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There is probably a camera on a pole at the entrance to your neighborhood. You’ve probably stopped noticing it. It is small, solar-powered, unremarkable, and it photographs every car that passes: yours, your neighbor’s, your teenager’s. And it reads the license plate, logs the time, and files the record in a national database. The company that owns it is called Flock Safety. Founded in 2017, valued at $7.5 billion, it now operates in more than 5,000 communities across 49 states, and its network scans roughly 20 billion vehicles a month. Twenty billion. Each month. For perspective, there are about...

For weeks, Verona, Wisconsin tried to get Flock to remove the three automated license plate cameras that its city council had voted to stop using. Flock told city employees not to remove the cameras, and a Flock employee told city officials that they were unsure whether the cameras could be remotely disabled, which led the town to decide to put black plastic trash bags over them until Flock eventually removed the cameras itself, according to emails obtained using a public records request by 404 Media. The emails give insight into the process cities face while deFlocking themselves after voting not...

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Friday that he is “very concerned” Canada’s expanding censorship and surveillance laws could erode the free-speech and privacy rights of Americans. Jordan made the comments in a sit-down with Elie Cantin-Nantel of EMCN Media, an independent Canadian digital media venture. The interview came weeks after he and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL) sent a letter to Canada’s public safety minister raising the same concerns. The Ohio Republican said Canada’s Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, would reach beyond Canadian borders because Americans routinely communicate with and travel to the...

New Gallup data show that people are growing increasingly distrustful of major technology companies such as Meta, Apple, and Google, as well as a newer player in the surveillance industry, Flock Safety. Some people are even taking matters into their own hands by destroying the AI-powered surveillance cameras appearing in communities across the country. Flock Safety, a private surveillance technology company founded in 2017, has been earning a reputation as a herald of the much-feared Orwellian “surveillance state.” Although a private company, Flock’s business model operates by selling AI-powered camera and audio detection systems to local and state governments for...

Digital ID: Billionaires are CIRCLING your digital life - it's time to WAKE UP

New York became the first U.S. state on Tuesday to halt construction of large new data centers, imposing a one-year moratorium as concerns grow that the facilities driving the artificial-intelligence boom ‌are raising power costs, straining water supplies and burdening local communities. The moratorium positions New York at the forefront of ‌a growing national debate over how to manage the infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence. While technology companies are racing to build new data centers, lawmakers ​and regulators in dozens of states are weighing measures to limit their effect on electricity grids, utility bills and local communities. "As data...

Which French scandal is worst? The fact that the French authorities have decided to impose QR codes on all people, French as well as foreign tourists, who wish to attend Tuesday's Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées? Or the fact that hardly any news outlet has seen fit to even mention the decision? ... For the first time ever, you cannot just wander over to the most famous street in Paris and simply join the crowd (the same, incidentally, is increasingly true of museums; a stroller cannot be spontaneous and just walk in; he has to sign in beforehand on...

The European Parliament has approved an urgent procedure to fast-track legislation that would revive the EU's expired “Chat Control 1.0” rules. This development sets up a decisive vote on July 9 over whether online platforms may once again be allowed to voluntarily scan private user communications for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). MEPs voted 331 in favor and 304 against using the urgency procedure, allowing Parliament to bypass the usual committee stage. The procedural vote does not itself reinstate the law but accelerates consideration of a proposal that would effectively restore the temporary legal framework that expired in April.

An innocent driver is stopped by a gun-waving police officer who sics a dog on him and he ends up in jail for hours, or even days. It’s happening more and more in America, a new study confirms, and it’s all because the technology for machines to read license plate numbers, and report them, fails. The results are from a study by the Institute for Justice, which confirmed such cases coming up over and over. The list, large already, is growing: A Colorado driver was repeatedly pulled over after officers mistakenly put his license plate number on a Flock hotlist....

China is so CASHLESS that even beggars use WeChat QR code when they beg for money.

Local moratoriums spring up after state inaction, while New Mexico and Utah fight “hyperscale” data polluters .... Local governments in Colorado are moving quickly to slap moratoriums on new data center development in reaction to a public backlash against rising electricity prices, heavy pollution and lucrative tax breaks. Denver, Jefferson County and Longmont have all moved in recent weeks to limit data centers, which house servers for mass computation that demand enormous amounts of electricity and cooling water. Cities and counties are moving in part because the state legislature failed to act in 2026, eventually letting two competing bills die...

A new order says OnStar data sharing went too far, and now the brakes are on. - FTC says GM sold location and driving data without clear consent. - Order bars sharing with reporting agencies for full five years. - Drivers can opt out and request old data about them be deleted. If you’ve ever had the creeping suspicion that your car, and the company behind it, knows more about you than it probably should, you’re not imagining things. But the pushback has already started. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just slapped a ban on GM preventing it from...

A Milwaukee police officer resigned after investigators found he had used automated license plate reader technology to track a woman he was dating nearly 180 times in the span of two months. The Institute for Justice points to a Kansas police chief who allegedly ran an ex-girlfriend's plate more than 200 times. In Kentucky, another officer reportedly tracked an ex hundreds of times over a two-month period. In each instance, the searches were entered into the systems as investigative activity, which means databases built for legitimate criminal work were allegedly repurposed for deeply personal surveillance.

How Will Digital IDs Work?

Digital ID is set to be expanded, in a move the government hopes will stop Aussies from being bogged down by online paperwork. #9News

Co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, who serves as the cloud giant's CTO, has been part of the tech industry's furniture for decades now. Looking ahead, he projects the rise of technologies such as AI, drones, and additional monitoring systems. “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on." — Larry Ellison, September 2024 The modern surveillance state Ellison's warning came during an hour-long Q&A at an Oracle financial analyst meeting in September 2024. This world that Ellison describes revolves around AI technologies processing huge amounts of video footage from the explosion...

The Digital Print x CHINA x Jordan B Peterson

For years, China has built what many observers have described as the most extensive surveillance network in human history. Now, thanks to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, that network is evolving into something far more powerful--and far more concerning. According to recent reporting from the Financial Times, Chinese authorities are upgrading their already vast surveillance infrastructure with advanced AI systems capable of analyzing behavior, identifying individuals, predicting crowd activity, and even anticipating potential social unrest before it occurs. This is no longer simply about cameras watching street corners. It is about creating a real-time digital map of an entire society....

We don't want anything like this in the UK

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.fbi.gov/houston/press-releases/2012/russian-agent-and-10-other-members-of-procurement-network-for-russian-military-and-intelligence-operating-in-the-u.s.-and-russia-indicted-in-new-york Russian Agent and 10 Other Members of Procurement Network for Russian Military and Intelligence Operating in the U.S. and Russia Indicted in New York Defendants Also Include Texas- and Russia-Based Corporations; 165 Persons and Companies ‘Designated’ by Commerce Department U.S. Attorney’s Office October 03, 2012 BROOKLYN, NY—An indictment was unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York charging 11 members of a Russian military procurement network operating in the United States and Russia, as well as a Texas-based export company and a Russia-based procurement firm, with illegally...