Nick Hidalgo
@nickhidalgo.bsky.social
Senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California
Even law enforcement officers know there is something inherently wrong with license plate readers and try to hide when they use the surveillance devices. Police secrecy should not be prioritized over privacy for anyone else. www.404media.co/do-not-menti...
‘DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE’: How Cops Are Trying to Hide Their Use of Flock
“DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE. DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT."
404media.co
"Flock cameras are just one part of a vast ecosystem," @lastweektonight.com's John Oliver warned his audience last night. "Check out resources like the EFF's Atlas of Surveillance, which catalogs each of the technologies used in your area." www.atlasofsurveillance.org/
Communities across the country are canceling their Flock contracts under public pressure. We built a toolkit to help yours be next! Because here’s the thing: these aren’t normal traffic cameras. They log every passing car into a national database law enforcement—including ICE—can search.
New: We found 50 cops who misused Flock cameras and other license-plate readers for personal purposes, often to spy on their girlfriends or ex-wives. He "watched every single move I made. ... Who do you turn the chief of police in to?" wapo.st/3S6rTuo
She left her ex. He secretly tracked her through a network of policing cameras.
Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems.
wapo.st
In addition to being creepy and dangerous surveillance dragnets, license plate readers don't even work.
Jake Snow@snowjake.bsky.social · 5d agoAutomated License Plate Readers: Dangerous when they're right and dangerous when they're wrong. www.businessinsider.com/flock-camera...
What a colossally bad idea. I can't even imagine a positive use case for this product.
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoTook me seconds to make an image showing 'protesters' around Google buildings, using Google Earth's new AI generation tool. You can make bomb blasts, protesters, drone strikes, nuclear plants. How on earth did Google think this was a good idea www.404media.co/google-earth...
hell yes! 404 media has been doing fantastic work folks, support their work!
Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 5d agoIMPACT: that company that was offering to buy books for AI companies’ training data — and probably destroy them in the process — says it will no longer offer this service following 404 Media’s exposure of it www.404media.co/ai-company-t...
Come work with us!
Jake Snow@snowjake.bsky.social · 6d agoCOME WORK at the ACLU! @aclu-norcal.bsky.social is hiring attorneys to work on tech and civil rights (my team) and the criminal legal/immigration system. These folks will work at the cutting edge of legal and policy efforts in California and beyond. Apply here: www.aclunorcal.org/jobs/staff-a...
Flock's CEO just told local media its license plate readers don't take video. This came after the LAPD cancelled its contract Except, Flock announced a new feature that can turn "all" Flock cameras into live video cameras. Flock has now deleted the announcement www.404media.co/flocks-ceo-s...
Flock's CEO Says its ALPRs Don't Do Video After Repeatedly Announcing They Can
Flock's CEO Garrett Langley says people don't understand the capabilities of its ALPR system, but they do.
404media.co
New: Public records show how a city that ended its Flock contract spent months trying to get the company to remove the cameras or turn off the cameras. They were told Flock "objects" to the city removing the camera itself. Eventually city put trash bags over them: www.404media.co/flock-object...
Flock ‘Objects to Our Removing Their Equipment’: Emails Reveal Why a Town Put Bags Over Its Flock Cameras
"For the time being, if you or someone on your crew has availability to secure black plastic bags (or something else) over the cameras, that would be great."
404media.co
Very excited to share this with the world. We have been working on it for a while! www.wired.com/story/the-ac...
The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets
A new toolkit for attorneys in Massachusetts targets the technologies police use—and conceal—to build criminal cases, from facial recognition to AI-written police reports.
wired.com
Some really crazy cases in here - cop looked up ex-girlfriend and family in Flock 100+ times - cop stalked wife giving "test" as reason - cop searched one plate 395 times in 10 months; was later fired Cops keep getting arrested for using Flock to stalk people www.404media.co/cops-keep-ge...
Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People
There have been more than a dozen cases around the country where police use Flock to obsessively and illegally stalk people.
404media.co
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-...
City Learns Flock Accessed Cameras in Children's Gymnastics Room as a Sales Pitch Demo, Renews Contract Anyway
Residents of Dunwoody, Georgia are furious about the city's surveillance contract with Flock. Do their elected officials care?
404media.co
The only thing that anyone should hear as they read this:
Blake E. Reid@chup.blakereid.org · 4mo agoOpenAI's "industrial policy" doc is a helpful roadmap for the tropes they are about to flood the zone with (including via "research" grants) to influence law and policy. Look out for stuff like the "Right to AI," "democratization," "public-private collaboration," "open economy,"... 1/
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
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.
Lawmakers Ask Tech Companies What User Data They Provided to D.H.S.
nytimes.com
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...
Santa Clara County Leaders Cut Out Flock Safety in New Surveillance Policy | KQED
Santa Clara County Supervisors amended their own policies to restrict Flock Safety license plate cameras in three South Bay cities.
kqed.org
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
Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 5mo agowhat even is the fucking point
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...
Op-ed: San Jose can protect immigrants by ending Flock surveillance system - San José Spotlight
As ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate read...
sanjosespotlight.com
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
rat king 🐀 👑 @mikeisaac.bsky.social · 6mo agoDHS is being more aggressive than ever targeting anonymous social media accounts that have spoken out against ICE, asking Big Tech to hand over information on users without signed judicial warrants story w/ @sheeraf.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
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:
aclunorcal.org
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...
Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts
nytimes.com
Proud to be part of the ACLU team opposing DHS attempts to harass and intimidate people exercising their First Amendment rights.
Jake Snow@snowjake.bsky.social · 6mo agoThe 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...
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...
Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans
Meta’s analysis that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong.
eff.org
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.
Ring Superbowl Ad Shows Americans How Powerful Surveillance Systems Have Become, Freaks Them Out | ACLU
Think twice about sending video from your home to companies, and possibly police and hackers
aclu.org
