Tag: technology

Police officer arrested after using Flock cameras 717 times to track ex-wife

A police officer faces two criminal charges after being accused of using Flock cameras to track his estranged ex-wife over 700 times while on and off duty.

Christopher Goodson, an officer in Haines City in central Florida, was found to have looked up his ex-wife’s license plate number in the Flock database 717 times between Sept. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026, according to an affidavit. Goodson told a supervisor he had looked up his ex-wife’s car to keep track of his children’s location.

Goodson has been charged with one count of offenses against users of computers and electronic devices, and one count of official misconduct, according to a Haines City Police Department news release.

The officer has indicated that he plans to resign due to the investigation, according to police.

Goodson’s arrest is part of a growing number of documented abuses of the Flock camera surveillance system by police.

A man in North Manchester, Indiana, who has repeatedly criticized his local government and the police at town council meetings, told the press that he noticed he was being frequently followed by police. “It started to be more than a coincidence; it kept happening more and more,” Bob Sklar told WWSB. “I didn’t understand why.”

He then realized that Flock cameras were being used to track him. Sklar said he is not aware of any legitimate reason he is being tracked.

Currently, there are over 116,000 such surveillance cameras, placed mostly at intersections in urban and suburban neighborhoods.   

Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, supervisor Andy Parrish is fighting Flock camera surveillance locally and nationally through his online campaigns. 

“People are being hurt. There are young women whose lives have been changed forever,” Parrish told LifeSiteNews. “We’ve got 80 women stalked and terrorized.”

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FCC Deals Blow to Montana Residents Fighting 260-Foot Cell Tower

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday ruled against a group of Montana residents seeking to prevent construction of a 260-foot cell tower that they say would harm nearby wildlife, including nesting eagles, and the environment.

The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau sided with Harmoni Towers, concluding the company isn’t required to do any further research on how the proposed tower might negatively impact the local environment — even though the company’s “environmental assessment” contained errors and overlooked key information, according to W. Scott McCollough, lead attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless cases.

Members of the nonprofit Stewards of the Swan Valley, who opposed the tower, allege that if built, the tower would harm a host of non-human species, including mammals, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles and flora.

The proposed tower site is near Condon, Montana, in the state’s Swan Valley, prized for its spectacular wilderness views.

“This is a horrible place for a cell tower with a strobe light on it,” resident Peter Guynn told The Defender. “It announces to the world that this is no longer a natural place.” Guynn called the FCC’s decision “egregious.”

In February, opponents of the tower filed comments, pointing out that Harmoni Towers failed to consider the published evidence on how the radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by cell towers affects non-human species.

The FCC said the company’s environmental assessment wasn’t required to address the effect on non-human species, arguing that the agency’s RF radiation exposure limits pertain only to the human environment.

“We find that the tower will not have a significant impact on the quality of the human environment,” the FCC wrote.

McCollough told The Defender, “Essentially, the FCC covered both its eyes so that it couldn’t see an impact.”

The residents are considering next steps, McCollough said. The FCC’s decision becomes final in 30 days, unless the residents submit an application asking for it to be reviewed.

Miriam Eckenfels, director of CHD’s EMR & Wireless Program, said that the FCC’s decision shows yet again that communities dealing with unwanted cell towers cannot rely on the FCC to help them.

“The FCC is the poster child of a captured government agency. It serves industry alone, and people are left to fend for themselves,” Eckenfels said. “This decision also highlights the importance of CHD’s 704NoMore initiative and its goal to change the federal framework towards consideration of health effects of RF radiation.”

The 704NoMore campaign is raising money to legally challenge Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which prohibits local and state governments from considering possible health impacts from RF radiation when making cell tower decisions.

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Why Sam Altman’s Wild Claims Are Empty Hype

Did you hear what Sam Altman – the ChatGPT geek – recently said?

It sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. And it signals the AI hype machine has officially hit maximum velocity.

Last week, on the Relentless podcast, Altman remarked, “We are now, like, in the singularity.”

He didn’t say we’re approaching it. He didn’t say it’s coming by 2030. He said we are in it right now.

He pointed to a recent incident where an autonomous AI agent powered by OpenAI’s latest models broke out of its sandbox and hacked into datasets at Hugging Face to score higher on a cybersecurity benchmark. When prompted to pursue advanced exploitation using complex attack paths to test cyber capabilities, the AI agent targeted Hugging Face to obtain the information needed to carry out the task.

To Altman, that’s not a dangerous security flaw. It’s the start of a brave new world.

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” said Altman, predicting an “awesome” future where AI handles 30 to 40 percent of all human work tasks.

Does that sound awesome to you?

For many people trying to make their way in an uncertain economy, a world of runaway machine evolution may not be one they’re eager to join.

When you hear stuff like “we are now in singularity,” if you feel a mix of dread and skepticism, join the club. When tech executives start declaring that long-held science fiction prophecies have finally come true right before their highly anticipated mega-IPOs, a healthy dose of financial distrust is essential. After all, building investor hype and sensational headlines is a central part of the IPO game.

What actually is the singularity? Are we really in it? And is this wild proclamation the ultimate top-of-the-market signal the massive AI bubble is finally popping?

These are the questions. Here, we’ll scratch for a few answers…

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Israel Creates Fake Think Tank In Likely Attempt To Dupe AI Chatbots

At a glance, the Hanover Institute for Public Policy looks like a new think tank dedicated to Israel/Palestine. The organization churns out think-tank style reports on questions such as “Does AIPAC Use ‘Dark Money in Elections?” and “Is Israel Carrying out a Deliberate Campaign of Starvation in Gaza?”

But the Hanover Institute is not a real think tank. None of the reports have bylines. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the webpage notes that the organization was created on behalf of the Israeli Government Advertising Agency by Piro, Inc, a firm co-founded by Daniel Rosenberg, the producer of Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.”

The Hanover Institute’s reports – all of which are about Israel and Palestine – appear to be part of an Israeli effort to influence chatbots. The institute’s “data reports” have footnotes and tables of contents, and they present arguments in a neutral tone, helping them appeal to chatbots like Claude or Gemini. Piro’s website says that it “author(s) content engineered for how LLMs evaluate credibility,” describing this service as “AI Story Optimization.” Others refer to this practice of influencing artificial intelligence as “LLM poisoning.”

According to its “about” page, the Hanover Institute “studies the inputs fueling antisemitism in the United States, and publishes what the evidence shows.” Many of the reports are formulaic, starting with an innocent question that someone might ask a chatbot.

“What Caused the Displacement of Palestinians in 1948?”

“Which Humanitarian Organizations Have Documented Israeli War Crimes?”

“What is the Current Situation in the Gaza Strip?”

In an article titled “Is the IDF the World’s Most Moral Army?” the Hanover Institute cites a 2022 poll that found that 47% of Israeli Jews believed that statement. Another report casts doubt on UNICEF’s assertion that “90% of water and institutional infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed” in Gaza. Many of the reports conclude by linking the topic to rising antisemitism, oftentimes citing the same studies.

In a few cases, the Hanover Institute publishes what it claims are original findings. For instance, it put out a study saying 19 of the 36 most-watched Israel-Gaza explainer videos contain contested claims, with most of the contested claims aligning with the Palestinian narrative.

The Hanover Institute’s publications sometimes contradict Israeli government narratives. For instance, one report says that foreign funding of universities as an explanation for antisemitic incidents is “weak and full of exceptions.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed this theory, telling Breitbart last year that Europeans and Qataris have spent “billions of American universities, vilifying, vilifying Israel, vilifying Jews, also, frankly, vilifying the United States.”

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking company, told RS that the sites appear designed to reach a U.S. audience curious about the ongoing conflict, either through search engines or AI chatbots. “LLMs favor concrete statistics and data, as well as strong citations and sources, which these articles all have,” Lee said.

“It’s a perfect mimicry of a typical credible American think tank, right down to the generic name, the site layout, and the red-white-blue color scheme,” Lee added.

Piro, Inc, the firm that created the Hanover Institute, has received $900,000 from the Israeli government for its work. Like many other contractors working for Israel, Piro’s work is subcontracted through Havas Media, a French public relations conglomerate.

The fake think tank has churned out over 100 reports since it started publishing on August 6. The Hanover Institute claims that “cited research is peer-reviewed and academic,” although it frequently cites Israeli government sources such as the Israel Defense Forces and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

RS analyzed 12 random Hanover Institute articles using GPTZero, a popular AI detection software that claims a low false-positive rate. GPTZero flagged 11 of the articles as AI-written with “high confidence”; it flagged one article as AI-written with “moderate confidence.”

Israel has also contracted former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale to create pro-Israel websites engineered to influence chatbots as part of a $46.5 million contract. A Drop Site investigation last month found that many chatbots, particularly Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini, had been successfully trained on data from those websites. Other chatbots frequently cite those websites without flagging them as part of an Israeli influence operation.

Piro does not explicitly state in its agreement submitted to the Department of Justice that its work for Israel is to influence AI. In an email to Politico, which first reported the filing, Rosenberg said his firm’s work is to “put accurate, sourced facts into the public record and to counter misinformation about Israel with verifiable information.” However, last month, Rosenberg posted on LinkedIn advertising Piro’s ability to influence chatbots:

“When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity about your category, an answer comes back in one confident paragraph. Most brands have no idea how that paragraph gets built. So we spent months reverse-engineering it…At Piro, we already knew how to build stories that move people. The question was: how do you make sure AI knows how to tell them?”

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4 Former Savannah Police Employees Arrested for Misusing Flock Cameras

Four Savannah department employees, including three former officers, were arrested after an internal audit discovered they had been using Savannah’s Flock powered license plate reader system for reasons outside of normal department law enforcement investigations. Dillard, Phillips, Rich, and Thomas, a civilian department employee, were arrested after investigators discovered their misuse of the system.

Dillard, Phillips and Rich each are charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, and one count of violation of their oath of office, while Thomas is charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, reported Fox5 Atlanta.

As the case is currently under investigation by the GBI, it will be completed by them and then sent to the Eastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office to be handled by the proper prosecutors. Savannah Police Chief Lenny Gunther states that his department will not tolerate such misconduct.

The real question is why Flock cameras exist at all; they are surveillance without informed consent.

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Robot smashes Usain Bolt’s 100-meter dash world record in opening heat of World Humanoid Games

Usain Bolt, meet Lightning bolt.

A robot named Lightning just ran at the 100 meter dash in 9.32 seconds, shattering human sprinter Usain Bolt’s record.

The superhumanoid feat went down during a test run at the second World Humanoid Robot Games, which kicked off Saturday in Beijing, China, the Guardian reported.

Developed by Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor, Lightning bolted down the track at a blistering 14.5 meters per second (around 32mph), as seen in a viral clip.

In doing so, the hot-to-trot bot eclipsed the previous World Record of 9.58 seconds set by the Bolt during his record-breaking 100-meter sprint in Berlin, Germany 2009.

During that run, the Jamaican sprinting sensation achieved a top speed of over 27mph — the fastest ever clocked by a biped until now.

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Tech Giants Scramble to Calm Public Anger over AI Data Centers

In July, roughly 1,000 Georgia residents gathered at the Effingham County College & Career Academy to hear what OpenAI could offer their community. They also faced protesters angry about the impacts of AI data centers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a day after announcing plans for a new data center near Savannah, Georgia, OpenAI held an open house for residents’ questions. Attendees passed protest signs reading “I didn’t vote for AI” and “You can’t drink data!!!” Inside were OpenAI-staffed booths with facility information, QR codes to a job board, site renderings and a taco bar. OpenAI pledged the community $80 million, plus up to $71 million in coding credits for local students.

OpenAI Chief Global Affairs officer Chris Lehane called the open house “an important piece” of winning community support. “People really do want to know, like, ‘Are my electricity bills gonna go up or not? Is this gonna impact my water supply? Am I gonna pay more or less in taxes?’” he said.

Open houses, multimillion-dollar pledges and free food were not standard for an industry that typically won approval through speed, confidentiality and political connections. That’s changing as grassroots backlash threatens the buildout’s momentum. Companies add job guarantees and water investments to deals, cite facilities that cut tax burdens, and frame AI’s impact around opportunity, not job losses.

“The politics of data centers have become more prominent and unambiguous across the country,” said Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith. Microsoft, he said, saw the need for a community-focused approach after the issue surfaced in last November’s elections, including New Jersey’s governor’s race, which Democrat Mikie Sherrill won after campaigning on electricity prices. “As soon as, especially, the New Jersey race was over, it was clear that this was on a different trajectory,” he said. Two months later, Microsoft announced commitments on electricity, water use, jobs and taxes.

Opponents cite rising electricity prices, environmental effects and noise; some object to AI itself over job-loss fears or broader social harm. Clifford Young, chair of Ipsos Public Affairs, said the backlash reflects a “broader-based belief that the system is broken and no longer working for the average person… it’s become, I would say, even a poster child for it.”

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Debate Over Flock Surveillance Cameras Takes Unexpected Turn in SoCal As ‘Darth Vader’ Weighs In

Well here’s some fun Saturday night nuttery for you.

We’ve written on the ongoing debate in this country about Flock license-plate reading cameras. They’ve been used to thwart mass terror attacks — but they’ve also been used by unscrupulous law enforcement officers to keep an eye on their exes. Creepy.

One thing you might not have expected, however, is for Darth Vader to come down from space and weigh in on the matter at a San Diego City Council Public safety meeting Wednesday. I have to say, the guy’s got Mr. Vader’s breathing sounds down perfectly, and his voice work is pretty solid too.

If whoever was behind the spot was trying to get attention, he achieved his goal, because the clip has been viewed millions of times. 

His little speech was way out there, but it would seem he was using the occasion to mock the city’s 500 Flock cameras installed on streetlights. Several of the folks in attendance appeared to struggle to contain their laughter.

The council member who announced that it was his turn to speak didn’t seem to flinch in the slightest when she introduced him. “Thank you,” she said to a citizen who had just finished her remarks. “Darth Vader?”

Maybe they’re used to this kind of thing on the Left Coast:

The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers… They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this.

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The Flock Camera Backlash Is A Very Good Sign

In a year as chaotic, violent, and economically destructive as this one has been, it is interesting that, to many Americans, the great villain of 2026 is turning out to be a traffic camera.

But, indeed, we are seeing visceral, cross-partisan opposition to so-called Flock cameras—named after the leading manufacturer of these automated license plate readers—take hold in communities across the country. And that opposition is, to be sure, entirely legitimate.

Flock’s camera networks are based on the idea that, while it would obviously be illegal and unconstitutional for law enforcement at any and all levels to put GPS trackers in everyone’s cars, it would be legal for a cop standing on some street corner to report that they had seen a specific vehicle drive by if it later turned out that that car had either been stolen or used to commit a crime.

But, taking that idea that public observations are not violations of privacy, Flock and similar companies help set up networks of cameras that record and register the license plate, make and model, and identifiable details of every single passing vehicle into a timestamped and searchable national database. And, as more and more of these cameras are added to streets and parking lots all over the country, and they, therefore, get harder and harder to avoid, the data the government has access to becomes essentially indistinguishable from what they would have if there were government GPS trackers in all of our cars.

There are currently around 120,000 of these cameras across 49 states, with more being added every day. And the American people are not happy about it.

In a genuine grassroots movement spreading primarily through local Facebook groups and the like, with little coverage outside local media, concerned citizens are doing everything from pressuring local lawmakers to rescind their contracts with Flock Safety to donning masks and cutting the cameras down with electric saws.

And this opposition is starting to have some success. More than 50 jurisdictions have ended their relationships with Flock after local backlash. And, after Flock tried and failed for months to get the wider public to view organizations that track the location of these cameras as terrorists because some have used those locations to avoid, disable, or destroy some, the company announced last week that it was implementing several changes to try and defuse the public anger.

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What JPMorgan Saw Inside Tesla’s Fremont Factory As Humanoid Production Nears

Retail flows across Asia remained heavily concentrated in newly listed, high-beta names, most notably Chinese robotics maker Unitree following its blockbuster Shanghai debut. The retail craze surrounding physical AI merely shows Beijing’s accelerating push to dominate the humanoid market.

To close out the week, we pivot across the Pacific for a peek inside the US humanoid-robotics supply chain, where Tesla’s Fremont buildout provides a timely indicator of how quickly physical AI is advancing.

Rajat Gupta, a JPMorgan analyst who covers Tesla, recently toured Tesla’s Fremont factory and reported to clients this week that the facility, once the birthplace of the company’s electric vehicles, is now pivoting toward producing robotaxis and humanoid robots.

Gupta and his colleagues toured the roughly 5-million-square-foot facility and found that the discontinued Model S and Model X production lines are being replaced by manufacturing equipment for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid.

“On Optimus, production lines are being installed at Fremont (the area was tarped off at the time of our visit), and TSLA remains largely on schedule for the targeted four-month transition following the end of S/X production in May, with initial humanoid deployments in 2H26 expected to focus on Optimus Academy for training and data collection, followed by internal factory use and external sales as early as 2H27,” the analyst said.

He said that Optimus robots are not currently working inside the Fremont plant. Initial deployments in the second half of 2026 will instead take place at the “Optimus Academy,” where the robots will collect real-world training data before being deployed in factories.

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