News & Commentary

Feb 25, 2026

License Plate Readings Shouldn’t Be Public Data

Such readings shouldn’t generally be retained at all, but if they are at least privacy needs to be protected

A street at night with cars. Photo by Thomas Hawk
Feb 10, 2026

Kansas Town Uses License Plate Readers to Go After Man Who Wrote Op-Ed

Targeting followed opinion piece critical of town’s police and anonymously posted anti-ICE fliers

A license plate reader against sky and trees
Feb 02, 2026

Retailers Secretively Using Face Recognition to Spot “Persons of Interest” — Including For the Government

Are Wegmans and other retailers participating in the Trump war on immigrants?

A man holding a child's hand and walking down a colorful grocery store aisle
Jan 16, 2026

Flock CEO Goes Ballistic on Critics as More Americans Question Mass Driver Surveillance

CEO attacks motives of people who care about privacy, says they are trying to “normalize lawlessness” and “let murderers go free”

City councilmembers in Oak Park Village IL debating ALPR
Nov 26, 2025

New Report Highlights How CBP and Border Patrol are Becoming a Repressive Internal Intelligence Agency

AP report reveals how the agency uses AI and mass surveillance across the nation to target, detain, and seize money from innocent drivers

A police car behind a car it has pulled over alongside a highway
Nov 19, 2025

Your Smartphone, Their Rules: How App Stores Enable Corporate-Government Censorship

Big Tech Oligopoly helps the Trump Administration crack down on free speech

Closeup of app store icon on a phone screen
Aug 19, 2025

I’m Hearing About More Pushback Against Flock, Fueled by Concern Over Anti-Immigrant Uses

Policymakers are beginning to recognize that the boundaries between local surveillance and the Trump Administration are hard to maintain.

Police being grilled on Flock at Austin City Council meeting
Aug 16, 2025

Flock’s Aggressive Expansions Go Far Beyond Simple Driver Surveillance

Build it (an authoritarian tracking infrastructure) and they (expanded uses) will come.

Vintage car driving on a road
Aug 07, 2025

Surveillance Company Flock Now Using AI to Report Us to Police if it Thinks Our Movement Patterns Are “Suspicious”

Company crosses a dangerous line by beginning to offer AI suspicion-generation functions

License plate readers on back of police car