100%. Entire thread is worth reading too.

ae@aelkus.bsky.social · 4d ago

i think that the end goal of a lot of tech companies at this point is to destroy any point social or psychological mediation the individual has left, such that there are any only atomized individuals connected by computer networks, with the tech company oligarch as the owner or operator of said nets

Alert: Eyes Off ALX needs your help tmrw (9/24)! APD’s delayed clarifications on its ALPR policy do NOT acknowledge tech risks/harms. We need folks to show up and demand real accountability. Meet us tmrw, 9/24 @ 5:30pm Pork Barrel, then come w/ us to APD’s 6:30pm public session @ Duncan Library!

1st they killed a right to privacy. I said nothing b/c I’m no criminal. 2nd they stopped freedom from tracking. I said nothing b/c I’m no criminal. 3rd they penalized seeking knowledge. I said nothing b/c I’m no criminal. Finally, they labeled me capable of crime. No one was left to defend me.

More Perfect Union@moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 3w ago

Anthropic Is building a surveillance system to monitor activists using a “pre-crime” approach that tries to predict incidents before they happen. The extensive monitoring system that the AI company is building is aimed primarily at keeping tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of AI.

APD: Don’t worry about our mass surveillance tech! We have a policy we self-govern. Just trust us. LOCAL NEWS: APD not clearly answering tech Qs. APD policy was ignored. APD pushing back on data limits. ALX: Maybe we should have a public process to verify police tech need, use, etc… ACLU: 👍👏😉

Chad Marlow@chadmarlow.bsky.social · 2mo ago

The ACLU is leading the fight against these invasive policing surveillance technologies. And the solution John Oliver calls for? That’s the ACLU’s Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) effort. If your municipality doesn't have a CCOPS law yet, adopt one! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnBP...

287 paid subscribers is not enough, get with the program ALX.

The Alexandria Brief@alexandriabrief.com · last mo.

Belmore's Notebook: a new Saturday column on what didn't make it into the story

Fun fact, you do not actually have to use 9/11 to frame discussion about every single Muslim American in 2026. You can simply choose to treat them as different unrelated topics, because they are. Hope this helps, media!

btwe I have warned you motherfuckers for what feels like 20 years that no fucking good was going to come from those MIT robo dogs but none of you fucking listened just stop it with this shit science and leave the mummy crypts the fuck alone, too www.the-independent.com/news/world/a...

ICE plans to spend up to $2M on robot dogs

The four-legged robots are equipped with cameras and Wi-Fi connectivity and can travel at speeds of up to about 5 feet per second

the-independent.com

Y’all - Age Verification Will NOT Solve Parents’ Internet/Social Media Woes! Sure, there are minor wins in the Meta settlement. But the “age assurance” demand gives MORE power to the entities devising digital harms w/o changing their incentives to improve products (for kids and adults alike). Grr.

ALT:

static.klipy.com

Mike Masnick@masnick.com · last mo.

In case you wanted about 3,700 words on the problems with today's "settlement" that gives Meta way more power over how the internet works than it should have.

Meta’s $18B child-safety deal hinges on age verification tech that doesn’t work well

Meta’s $18B child-safety deal hinges on age verification tech that doesn’t work well

The historic settlement reignites ongoing concern around how age-verification technology puts privacy at risk.

techcrunch.com

The NYT is going to invent a new verb tense before they write a headline implying the Trump administration is responsible for anything

Jeremy Diamond ☕️@dmnd.me · last mo.

Pretty rare I get an NYT push notification this poorly written

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.

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

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license…

wired.com

Local police are increasingly doing to work of lobbying to boost Axon tech. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead, there was robust public input, risk/benefit analysis, and meaningful (not performative) public policies surrounding such tech?! Maybe let’s push for better city gov oversight… just sayin’

Electronic Frontier Foundation@eff.org · 10mo ago

EFF has long warned about police use of facial recognition technology. Now we're seeing exactly what we feared: Axon is testing this tech in body-worn cameras. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

For every city getting rid of Flock ALPRs, beware the uninformed bait and switch with Axon…

Alt National Park Service@altnps.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Trump purchased up to $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise just weeks before ICE issued a notice seeking a contract worth up to $220 million for equipment that experts say only Axon is positioned to provide. The White House has said there is “no conflict of interest”. 🙄

There are going to be Democrats who say we shouldn’t rip it all out — it’s already built, we have other priorities — but removing the visible signs of Trumpism is absolutely necessary.

Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social · last mo.

The vandalism and desecration of the White House isn't just vanity and it's not trivial. It's caesarism, as in literally what Julius Caesar did to the symbolic architecture of civic republicanism. Our national iconography matters and allowing the disfiguring of it to persist is a substantive harm.

Ypsilanti Township in Michigan passed a six month moratorium on “major electric utility infrastructure” as a delaying tactic, the latest in the Township’s long fight to stop the construction of a $1.2 billion data center. @mjgault.bsky.social reports. Read more: www.404media.co/township-fig...

The subtext here is that they expect US-born workers to soon be so desperate for employment (whether because of AI-hype-fueled or DOGE-type downsizing) that they'll be eager to take the kinds of jobs that, historically, only immigrants were willing to do.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last mo.

Bessent on the latest bad jobs report: "After the deportations that we've seen and the closing of the border, we don't need to produce as many jobs"

“we’re witnessing the growth of a massive public-private bureaucracy that’s metastasizing in unnerving new directions. It now appears to entail extensive domestic surveillance operations as well.” Essential from @gregsargent.bsky.social This is what the next Dem admin must dismantle

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · last mo.

Trump's covert surveillance of anti-ICE protesters is much worse than we thought. I dug into this and found that DHS agents secretly spied on over a dozen meetings of left-leaning groups, all protected by First Amendment. The details are unnerving. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2144...

As the midterms approach, we tested AI chatbots on election disinformation. Our research found they can challenge conspiracy theories — but they also enable users to generate deceptive election content. Here’s what we found: bit.ly/3TSPbV6

Does AI Fight or Fuel Election Disinformation?

As the midterms approach, our tests reveal that popular chatbots challenge conspiracy theories. Still, they offer users the ability to create deceitful images, audio, and video.

brennancenter.org

BREAKING: S.T.O.P. Condemns New Flock AI Tools, Calls Company Safeguards "Crisis PR Stunt" "Flock isn't fixing a broken system, it's building an even worse one." - STOP Executive Director Michelle Dahl #Flock #AI #ALPRs www.stopspying.org/content-inpu...

S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project

stopspying.org

Anyone sounding the AI alarm should get smart on each choke point of the AI stack layer (and the related issues). Consumer-output harms raise the loudest mass opposition, but unsexy, inherent risks of the structure underneath are also deeply in need of guardrails. Worth a read…

Justin Hendrix@justinhendrix.bsky.social · last mo.

Ellen P. Goodman, a professor at Rutgers Law School and co-Director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law, asks what it would take to actually democratize AI at each layer of the stack, starting with compute—the layer Zuckerberg's latest manifesto skips.

Wow this is huge. Rhode Island's Governor just became the first (I believe?) in the nation to call for a moratorium on installation of Flock cameras and other ALPRs www.wpri.com/news/politic...

McKee calls for statewide pause on installing automated license plate readers

On Tuesday, Gov. Dan McKee announced that he had directed Rhode Island State Police and the Department of Public Safety to conduct a 60-day “comprehensive review” of ALPR systems.

wpri.com

Paying to examine every detail of a business’s death spiral has kind of the same vibes as the torturer in the Princess Bride asking Westley to explain his pain in detail, for inclusion in a scientific study of pain. Or maybe Lector savoring Clarice Starling’s descriptions of childhood trauma.

Google Buys Spirit Airlines’ Emails, Files And Flight Records For $10 Million — So Gemini Can Learn From Bankruptcy

Google won a bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines’ internal data, paying $10 million for emails, Teams messages, code repositories, operating records, pricing data, maintenance history, and disrupti...

viewfromthewing.com

New surveillance technologies are always appropriated to inflict intimate partner violence. While systems like smart cameras are sold as ways to increase safety, there are few, if any, guardrails to prevent them from becoming tools of domestic violence. 19thnews.org/2026/08/floc...

Flock is just the latest example of using surveillance to stalk women

The technology is under fire for how police officers have abused it. But it’s only the symptom of a larger problem.

19thnews.org

But their CEO said they would zero out crime, so it’s hard to know what to believe.

5,000 Flock Cameras Cover Atlanta, Yet The Police Are Resolving Fewer Crimes - Jalopnik

Flock cameras are all around Atlanta, but the rates at which crimes are getting solved or "cleared" have actually gone down in the last few years.

jalopnik.com

There should be an emergency meeting among Dem leadership tonight and the entire Dem delegation should be on the Capitol steps tomorrow morning denouncing this and describing steps they’ll take in light of this latest dangerous insanity.

Brian Tyler Cohen@briantylercohen.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Breaking: Trump announces the US will now be siding with North Korea and Kim Jong Un instead of the democratic South Korea. “Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea...”

Without real consequences for police abuse, Flock Safety's reforms are "just a fig leaf for Flock,” EFF’s @cooperq.com told @techcrunch.com. "The best way to ensure accountability is to pass laws constraining the use of this technology and requiring a warrant for its use.”

Flock says its new tool will help identify police abuse, but hasn’t explained how it works | TechCrunch

The surveillance company announced it's making a tool called "Audit Assistance" mandatory for all customers, claiming it's already helped catch abuse. But the company has yet to explain how the tool w...

techcrunch.com

In 2025, about a month after the US strikes on Iran, Speaker Mike Johnson met with Israeli PM Netanyahu. Johnson issued a public statement about the meeting. But I just found out more about it...

You do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to Karoline Leavitt and her team. JFC

Eric Lipton NYT@ericlipton.nytimes.com · 2mo ago

One you might find surprising. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt & members of her team have been extremely helpful in responding to questions I raise. Regardless of public facing commentary, privately they are willing to engage and address questions. And I have appreciated that. Thank you

Awaiting comments from elected officials who loved emphasizing talking points that longer data retention periods were both necessary and privacy protective… With Flock shortening retention, those officials are, at best, under-informed (or not factoring true data risks under any retention length).

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Flock just announced some pretty huge changes that are clearly the result of increased scrutiny on the company from journalists, activists, and local communities. An indication that it sees the current state of affairs as untenable: www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-g...

It's really hard to overstate how hugely ending Salvadorian TPS would hit economically and socially -- in a very different way from Haiti. These are folks who have had TPS for LONGER THAN DHS has existed. The Great Delegalization continues apace. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

These Immigrants Lived in the U.S. Legally. Now Trump Is Changing Their Status.

More than a million immigrants are seeing protections that granted them safe lives in the U.S. suddenly swept away.

newyorker.com