Part of what this scandal shows is how many constantly-monitored cameras there are in some cities. In this case it's not just livestreams of police cameras. There are cameras from private businesses/clubs/community centers being piped directly to cops in real time: www.404media.co/city-learns-...

The only thing that anyone should hear as they read this:

As I’ve said a million times, I’m not particularly against smart uses of AI This is the stupidest use I’ve seen yet though

communities and cops have often embraced ALPRs, even in the face of objections (like mine, in my neighborhood) based not only on privacy but on likely abuse by ICE/federal govt. any community that has them should get rid of them now.

what a crazy night for sam altman to be like "yeah we got that dept of war deal, and there's no moral concerns here"

“With these subpoenas, the government is intimidating anonymous social media users who are documenting ICE in their communities. Companies are capitulating to demands instead of fighting illegal subpoenas in court,” said ACLU attorney @snowjake.bsky.social.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) threaten civil liberties and have been used to target immigrants, protestors, and people seeking reproductive care. And Flock has proven itself incapable of securing ALPR location information against illegal sharing. www.kqed.org/news/1207446...

In a sane world, our universities would be suing this company into the ground. Unfortunately, many of them probably think in order to stay "relevant" or whatever, they need to develop partnerships with these plagiarism-as-a-service companies instead

ALPRs are marketed to promote public safety, but many are waking up to the reality: they have high error rates and low efficacy for solving crimes — and worse, they can be weaponized against anyone the government chooses to target.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ sanjosespotlight.com/op-ed-san-jo...

This legislation establishes New Mexico’s first statewide regulations for Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data, ensuring that location information isn't weaponized against residents for seeking legal healthcare, exercising constitutional rights, or for federal immigration enforcement.

surprising amount of chilling of dissent in this new era of tech companies and the government collaborating to stand up for free speech etc

Because when you're facing authoritarianism, do not obey in advance. Read our open letter to Amazon, Apple, Discord, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit here:

The ACLU (including my team) has filed multiple actions to block subpoenas sent by DHS to identify people speaking out against its abuses. Today's NYT story shows that those cases are the tip of the iceberg: DHS has sent HUNDREDS of subpoenas to tech companies. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Proud to be part of the ACLU team opposing DHS attempts to harass and intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights.

Meta thinks now is a great time to launch facial recognition surveillance tech in their creepy glasses because EFF will be too distracted by fascism to notice. We noticed. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Ring is just one piece of a larger picture: data collection devices owned by both government and private entities, centralized by private companies through cloud services, and subject to AI analysis that makes them far more powerful than they would have been even in the recent past.

Meta reportedly wants to add face recognition to smart glasses while privacy advocates are distracted

Let’s make sure this gets the attention it deserves and the scrutiny Meta clearly wants to hide from. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

guys please don’t fall for the cute doggo ring super bowl commercial. they’re literally creating a tool that turns all ring cameras in a neighborhood into a surveillance dragnet

A Kansas man wrote an op-ed criticizing local police for cooperating with ICE. Instead of respecting his First Amendment rights, the police used automatic license plate readers to track him in hopes of finding wrongdoing. We must keep getting this easily-abused surveillance out of our communities.

Whatever the federal presence looks like in the Bay Area on Super Bowl Sunday, we won’t allow it to stop us from exercising our First Amendment right to protest ICE violence. Before you head out on Sunday, here’s what you need to know about your rights to help you stay safe.

This surveillance tech is a "threat to undocumented immigrants or anyone opposing federal immigration actions who travel[s] through Mountain View, a chilling prospect as the U.S. is rattled by images of federal agents snatching people off the streets, brutalizing protesters and even killing..."

The Department of Homeland Security is abusing administrative subpoenas to terrorize people and stop them from speaking out. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

Proud graduate of a football school. GO HOOSIERS!

pulling this reflection on white silence/fear over here, too:

WOW @nicoleozer.bsky.social, a brilliant privacy scholar and leader (and my former boss), has been appointed to the board of @calprivacy.bsky.social. This is ✨amazing news✨ for Californians' privacy. cppa.ca.gov/announcement...

FINAL: No. 2 Indiana defeats No. 1 Ohio State 13-10. The Hoosiers complete a 13-0 season and win their first Big Ten title since 1967. #iufb

BREAKING: @aclu-norcal.bsky.social, Lieff Cabraser, and Tobener Ravenscroft just sued San Francisco landlords over AI-powered surveillance in people's homes. Our homes are the last refuge of privacy. What happens there is none of your landlord's business. www.aclunc.org/news/aclu-su...

Surveillance is not safety. Yet government agencies deploy untested, invasive surveillance—like automated license plate readers—without considering proven, non-surveillance alternatives first. Mass surveillance should never be the first approach to public safety. www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/l...

VICTORY: DHS has withdrawn its subpoena demanding the identities of anonymous Instagram users who posted about ICE raids in LA. The First Amendment protects your right to record police, to share those recordings, and do so anonymously.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ @snowjake.bsky.social @aclu.org

NEW: A risk assessment found that leading general-use chatbots — ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, and Claude — are "fundamentally unsafe" for teen mental health support, failing to catch important red flags and responding inappropriately to users exhibiting signs of crisis. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Today @eff.org & our @aclu-norcal.bsky.social team sued San Jose alleging its warrantless searches for driver locations are unconstitutional. This program is fed by a vast network of license plate readers and amasses people's private habits, associations, and movements www.aclunc.org/news/lawsuit...

The San Jose PD regularly conducts warrantless searches through its massive license plate reader database, allowing it to reconstruct detailed maps of a person’s movements through the City going back as far as a year. This poses a serious threat to communities’ privacy and freedom of movement.

Don't be evil? "Google is hosting a CBP app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officers..." www.404media.co/google-has-c...

Been out of the SCOTUS opinion analysis for a min (baby). But this Gorsuch Dissent (joined by Thomas 😮) from cert. denial in Veneno v. US, which challenged the Major Crimes Act (a fed. law that allows feds. to prosecute crimes on Indian Reservations), is worth discussing/explaining for a sec. 🧵 1/8

Amazon is firing 14,000 employees so that it can invest more in AI. Record profits for billionaire CEOs has never stopped greedy corporations from screwing over working people. The system is rigged.

I can see them wanting to do this to "monitor drivers", but ultimately this is about SURVEILLANCE! Imagine the kind of footage they're getting of the streets, people at their homes, and in their homes, given what the average driver sees in a day! SMH

We at @aclu-norcal.bsky.social and @aclupa.org filed this motion to protect people exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out anonymously. These summonses are intolerable abuses of power by DHS. The court JUST ordered Meta not to reveal anything to DHS until further notice.

If you're going out to protest this weekend and wondering how to protect yourself from digital surveillance, @aclu-norcal.bsky.social has a video for you (featuring, yes, me). We draw heavily from @eff.org's fantastic Surveillance Self Defense resource, available here: ssd.eff.org/module/atten...

Most of the power authoritarians have is freely given. We should not comply with them in advance. Trump is far weaker than he looks. So is the GOP. We should draw them out, drain them at every opportunity, and fight for people’s wellbeing at every turn. We have been sent here to fight for people.

BREAKING: Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, delivers the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era, ruling that Trump and his cabinet illegally targeted pro-Palestinian students for deportation to "strike fear" into First Amendment protesters. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

In Illinois, the Evanston Police Department shared their automatic license plate readers with at least seven out-of-state agencies for immigration enforcement. evanstonroundtable.com/2025/06/16/f...

New from me: Let’s call AI something else. buttondown.com/creativegood... I'm drawing on the excellent new book "The AI Con" by @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social - and our recent Techtonic interview (click "pop-up player" at www.wfmu.org/playlists/sh... ).

This lawsuit seeks to uphold a basic constitutional principle: when the government wants to pry into people’s homes and private lives, it must get a warrant. Read more about the ACLU’s case here: www.aclunc.org/our-work/leg...

Awesome! This is the most excited I’ve ever been about Bluebook rules! …Alright fine, the only time I’ve ever been excited about them.

We just sued Sonoma County for its warrantless drone program. With 700+ flights logged, county agents routinely launch low-altitude drones that invade people’s privacy in and around their homes. This violates the California Constitution, full stop.

Networked surveillance doesn’t see state lines. But the law can, and stories like these are precisely why @aclu-norcal.bsky.social and @eff.org has fought to enforce California’s ban on sharing license plate reader info across state lines. www.eff.org/press/releas...