Who could have predicted that third party verification programs collecting IDs to age gate content would have all their data hacked?! Oh right…..everyone!

A San Francisco Supervisor wants to amend a landmark surveillance law so it is harder to sue police when they spy on you illegally. Police are not above the law and this policy change will result in one thing: more illegal surveillance. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

My response to Ring's decision to roll back reforms and go back to surveillance on behalf of police as a business model. This is part of a trend of companies bending over backwards to get in on the techno-authoritarian money/power grab that comes with being a lapdog of the carceral state.

Folks need to be paying attention to the growth of Real-Time Crime Centers. It is not just NYC, but they tend to lead on these things. www.biometricupdate.com/202510/nypd-...

I’m watching the Jonathan Demme/Denzel Washington Manchurian Candidate remake and not only do I think it’s fantastic—I also think it might be a defining film to capture the era of the endless war on terror.

Ads reveal that Flock, makers of automated license plate readers and other surveillance technology, are promising to introduce "Distress detection" into their gunshot detection devices which will alert police when it hears human voices in distress, including screaming. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

“The judge or the prosecutor doesn't know which portions were written by the AI and which portions were written by the officer,” EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told KPBS News. “It interjects a lot of uncertainty — and a lot of deniability for the officer.” www.kpbs.org/news/public...

It amazes me that politicians continuously sell us the idea of policing as the only route to peace and safety when with our own eyes, everyday, from the Punisher logo to this, we are forced to confront the fact that they outwardly present themselves as a death and violence cult.

NEW: ICE is planning to hire a team of nearly 30 people to surveil social media 24/7, build dossiers on people, and flag them for arrest and deportation. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ice-so...

The false positive rate on this is going to be 450%. 7000% once people see the recorders and start pranking them. Which will eventually mean the false positive rate will be zero, bc the cops will start ignoring them altogether.

Major corporations stop making products designed to violate wiretap laws challenge

Flock to receive the prestigious Joey Skaggs Public Disturbance Award for inventing an omnipresent device that can endlessly tie up police investigative resources using only the power of protected speech.

This is the same Flock whose nation-wide data ICE keeps finding ways to access.

Flock is preparing to roll out a new feature: Its gunshot detection devices will begin listening for voices in “distress”

Ads reveal that Flock, makers of automated license plate readers and other surveillance technology, are promising to introduce "Distress detection" into their gunshot detection devices which will alert police when it hears human voices in distress, including screaming. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

The @nytimes.com broke down how DC became a testing ground for ICE and their conclusions are exactly what organizers have been screaming about at the top of our lungs: “One key to the strategy: ICE’s close partnership with both [MPD] and the U.S. Park Police.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/u...

ICE lied about the person it shot, claiming he was a "criminal," but NBC finds that he had no criminal history whatsoever. Not even traffic tickets in 12 years! It also lied about the extent of the injuries to its agents....

“As predicted by many activists and civil rights advocates, ICE is increasingly becoming a force tasked with enforcing the political will of the administration and straying further and further from its original mission,” EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told @Truthout.org. truthout.org/articles/tr...

The campaign promise in 2024 was that they would deport so many people it would drive the price of housing down. Now they want to deport their way into shorter wait times at hospitals. I truly don't know how or if these guys can believe their own propaganda at this point.

I've been writing about the war on drugs for more than 20 years. There are some cases that have stuck with me -- names that have never left my head. For the last couple years, I've been working with The Intercept on a podcast to tell their stories. It launches in a week.

While Ring has offered end-to-end video encryption since 2021, it isn’t the default setting so users should look into changing the privacy settings on their security cameras, EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told WBUR’s Here & Now. www.wbur.org/hereandnow/...

If Judge Young gets impeached for this bracingly honest opinion, I would not be surprised in the LEAST. It's not just the cover page — look at how he describes testimony from the acting ICE director, Todd Lyons on masked agents: "disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable."

In a 161-page ruling, Federal District Court Judge William Young finds that noncitizens in the US have the same First Amendment rights as citizens, and the State and DHS secretaries violated the law by arresting and deporting pro-Palestinian protesters. storage.courtlistener.com/rec...

You have to wonder what's happening behind the scenes. Local police have their own blanket surveillance on cities, but the massive semi-unseen federal national security apparatus also has its own surveillance. Those *tend* to have a few more legal safeguards, but then again, who knows these days.

10 years of painstaking carceral studies historiography made explicit and obvious in the last 3 months.

From the Caribbean to Gaza to Portland this whole administration’s posture is basically that they are *encouraging* the slaughter of civilians because to them it’s a sign of toughness and good war fighting. No wonder this is likely to be the first administration that uses AI to automate weapons.

I fully understand how difficult it is to remain focused on any one particular atrocity but this really ought to be a serious scandal and people need to pay heavy prices for this

ICYMI: I wrote a short article about a phenomenon of 20th century researchers using the FBI like reference library by asking them biographical questions about subjects likely surveilled. Poses interesting Q's about future humanities/social science research in the age of mass digital surveillance.

ICYMI: I wrote a short article about a phenomenon of 20th century researchers using the FBI like reference library by asking them biographical questions about subjects likely surveilled. Poses interesting Q's about future humanities/social science research in the age of mass digital surveillance.

“But this is unconstitutional, they can’t do this!” I mutter over and over to myself as they take me to the gulag on what was once Paramount’s Hollywood lot because the menorah in my window was deemed anti-Christian”

Great thread. If you only read one skeet, read this one.

One thing to keep in mind about this thread is that the tech capabilities of police departments don't happen in a vacuum. City, state, and federal law enforcement agencies collaborate. Regional fusion centers exist to take local surveillance and make it a federal national security issue, etc.

Very important thread, especially in light of our slide into authoritarianism.

I don't think the general US public really understands that the US fascist state will have 10,000 times more info on you than the German state police ever did.

Read this thread

However much you think your data is being collected by police, you're probably underestimating it. The actual scale is mind-bending. And it's tempting to think "oh well I don't do crimes so whatever" but what about if and when your beliefs, associations, or speech becomes a crime?

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 Important thread!

Must-read thread for anyone that hasn't taken steps to protect themselves from digital surveillance because "I haven't broke any laws" or "it's too much work" or whatever excuse you may be telling yourself.

🧵

I spent the week at the police surveillance convention and let me tell you my biggest observation: The name of the game now is consolidating as much information as humanely possible from surveillance devices, the internet, other governmental data, and literally a million other places. 🧵

So you are saying…

read the entire thread. this is why I've been talking nonstop about how capture of data re: meshing, uniting disparate stuff and capture of institutions should be our focus as much as surveillance. that's been the gov-tech vision for a while. I wrote more here: www.baykurt.org/wp-content/u...

Read this please. And consider following Matthew G. He has the latest knowledge of tech. Plus he is a bona fide historian of policing. We all need to learn from him and his perspective. Follow: @mguariglia.bsky.social

Yeeeeeeeeeeep.

I attended a conference of police all discussing surveillance and technology and here’s what learned:

I spent the week at the police surveillance convention and let me tell you my biggest observation: The name of the game now is consolidating as much information as humanely possible from surveillance devices, the internet, other governmental data, and literally a million other places. 🧵

What could one bad Chicago cop cost the taxpayers, Michael? $90M, 200 years of people wrongfully imprisoned, plus his salary, overtime, benefits, retirement plan, guns, cars & everything he can fit in his pockets out of the evidence room for over a decade?

JUST IN: A new class action lawsuit challenges ICE's warrantless immigration arrests in Washington, D.C., which they say are occuring without probable cause and based largely on perceived ethnicity. www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

NEW WIRED led the way in reporting on Elon Musk's efforts to dismantle the US government. My colleagues and I spoke to 100s of employees at dozens of agencies to understand what happened. This is the definitive story of DOGE as told by those who experienced it www.wired.com/story/oral-h...

Flock around, find out: Flock apparently decided to reinstall all of the ALPRs they recently took down in Evanston. One problem though: they didn't consult Evanston about it. The city sent a cease & desist letter, and Flock has "committed to promptly removing the cameras." Full story here ⬇️