obligated to comply with,” compelling it to handover the IP address and information related to the type of device used by the group to access the ProtonMail account.

On its website, ProtonMail advertises that: “No personal information is required to create your secure email account. By default, we do not keep any IP logs which can be linked to your anonymous email account. Your privacy comes first.”

Despite its no IP logs claims, the company acknowledged that while it’s illegal for the company to abide by requests from non-Swiss law enforcement authorities, it will be required to do so if Swiss agencies agree to assist foreign services such as Europol in their investigations.

“There was no possibility to appeal or fight this particular request because an act contrary to Swiss law did in fact take place (and this was also the final determination of the Federal Department of Justice which does a legal review of each case),” the company said in a lengthy response posted on Reddit.

Put simply, ProtonMail will not only have to comply with Swiss government orders, it will be forced to hand over relevant data when individuals use the service to engage in activities that are deemed illegal in the country. This includes monitoring IP addresses from users in “extreme criminal cases,” according to its transparency report.

“Proton must comply with Swiss law. As soon as a crime is committed, privacy protections can be suspended and we’re required by Swiss law to answer requests from Swiss authorities,” ProtonMail founder and CEO Andy Yen tweeted, adding “It’s deplorable that legal tools for serious crimes are being used in this way. But by law, [ProtonMail] must comply with Swiss criminal investigations. This is obviously not done by default, but only if legally forced.”

If anything, ProtonMail users who are concerned about the visibility of their IP addresses should use a VPN or access the email service over the Tor network for additional anonymity.

“The prosecution in this case seems quite aggressive. Unfortunately, this is a pattern we have increasingly seen in recent years around the world (for example in France where terror laws are inappropriately used),” the company said.

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Keir Starmer Considers VPN ID Checks as UK Expands Online Safety Act Powers

Having already installed itself as the nation’s digital nanny with its online censorship law, the Online Safety Act, the government is now peering into the last remaining corner of online privacy and wondering whether it, too, might benefit from a sturdy padlock.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has confirmed that ministers are examining new powers to move beyond social media age limits and into the architecture of private browsing itself. The latest idea involves ID checks for VPN use and chatbots.

Naturally, this is all for the children.

A VPN, or virtual private network, is often treated like a villainous contraption, but it’s actually a tool that encrypts your internet traffic and masks your location. In plain English, it stops internet providers, advertisers, and sometimes governments from tracking what you read, watch, or search.

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Oregon Could Vote to Ban Hunting and Fishing – Proposed Law Would Classify Both as Cruelty to Animals

A petition to ban hunting and ranching in Oregon is nearing the number of signatures needed to be placed on this fall’s ballot.

David Michelson, the organizer of Initiative Petition 28, said supporters have gathered about 105,000 of the 117,713 verified signatures needed by July 2, according to Fox affiliate KPTV.

“If it makes it on the ballot and is approved by voters in November, the protections that currently apply to pets such as dogs and cats would extend to wild animals, livestock, and animals used in research,” the outlet reported. “Supporters call the proposal the PEACE Act, short for People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions. Supporters say the measure is intended to protect animals from abuse, neglect, and killing.”

The proposed law reportedly has exceptions for veterinarians and for those who kill animals in self-defense.

Michelson told the NBC affiliate KOIN-TV, “We really want to make Oregon the first state to vote on something like this.”

“We are aware that it’s unlikely 50 percent of Oregonians are ready right now to move away from killing animals,” he added. “But we want to get that conversation out there. So that we can hopefully move in that direction.”

Amy Patrick with the Oregon Hunters Association told KPTV, “I’m hopeful that Oregonians will not vote ‘yes’ on this. I’m hopeful that whether you’re in an urban region or a rural region, you understand what makes Oregon great.”

“And part of that is our wildlife. And part of that is our economy that comes from our farming and ranching,” she continued. “And that folks will really, really delve into what this [proposal] does and how this is going to affect us not just in the abstract. So if you’re not a hunter or you’re not a rancher or a farmer, don’t think that this is not going to affect you in your day-to-day life.”

An Oregon State University report issued in February 2025 stated that cattle ranching makes up a significant portion of the state’s economy, contributing over $900 million annually.

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Florida Marijuana Campaign Asks Supreme Court To Restore 71,000 Legalization Ballot Signatures State Officials Tossed

The attorney general of Florida and several business and anti-marijuana groups are telling the state Supreme Court to block a cannabis legalization initiative, calling it “fatally flawed” and unconstitutional as advocates work against the clock to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

In a series of briefs submitted to the court on Friday, Attorney General James Uthmeier (R), Drug Free America Foundation, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Florida Legal Foundation, Associated Industries of Florida and a former judge made similar arguments contesting the initiative from Smart and Safe Florida.

The parties generally contend that the proposal is written in a way that’s affirmatively misleading, runs counter to federal law prohibiting cannabis and violates the state’s single subject rule for ballot initiatives.

The attorney general called the measure “fatally flawed,” arguing that it “misleads voters in a way designed to garner greater approval, is flatly invalid under the federal Constitution, and violates the single-subject requirement. The Court should therefore strike the proposed amendment from the ballot.”

Each of those reasons alone, the brief said, “warrants removal from the ballot.”

The attorney general’s office last month asked the state Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the legalization initiative. The court accepted the request and set a schedule for state officials and the cannabis campaign to file briefs this month. Proponents of the measure have until January 12 to submit response briefs, then the opposition has until January 20 to reply.

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Amazon’s Ring and Google’s Nest Unwittingly Reveal the Severity of the U.S. Surveillance State

That the U.S. Surveillance State is rapidly growing to the point of ubiquity has been demonstrated over the past week by seemingly benign events. While the picture that emerges is grim, to put it mildly, at least Americans are again confronted with crystal clarity over how severe this has become.

The latest round of valid panic over privacy began during the Super Bowl held on Sunday. During the game, Amazon ran a commercial for its Ring camera security system. The ad manipulatively exploited people’s love of dogs to induce them to ignore the consequences of what Amazon was touting. It seems that trick did not work.

The ad highlighted what the company calls its “Search Party” feature, whereby one can upload a picture, for example, of a lost dog. Doing so will activate multiple other Amazon Ring cameras in the neighborhood, which will, in turn, use AI programs to scan all dogs, it seems, and identify the one that is lost. The 30-second commercial was full of heart-tugging scenes of young children and elderly people being reunited with their lost dogs.

But the graphic Amazon used seems to have unwittingly depicted how invasive this technology can be. That this capability now exists in a product that has long been pitched as nothing more than a simple tool for homeowners to monitor their own homes created, it seems, an unavoidable contract between public understanding of Ring and what Amazon was now boasting it could do.

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40 State Attorneys General Want To Tie Online Access to ID

A bloc of 40 state and territorial attorneys general is urging Congress to adopt the Senate’s version of the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, positioning it as the stronger regulatory instrument and rejecting the House companion as insufficient.

The Act would kill online anonymity and tie online activity and speech to a real-world identity.

Acting through the National Association of Attorneys General, the coalition sent a letter to congressional leadership endorsing S. 1748 and opposing H.R. 6484.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Their request centers on structural differences between the bills. The Senate proposal would create a federally enforceable “Duty of Care” requiring covered platforms to mitigate defined harms to minors.

Enforcement authority would rest with the Federal Trade Commission, which could investigate and sue companies that fail to prevent minors from encountering content deemed to cause “harm to minors.”

That framework would require regulators to evaluate internal content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms, and safety controls.

S. 1748 also directs the Secretary of Commerce, the FTC, and the Federal Communications Commission to study “the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”

This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems.

Age verification at that layer would not function without some form of credentialing. Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems.

That means users could be required to submit identifying information before accessing broad categories of lawful online speech. Anonymous browsing depends on the ability to access content without linking identity credentials to activity.

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UK Regulator Ofcom Proposes Second Fine Against US Platform 4chan

Britain’s speech regulator, Ofcom, has proposed another financial penalty against 4chan under the Online Safety Act, deepening a censorship dispute that stretches from London to Washington.

4chan is an American platform, hosted in the United States, with no presence in Britain. Yet under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom believes that this falls under its authority.

Tensions increased after Ofcom declined to provide 4chan with a copy of its provisional decision before announcing the outcome publicly. According to the platform’s legal team, this decision limited its ability to respond in real time.

Preston Byrne, counsel for 4chan, stated that the regulator’s refusal was intended “to deny us the opportunity for a public rebuttal.”

He further accused the regulator of engaging in “domestic narrative control” by withholding advance access to the decision while preparing to publish its conclusions.

Ofcom announced that it has escalated its enforcement action against 4chan, stating: “In accordance with section 130 of the Online Safety Act 2023, we have today issued 4chan Community Support LLC with a provisional notice of contravention.”

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UK Fines US Platform Imgur For Lack of Age Verification

Imgur’s decision to suspend access for UK users in September 2025 was an early signal that regulatory pressure was building. The platform’s parent company has now learned the financial cost of that pressure.

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has fined MediaLab, which operates image hosting company Imgur, £247,590 ($337,000) for violations of the UK GDPR.

According to the regulator, the company processed children’s personal data without a lawful basis, failed to implement effective age assurance measures, and did not complete a required data protection impact assessment.

The ICO’s findings focus on how children under 13 were able to use the service without verified parental consent or “any other lawful basis.”

The regulator also determined that the company lacked meaningful age checks. That means the platform did not reliably verify whether users were children before collecting and processing their data. Additionally, MediaLab did not conduct a formal risk assessment to examine how its service might affect minors’ rights and freedoms.

“MediaLab failed in its legal duties to protect children, putting them at unnecessary risk,” said UK Information Commissioner John Edwards. “For years, it allowed children to use Imgur without any effective age checks, while collecting and processing their data, which in turn exposed them to harmful and inappropriate content. Age checks help organizations keep children’s personal information safe.”

He added, “Ignoring the fact that children use these services, while processing their data unlawfully, is not acceptable. Companies that choose to ignore this can expect to face similar enforcement action.”

The ICO says it has the authority to impose fines of up to £17.5 million or 4 percent of an organization’s annual global revenue, whichever is higher. In setting the penalty at £247,590, the office stated that it “took into consideration the number of children affected by this breach, the degree of potential harm caused, the duration of the contraventions, and the company’s global turnover.”

This enforcement action sits within a broader UK policy change toward mandatory online age verification.

Lawmakers and regulators have increasingly pressed platforms to deploy age assurance tools that can include document checks, facial age estimation, or third-party verification services. All-privacy invasive.

While positioned as child protection measures, these systems often require users to submit government-issued identification or biometric data simply to access online services.

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