Tag: police state

Same Cage, New Landlord: How Axon is Replacing Flock Without You Noticing

Communities across the country spent the better part of two years fighting to tear down Flock Safety’s license plate readers, and in city after city, they won. Then, in the same council chambers where residents celebrated those victories, officials quietly signed even bigger checks to a company that builds the exact same surveillance apparatus, only this time it’s hidden inside the streetlight over your driveway.

Since January of this year alone, roughly 23 cities have canceled, rejected, or deactivated their Flock contracts, and close to 98 have done so since 2021, as residents raised alarms over warrantless tracking, indefinite data retention, and a vendor-run national database that agencies across the country could tap into without a warrant. Asheville, North Carolina became the latest flashpoint in late August, when its city council voted 5-2 to terminate the city’s contract and order every piece of Flock hardware removed from its streets, following a marathon public comment session and a public call from the mayor herself to shut the cameras down. Lansing, Michigan followed almost the same week, with residents packing council chambers to demand an end to what one described as adjusting his daily commute just to avoid being logged by the cameras. Cleveland’s safety committee, for its part, voted down a quarter-million-dollar Flock renewal outright after council members openly questioned whether the cameras made anyone safer at all.

By every surface-level measure, this looks like a movement winning. It isn’t. It’s a market-share transfer, and the company picking up the business is Axon, the Scottsdale, Arizona outfit better known for Tasers and police body cameras, which has spent the past year building a product engineered specifically to defeat the kind of organizing that just took Flock down. Axon calls it Lightpost, and unlike Flock’s freestanding poles, it clips directly onto a streetlight that’s already there, drawing power straight from the light’s own socket. No new poles. No trenching. No visible object for a resident to photograph, protest, or bring to a council meeting.

Axon’s own marketing describes it as a way to turn streetlights into real-time detection tools, combining license plate recognition, vehicle attribute recognition, and live streaming video into a form factor built for speed of deployment. A companion product, Axon Outpost, offers the same capability as a standalone unit that can be mounted on new or existing poles, buildings, vehicles, trailers, or even trees, and can run on solar power when no electrical hookup is available. Both feed directly into Axon Fusus, a platform that integrates footage from body cameras, squad cars, drones, and third-party cameras into a single searchable, real-time operational view for police departments.

The company building this doesn’t hide the fact that blending in is the point. Ubicquia, the infrastructure firm Axon partnered with to build Lightpost, markets the devices as mounting directly on existing streetlight infrastructure and blending seamlessly into the urban landscape, while avoiding complex permitting processes altogether. That single sentence is the entire strategy laid bare. Flock’s cameras became targets because they were visible, arguable, votable things sitting on a pole at an intersection. A camera hidden inside the fixture that already lights your street at night isn’t something most residents will ever notice, let alone organize against, and that is by design rather than accident.

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Microsoft knows your entire browser history — and it can send it to the FBI

Virtual Private Networks are meant to shield your browsing history from all manner of prying eyes, including your internet service provider, your workplace or school, and even potential hackers. If you use a VPN with your Windows PC, though, I have some bad news: Microsoft has a full record of your browsing habits, and it can even report your activity to the FBI.

According to court documents released on July 1, a 19-year-old young man working with the cyber criminal group known as Scattered Spider was caught hacking into a computer system belonging to a luxury jewelry store. While inside, the hacker stole company data and demanded $8 million in cryptocurrency for ransom. Ultimately, the jewelry store kicked the hacker out of its system without paying the ransom, and the perpetrator was later arrested and charged.

It’s a simple case of conspiracy, digital intrusion, and fraud … but there’s a catch.

The hacker’s identity should have been hidden from the feds.

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TDF alarmed at Hamilton Police overbearing response to peaceful assembly of controversial political group

Hamilton Police state on their website that “the messaging associated with DomCon is divisive and exclusionary and can negatively impact the sense of safety and belonging within our community.” Police “encourage venues to consider the impact this event and its messaging may have on the broader community when making decisions about hosting it” and ask people with information regarding a recent venue booking to contact Hamilton Police.

Police are reportedly visiting venues to “inform” people about the group.

Deploying police resources against a political organization based on that police force’s own political evaluation constitutes an improper use of law enforcement powers. The police should evaluate a group based on objectively reasonable concerns about public safety and criminal conduct. As reported by media sources, a police spokesperson confirmed that “At this time, the messaging associated with the event does not meet the threshold for criminal or unlawful activity.”

Police are required under the law to remain neutral as between competing political organizations provided these organizations do not engage in criminal activity or are not reasonably suspected of doing so. It is inappropriate for police to visit a business owner to discuss potential clients; this can reasonably be perceived as intimidation. Allowing police to apply their own political test before Canadians can engage in peaceful assembly and expression violates s. 2(b) and s.2(c) of the Charter. Groups with offensive, politically divisive, or dissenting beliefs are protected by the Charter.

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The Most Dangerous — And Incompetent — Feds You’ve Never Heard Of

Nested within ICE is an American Stasi with the power to target U.S. citizens. Called Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, it is the country’s second-largest criminal investigative agency behind only the FBI — though with broader authorities.

But the most dangerous feds in America may also be the most incompetent. The Justice Department’s ongoing attempt to turn 15 Minnesota anti-ICE activists into a sprawling “Antifa” conspiracy opened a rare window into HSI, with disclosures that are equal parts creepy and hilariously inept, including:

  • The Dropped Wire: An undercover agent spying on a church gym when her concealed surveillance wire fell out — which she only realized later.
  • The Terrorist Dental Plan: Hunting for a “terrorist financing” ring, HSI secretly subpoenaed years of labor union SEIU’s bank records only to uncover a paper trail consisting entirely of strike supplies, retiree dues, and member dental benefits.
  • The Antifa Bike Shop: Prosecutors showed a grand jury an Alex Jones-style HSI briefing titled “The Conspiracy” that framed a bicycle repair shop as a key node in a criminal syndicate.

Federal court records describe Operation Puppet Master — yes, that’s the official name — HSI’s clandestine effort to infiltrate anti-ICE groups that the agency believe are fronts for “Antifa” domestic terrorists.

The reality of HSI’s work, as depicted in the court filings, contrasts starkly with the ICE’s official propaganda. Press releases highlight HSI’s work busting child predators and little more. It is an unimpeachable public relations shield: who isn’t against pedophiles? But HSI has quietly evolved into a lightly regulated domestic intelligence apparatus that under the name of “counterterrorism” now investigates unions, non-profits, environmental groups, and protesters.

In a document detailing Operation Puppet Master entered in the court record, HSI says: “Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) St. Paul has opened an investigation … [which] will prioritize the identification of funding sources, organizational structures, and predicate actions behind these campaigns.”

Here’s what that looked like in practice.

Two undercover agents sat through a skills workshop at the Minneapolis Public Library. Their report is a memo of pure nothing. The marquee finding: an attendee had red curly hair.

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Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.

Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.

The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own.

The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.

Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country.

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Pennsylvania Sues Snapchat Over Lack of Age Verification

Child safety is an extremely powerful weapon used to force private companies to implement age verification digital ID checks and, in some cases, change the design of their platforms. And once this is done, it’s not clear that children are any safer, but one thing is certain: online privacy and anonymity are weakened, and in some cases, lost.

This is the context in which the latest legal action against a major US tech company should be seen. Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday has sued Snap, the maker of the Snapchat app, accusing it of violating the state’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law (UTPCPL).

The filing, in Philadelphia County on August 25, 2026, is framed as consumer protection, but it is about pressing Snap to verify its users’ ages and to change how the app is designed.

“Child safety” is a broad and vague banner that can cover a lot of ground – from protecting minors from predators and inappropriate content, to shielding them from features that the state decides are “addictive.”

But before it gets to the “addictive” part, the complaint states that Snapchat’s age gate is not good enough – specifically, that it defaults to 18, and that this makes it “unreliable.”

The filing further states that this has “helped render Snap’s efforts to protect young users from predatory adults practically useless for any safety features that depend on accurate age-gate information.”

The remedy the state wants is a court order forcing Snap to implement reliable age verification for all users.

Other claims made in the suit are that Snap has misrepresented how often adult-themed content appears on the platform in order to get the app a 13+ rating in stores – and that it has built “addictive” features into the app, such as infinite scroll and autoplay.

“Snap deliberately designed Snapchat to be addictive,” the complaint says, adding that the company “knows that minor users especially are susceptible to Snapchat’s addictive features.”

The features that the state wants a court to stop Snap from using are: Snapstreaks, push notifications, infinite scroll, autoplay, ephemeral content, and Snapchat+’s Friend Solar System.

The suit also wants the court to order Snap to pay civil penalties and cover the costs of the suit.

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Britain’s Biggest Council Pushes Two-Year Jail Term For Flying National Flags

Britain’s largest local authority has gone to the High Court to stop people hanging the Union Flag and the St George’s Cross from lampposts, with campaigners warning that a breach could mean up to two years behind bars.

Birmingham City Council filed the application this week as the latest move in a year-long war on “unauthorised attachments.” The attachments in question are the flags of the country. The penalties being threatened include prison, unlimited fines, and seized assets.

Protesters who fly the Union Jack from lampposts could criminal proceedings if the injunction is granted.

Former Metropolitan Police detective Peter Bleksley called it what it is. “It’s absolutely scandalous!”

The Free Speech Union described the move as “truly mental.”

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Denmark Under Pressure Over Its Decades-Long Forced Contraception of Greenlandic Women – Now, Reports Investigate Whether this Constitutes Genocide

Around half of fertile women in the Arctic Island were fitted with IUDs or given hormone birth control shots.

From the 1960’s and into the early 1990’s, Denmark imposed an inhuman sterilization program on Greenlandic Inuit women, with the purpose of limiting population growth in the self-governing territory.

Now, against the background of Donald J. Trump’s decision to control the island, the Danish are under fire for their mistreatment of the indigenous populations.

Two separate reports investigating the forcible contraception of thousands of Indigenous women and girls are divided over a core question: does it constitute genocide?

Associated Press reported:

“The Greenlandic government, which commissioned the inquiry, released the reports Friday but, when pressed by journalists during a news conference, would not say whether its leaders concluded whether a genocide had occurred. The government told the authors to use the definition under the United Nations’ 1948 genocide convention, which includes ‘imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group’.

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Senate Probes Flock Safety Over 20 Billion Vehicle Scans

The US Senate has joined a host of other actors in putting pressure on Flock Safety, a maker of automated license-plate readers, over misuse of its technology by law enforcement and others.

The Senate’s scrutiny came in the form of a letter that was sent by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, on August 26.

The senator gave Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley until September 8 to answer a series of questions and produce documents.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The investigation targets the scale of the operation, the retention of data collected from the more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states that Hawley said the company has, as well as customers’ search capabilities.

Hawley’s letter says the cameras produce more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month. The scans are then turned into records that can be searched by customers.

Hawley’s concern is that this is turning the act of driving a vehicle into a record that can be searched – and he said that Congress has never authorized the creation of such a network.

“But Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” the senator wrote. “Congress never authorized the network your industry has built.”

The letter seeks information on whether customers can run statewide or nationwide searches of vehicle or driver data, and if this is the default option. The retention periods, both default and maximum, are also of interest to Hawley, as is the number of confirmed misuse cases since January 1, 2021.

Hawley also wants to know what information customers must provide to justify a search, what restrictions Flock imposes, and what the accuracy is when it comes to complete and correctly attributed vehicle identification. The frequency of incorrect alerts is also a question.

Flock is also asked to provide details about the data the devices capture, whether the data is linked to any outside source, and whether multi-factor authentication is required of all users.

And in a question that goes beyond the plate readers, Hawley wants to know if Flock has the capability to biometrically track people.

The request for documents includes contracts with governmental customers, prices and fee schedules, information about pilot programs, discounted or donated equipment, and help given to customers to secure federal, state, or private grant funding.

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ICE to Deploy Boston Dynamics Robot Dogs for Its Enforcement Operations

Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to deploy robotic dogs as part of its immigration enforcement operations.

The agency planning to spend as much as $2 million on Boston Dynamics’ four-legged Spot robots.

The Department of Homeland Security says ICE needs remotely operated robots capable of entering dangerous locations where sending officers could put them at unnecessary risk.

According to procurement documents, the robots will be used for “inspection, situational awareness, and hazard assessment” in confined, unstable and otherwise difficult-to-access environments.

ICE is expected to spend between $1 million and $2 million purchasing Spot robots and accompanying equipment.

With individual units costing roughly $75,000 before additional equipment, the contract could put dozens of robotic dogs into service.

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