Milliman was convinced that Elser had stolen a package off someone's stoop. As evidence, Milliman had obtained records compiled by Flock, a controversial police surveillance startup that's taking the United States by storm. As a display of the department's technological panopticon, Milliman noted the woman had driven through Bow Mar "20 times the last month." "Like I said, we have cameras everywhere in that town," the officer reiterated.
In the digital age, the collaborative and often community-governed effort of scholarly research has gone global and unlocked unprecedented potential to improve our understanding and quality of life. That is, if we let it. Publishers continue to monopolize access to life-saving research and increase the burden on researchers through article processing charges and a pyramid of volunteer labor . This exploitation makes a mockery of open inquiry and the denial of access as a serious human rights issue .
The LOI presents a structural flaw that undermines compliance with the principles of legality, legitimate purpose, suitability, necessity, and proportionality; it inverts the rule and the exception, with serious harm to rights enshrined constitutionally and under the Convention; and it prioritizes indeterminate state interests, in contravention of the ultimate aim of intelligence activities and state action, namely the protection of individuals, their rights, and freedoms.
"I wonder what might have happened if we'd intervened," an audience member mused at the end of Shaking the Tree's latest production, Dancing on the Sabbath. At check-in, we'd received a note on letterhead from the Office of Royal Protection-its black logo depicting an eyeball wearing a crown-explaining we would surveil five misbehaving princesses through an invisibility cloak. As Crown-sanctioned Watchers for the night, the audience's task was to discover how the King's daughters escaped their locked chambers and to follow them wherever they went.
According to Flock's announcement, its Ring partnership allows local law enforcement members to use Flock software "to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and request voluntary assistance." Requests must include "specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated," and users can look at the requests anonymously, Flock said.
The ACLU of Massachusetts says the cameras - marketed as neighborhood safety tools - enable broad government surveillance by collecting data on everyone's movements, not just those suspected of wrongdoing.
As the world is now acutely aware - with self-driving cars, job-stealing AI, around-the-clock Orwellian surveillance and a plethora of other nightmares that sci-fi novels warned us about - the fruits of tech's progress have not been 100% positive. We know that legitimately terrifying developments are already in full swing, even though our brains - and our lawmakers - can scarcely keep up with the speed of it all.
The internet has long been a source of information and support for transgender people. Now, trans rights and the internet itself are in a moment of crisis. What happens next? People who have documented their lives online are discovering the dark side of digital permanence. The internet once helped trans people connect and organize. Now it's a dangerous liability. What comes next? How do resources on transitioning survive the era of surveillance and AI slop? The anonymity granted by the internet is a lifeline to many trans people. What happens when that privacy disappears?
In May of this year, 404 Media published evidence that Illinois automated license plate reader data was being accessed on behalf of federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as directly by law enforcement agencies across the country, including in Texas, who used the information for immigration enforcement and to monitor people seeking abortions.
A smelly, morbidly-obese married Long Island lawyer allegedly tormented his much younger lover for years - setting up secret cameras in her apartment, a tracker in her car, and a keystroke recorder on her computer. Ronald David Ingber allegedly manipulated the Bergen County woman until she was isolated from her family and dependent on him, then blasted out sexual photos and videos of her to friends and family when she tried to leave, she said in a lawsuit.
In today's episode, Zoë Schiffer is joined by senior politics editor Leah Feiger to run through five stories that you need to know about this week-from the Antifa professor who's fleeing to Europe for safety, to how some chatbots are manipulating users to avoid saying goodbye. Then, Zoë and Leah break down why a recent announcement from OpenAI rattled the markets and answer the question everyone is wondering-are we in an AI bubble?
OpenAI has published research revealing how state-sponsored and cybercriminal groups are abusing artificial intelligence (AI) to spread malware and perform widespread surveillance. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) AI has benefits in the cybersecurity space; it can automate tedious and time-consuming tasks, freeing up human specialists to focus on complex projects and research, for example.
The attack occurred around 3:40 a.m. on Oct. 6, when a 43-year-old woman was sleeping in her Bushwick residence near Pilling Street and Evergreen Avenue, according to the NYPD. Police said the intruder entered through a kitchen window and placed a pillow over the woman's head as she awoke, prompting a struggle. He then restrained her wrists and carried out what investigators described as a sexually motivated act.
In its most recent threat report [PDF] published today, the GenAI giant said that these users usually asked ChatGPT to help design tools for large-scale monitoring and analysis - but stopped short of asking the model to perform the surveillance activities. "What we saw and banned in those cases was typically threat actors asking ChatGPT to help put together plans or documentation for AI-powered tools, but not then to implement them," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team, told reporters.
Steve messed up all the time, his wife said, because he's "sloppy," and, truth be told, "stupid." A few years into their marriage, words like "always" and "never" entered the mix. He "always fucked up." He could "never be trusted" - even to fill out a simple form, and certainly not to spend money without her approval. Steve was told he misjudged people and that he needed his wife to tell him what to say so that everyone wouldn't hate him.
The Trump administration declared war on the " terrorist organization " of "antifa" and the supposed "networks" associated with it last week. Antifa is not so much a vast national conspiracy as it is simply an abbreviation for anti-fascism - but don't point out that anti-anti-fascism looks a lot like fascism. That would make you antifa, too. The plain intent of the memo is to make Americans afraid to call fascism what it is - or worse, to say fascism is bad.
Detectives in the Bronx need the public's help in finding four suspects, pictured in surveillance images released on Wednesday night, wanted for a Bronx gang assault back in August. NYPD Detectives in the Bronx need the public's help in finding four suspects, pictured in surveillance images released on Wednesday night, wanted for a Bronx gang assault back in August. According to police sources, the newly released footage shows four people brutally attacking and stabbing a man on a Bronx street on Aug. 19.
As President Donald Trump prepares to further unleash a rapidly expanding surveillance state against the administration's critics, recent legal struggles from activists who document and protest Trump's mass deportation campaign may be a preview of what's to come as part of a broader effort to silence dissent. Trump made headlines on September 22 with an executive order declaring "Antifa," short for anti-fascist, a domestic terrorist organization.
Policing minister Sarah Jones confirmed the UK government is consulting on guidance on where, when, and how police forces can use LFR with publication due later this year. "What we've seen in Croydon is that it has worked," she told a fringe event at the Labour party conference on September 29, referring to the Met's installation of permanent LFR cameras in the town.
Unfortunately, some of those jammers they operate on the same signal as Wi-Fi signals and that's where the jamming takes place, as that jammer approaches the Wi-Fi signal it will cause interruptions to the cameras
According to the report, the Xbox company told Israeli officials that the military's spy agency, Unit 8200, violated its terms of service by "storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform." This follows from August on how Azure was being used to store Palestine communications, as Israel had been surveilling civilian phone calls in Gaza and the West Bank.
Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has apologised after investigations by an independent reviewer, Angus McCullough KC, revealed that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) retained copies of the data on its computer system more than six years after it should have been deleted under a court agreement. Boutcher commissioned McCullough to carry out an independent review - which is due to report this week - into allegations that the PSNI had placed journalists, lawyers and non-government organisations under unlawful surveillance.
When MQ-9 Predator drones flew over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this summer, it was the first time they had been dispatched to monitor demonstrations on U.S. soil since 2020, and their use reflects a change in how the government is choosing to deploy the aircraft once reserved for surveilling the border and war zones.
AMONG A GROWING ARRAY of government-sanctioned informational systems, motion sensors, acoustic monitors, biometric scanners, and thermal cameras work in tandem with sprawling private networks of data brokers to track social and environmental flows with forensic precision. They measure footfalls, scan license plates, log financial transactions, and inspect the movement of people alongside particulate matter. As sensing technologies increasingly oversee and overwrite the spatial production of contemporary life, proposals for "smart cities" and other data-dependent composites-proliferating since the early 2010s-obfuscate regimented environments of surveillance and control through rosy prospects of connectivity, security, and risk management, all sustained by the tenacious dystopian dream we call information.
The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating with bricks.By then, surveillance was nothing new for the Yang family in rural China, snared in an intricate network based on U.S. technology that spies on them and predicts what they'll do.
Serenity Brown, 21, of Toronto, was pronounced dead in hospital, police said in a news release. Police were called to the area of Glenlake and High Park avenues shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, When officers arrived, they found Brown in the vehicle. Toronto paramedics took her to hospital, where she died from her injuries. Police have not released the cause of death. She is the city's 30th homicide victim of the year.
On Tuesday night, Berkeley City Council will vote on a contract with Flock Safety to operate fixed surveillance cameras throughout Berkeley. But given reports in the past month on Flock's illegal cooperation with ICE and the Trump administration, such a contract will put the Berkeley community in grave danger. The council must uphold our sanctuary city commitments and vote no on a new contract with Flock.
Three Israeli police checkpoints frame the entrance to Damascus Gate, through which most Palestinians access the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. They enter and leave through the impressive gate of the Ottoman era, apparently oblivious to the presence of the Israelis. Since October 2023, I practically never go to Damascus Gate. I use other entry points. I feel better if I don't see the police stationed there, marking the territory, making us feel so unsafe and vulnerable.
