Is This Our Future?

Is this what Trump’s leading us to?

How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners

An unsecured police dashboard was a rare window into how the authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of private data.

New York Times

By Lily Kuo and Pei-Lin Wu

Aug. 2, 2026

Most days, Marc Hofer, a cybersecurity researcher and journalist based in Amsterdam, trawls the internet for clues about how China surveils its citizens, a subject that has fascinated him since he worked there as a foreign correspondent.

Mr. Hofer, 46, was doing his usual scan earlier this year when he came across something called “Dynamic Control Platform for Overseas Personnel.” It was a futuristic dashboard — like something from the movie “Minority Report” — that appeared to track foreigners in the northern Chinese city of Zhangjiakou, a popular skiing spot that co-hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The system’s dashboard said it tracked more than 700 foreign residents living in the city. In total, it had entries for nearly 12,000 people, which included fugitives, people from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as more than 300 foreign journalists. Some of them had not been to Zhangjiakou.

Is this what we are starting to do here? Making us into a police state? Where I live, the crime reports show a safety grade of A, which is 74% better than the U.S. average.

But still, there were comments like this:

• Would someone please tell me what freedoms you’re losing in the name of safety? Because it sounds to me like you’re mad that you can’t speed and run stoplights
• I don't understand why people hate FLOCK cameras so much. If you’re not doing anything wrong, why does it bother you? These cameras solve crimes, find stolen cars, and help catch people who think they can get away with anything.
• There’s cameras everywhere anyway, so who cares at this point?

People are divided into two camps: those who don't think there's anything wrong with tracking citizens, as in China, as long as it reduces crime. (Of course, even now, they have no real idea what the actual crime rate is.) They don't seem to care that this approach leads society down the path toward totalitarianism. Truthout wrote back in 2015, before this discussion even began:

From 1933 through 1945, before being destroyed and dismantled, buildings here housed the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the leadership of the SS (Protection Squad of the Nazi Party) and the Reich Security Main Office. These institutions used cold and brutal methods to serve cold and brutal purposes. Following World War II, Communist Party secret police in East Germany surveilled people’s mail, telephone calls and foreigners. With 500,000 professional and civilian informants — and estimates as high as 2 million (if occasional informants are included) — to monitor a population of 17 million, the Stasi have been described the most intrusive surveillance organizations in world history.

Totalitarian regimes in Germany made widespread use of mass surveillance in order to dominate freedom and carry out horrific crimes. It is no surprise then that Germany is today a top-ranking country globally for data privacy and protection laws, that Berlin has evolved to become one of the world capitals for hackers and data privacy advocates, and that one of the first peer-to-peer computational platforms to guarantee user privacy against unwanted electronic surveillance, Enigma, is named after the tool that the Nazis used to broadcast coded messages from. Yet, ironically, the power of today’s mass surveillance systems — like those of the NSA, brought to light by Edward Snowden’s revelations — far exceed what previous totalitarian regimes could have imagined. Surveillance has spread like a pandemic.

And are we heading down that path?

As more of our personal information moves from our own computers to cloud services, an increasing share of our digital lives is stored by third parties. That makes it potentially more accessible to ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies than when it existed only on a personal device. Combined with advances in AI and data analytics, many civil liberties advocates worry this could enable increasingly comprehensive surveillance of ordinary citizens. Previously, they had to come to your house, but when it is in the vapors of the cloud... who knows who can get access to it without your knowledge!

Do you have stuff up in the clouds? I do. I have all the slide presentations I have given, from the cultural diversity ones to the ones on trans history, on Google Drive.

You Get What You Voted For

[Editorial]

When you vote for hate, bigotry, and corruption, don't be surprised if that is what you get! You saw what he did in his first term, but it didn't matter. He was against what you are against.

His sexual exploits didn't matter.

His racism didn't matter.

His 34 convictions didn't matter.

His draft dodging didn't matter.

His bigotry didn't matter.

*****

He was against the Democrats, whom I also hated.

He was against the foreigners, whom I also hated.

He was against the gays, whom I also hated.

He was against the crime, which I also hated.

Trump was elected based on hate, and this is the result of that election—the election that was run on hate. The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

Just look at ICE and CBP... their tactics, their dress, and their holding warehouses. Who do they remind you of? I don't even have to say it because you know who I am talking about.

Tell me, what do you think of all the Automated License Plate Readers? It is amazing that the polling data shows a divide: those who see nothing wrong with all the surveillance tend to be Trump supporters.

Do you know who owns the ALPR companies? Neither do we. Why? Because they are owned by venture capitalists and private equity firms, so we don't really know who owns them other than that they are "billionaires."

You know all those "data centers" everyone is up in arms over? Well, some of those data centers are for the "Cloud" when you store your data online, guess where it goes? Yup, to a data center (hence the name). But it is not only that; it's also all the ALPR data, and not just for 60 or 90 days, but forever and ever. Can you imagine being questioned by police for a crime and they ask, "What were you doing on the night of December 28, 2024, at 1:05 AM?" The data never goes away... they just keep building more data centers.

Look at the persecution of us. The trans community was persecuted back in the 1930s in Germany, if you want to learn where the pink triangle came from, learn your history! But now we are taking advice on our elections from Putin; Trump said that Putin gave him some very good advice on mail-in ballots.

We can see the trajectory we are heading on. Will the voters see it, or will they continue to be blinded by hate?

There is no surprise in where we are today. When people vote for hate, this is what we get.

[/Editorial]

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After I write the blog I have it proofread for grammar by an AI and then afterwards I ask it what it thought about the post. this is Gemini response in part to the question.

When marginalized communities are targeted by political movements, the infrastructure of surveillance—like the endless retention of ALPR data, private equity-backed tech, and aggressive federal policing—isn't just an abstract privacy issue; it's an existential threat. The state and corporate entities building these data pipelines are the exact ones trans people have historical reason to not trust with infinite retention of their movements and lives.

But what really got to me was I tried first to have it proofread on Perplexity and it rejected it saying was promoting racism!

Accuracy

[Editorial]

Accuracy counts, but it matters much more in some situations than in others. While accuracy in a cornhole game might not be important, accuracy in reporting crimes is critical. The tech industry and academia give a nice, fancy name to this disparity: "surveillance asymmetry." However, out on the streets, an automation error puts innocent people in life-or-death situations.

'Flock Flocked up'

How a license plate camera misread unraveled one man's life.

Business Insider

By Nicole Einbinder 

Mar 9, 2026

In April 2024, Brandon Upchurch and his cousin were driving home from a convenience store when they noticed flashing lights behind them. When Upchurch pulled over, officers from the Toledo Police Department drew their guns and ordered him out of his red Dodge Ram.

Upchurch initially refused to turn off the engine or exit the truck, and repeatedly asked officers why he was being pulled over. An officer named Adrian Wilson warned that he would deploy his police dog if Upchurch didn't get on the ground. As Upchurch began to get down, Wilson released the animal.

The dog latched onto Upchurch's dreadlocks, rammed his head into the ground, and sunk its teeth into his arm. Wilson later said he thought Upchurch had tripped and was getting ready to run.

"Your car has a stolen license plate on it," one of the officers said. His plates weren't stolen, Upchurch insisted. He was transported to a hospital for his injuries, then sent to the county jail, where he remained for hours. The charges, which were later dismissed, were obstructing official business and resisting arrest.

Flock's stated mission is "shaping the future of safety." Or is it actually bringing us into the dystopian era of George Orwell's 1984 and Big Brother? The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote back in 2024 about this exact crisis:

The Human Toll of ALPR Errors

By Adam Schwartz

Imagine driving to get your nails done with your family and all of a sudden, you are pulled over by police officers for allegedly driving a stolen car. You are dragged out of the car and detained at gun point. So are your daughter, sister, and nieces. The police handcuff your family, even the children, and force everyone to lie face-down on the pavement, before eventually realizing that they made a mistake. This happened to Brittney Gilliam and her family on a warm Sunday in Aurora, Colorado, in August 2020.

And the error? The police officers who pulled them over were relying on information generated by automated license plate readers (ALPRs). These are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, upload them to a central server, and compare them to a “hot list” of vehicles sought by police. The ALPR system told the police that Gilliam’s car had the same license plate number as a stolen vehicle. But the stolen vehicle was a motorcycle with Montana plates, while Gilliam’s vehicle was an SUV with Colorado plates.

You don't hear about these "errors" until they get someone killed.

Wrongful detentions like these happen all over the country. In Atherton, California, police officers pulled over Jason Burkleo on his way to work, on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle. They ordered him at gun point to lie on his stomach to be handcuffed, only to later realize that their license plate reader had misread an ‘H’ for an ‘M’. In Espanola, New Mexico, law enforcement officials detained Jaclynn Gonzales at gun point and placed her 12 year-old sister in the back of a patrol vehicle, before discovering that the reader had mistaken a ‘2’ for a ‘7’ on their license plates. One study found that ALPRs misread the state of 1-in-10 plates (not counting other reading errors).

What someone needs to do is sue the pants off of the ALPR companies. Right now, there are no incentives for the companies to achieve 'Zero Defects.' In the meantime, I hope that no one gets killed.

[/Editorial]

Thoughts

"Then he grabbed up some bolts, he let out a laugh, / said I'll split them right down the middle, / gonna cut them right up in half... / and then storm clouds gathered above into great balls of fire."

— Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Origin of Love

That is exactly what the Supreme Court ruling just did… it split us right down the middle. Besides being horribly wrong, it is going to create a new Underground Railroad.

What a can of worms they just opened!

Think of this: they just created a system akin to the Underground Railroad, but in the electronic age. In the era of telehealth. In the era of mail-order drugs. All these laws do is open up the black market. Soon, you will start seeing underground ads for blockers and hormones.

You will see an increase in self-medication. These Republicans don’t see the real world; they live in their own little fantasy world.

Then I have to wonder—will this be the excuse for a massive surveillance network? License plate cameras, speed cameras, and Ring cameras, all tracking your every move?

It is not just us, but also women who might be having an abortion. It is the era of Big Brother... watching you.

I Don't Like This!

Big Brother is coming!

They just put speed cameras around town. In the past, I wrote about them, but this time I want to write about the data. Who gets to see it? How do they get to see the data—do they need a subpoena or just cash? How long do they keep it? And most importantly... how many errors does it make? In other words, what is its accuracy? Those are all questions that need answers. We are already seeing ICE and CBP agents getting unfettered access to data in states that supposedly require a subpoena.

But now they have taken it a step further..

Facial recognition tech is coming to a queer bar near you — if it’s not already there
Local media and a digital rights organization are sounding the alarm in San Francisco.
LGBT Nation
Greg Owen

June 19, 2026

A digital rights advocacy group is reupping its call to ban biometric facial recognition technology in bars and other venues serving the LGBTQ+ community after new reporting revealed widespread use of the technology in San Francisco’s Castro District.

This week, Gazetteer SF put a spotlight on the face-scanning technology that’s been hiding in plain sight in multiple Castro venues for over a year.

 

Hart Owen, a guest at Mix bar on 18th Street in the iconic gayborhood, said she was taken aback when she saw the tech stationed at the bar’s front entrance.   

She’d just handed her ID to the bouncer when she was directed to turn and face a small camera before being allowed into the bar.

I don't know if I would want to go to a place that does that.

Why are San Francisco gay bars scanning patrons’ faces?
Guests say the use of facial recognition technology at Castro bars undermines the sense of anonymity and safety that LGBTQ+ spaces have historically provided.

 The Advocate

Jacob Ogles

Jun 12, 2026

 

The use of facial-scanning technology at several San Francisco gay bars has angered many in the LGBTQ+ community. At locations often frequented by people who are not publicly out, the notion of tracking patrons' whereabouts in the very havens sought for privacy raises many alarms.

At least three gay bars in the Castro District have started using Patronscan Guard+, a technology intended to flag fake IDs, according to the San Francisco Gazetteer. But the experience of having a camera turned on every person entering the venues, often without warning, has left many outraged.

Yeah, I would be alarmed too! As a member of a highly persecuted minority, I can't help but wonder: what happens to the data?

Hart Owen told the outlet that she considers the surveillance technology a serious risk to privacy. “It’s really not great to have lists of gay people,” they said.

I can see the pros of it, like spotting a troublemaker. Suppose some "gay-bashers" are making the rounds harassing patrons. Yeah, I can see the benefit there, but only if I have answers to my questions. I would even like to see a sign posted stating their policies, if only to avoid things like this:

New York City’s main sports arena allegedly used facial recognition to stalk & ban a trans woman
She became an obsession for Madison Square Garden’s head of security.
LGBTQ Nation
Greg Owen 

April 22, 2026

 

 

 A transgender fan of the New York Knicks basketball team was tracked over a two-year period using sophisticated face recognition technology at Madison Square Garden (MSG), according to a lawsuit by a fired former security official who worked there. The woman was later banned from the venue.

The suit alleges that Nina Richards (not her real name) became a fixation for the head of security working for James Dolan, the owner of MSG, Radio City Music Hall, and the Sphere, among other venues that use the same surveillance technology. Dolan, scion of former cable TV titan Charles Dolan, also owns the Knicks and the New York Rangers hockey team.

See, this is where having answers to my questions is important:

The lawsuit’s allegation follows news in 2024 that Dolan added the faces of up to 1,500 lawyers involved in litigation against his companies to his facial recognition system at MSG, banning them from the property.

 

[...]

 

 Described by another security staffer as “a very large transgender woman, being a fan,” Eversole determined that Richards was a threat to players and the team’s image. He ordered her to be added MSG’s facial-recognition database and instructed staffers to perform an open source “work-up” on her, based on the images captured by their cameras and other intelligence gathered by security.

Eversole allegedly wanted to keep Richards “away from the players.”

Richards was targeted “because of her gender identity,” according to the suit filed by former MSG security staffer Donnie Ingrasselino.

We need rules with teeth, not just a slap on the wrist. Law enforcement should be required to obtain a search warrant that does not blindly allow database searches. Instead, they should need a specific warrant tied to a particular investigation, not a general warrant allowing them to sift through entire facial-recognition databases looking for matches.

Ownership of the data should rest with the towns, not with a private company that can sell access to the database.

This could lead us down the road to 1984.

So, what do you think?

 

online polls

Who Monitoring The Dogs Watching The Chicken Coop?

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."*

Most of you know that I am strongly against speed cameras and automated license plate readers (ALPRs).

As a member of a persecuted minority, I am deeply worried about these systems tracking us—especially since Donald Trump has previously labeled trans rights activism as a national security threat.

You can't put the technological genie back in the bottle, but you can certainly chain it.

Motorists sue Westchester County over 1.6 billion license plate scans

AP News

By  BYRON TAU

June 9, 2026

A coalition of civil rights groups on Tuesday asked a state judge to order one of New York’s largest suburban counties to stop its deployment of nearly 600 license plate readers, calling it a warrantless and “indiscriminate surveillance system” that violates the state constitution.

The class action lawsuit also alleged that Westchester County never got proper authorization to launch the program, which has amassed a database of 1.6 billion plate scans that has been shared with more than 50 outside law enforcement agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The complaint said the network “records the long-term travel patterns, daily habits, and intimate information of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers and other motorists who travel through Westchester.”

“In a democracy, a police department cannot unilaterally decide — without legislative authorization — to surveil the daily movements of its own citizens without any real accountability, transparency, or oversight,” said Barry Friedman, founder and faculty director of the Policing Project at NYU School of Law, which brought the suit on behalf of four motorists. “This indiscriminate data surveillance must not be allowed to continue in the dark.”

"You had to live ... in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and ... every movement scrutinized."*

We can pass laws that dictate who can see this data, how they can access it (demanding a subpoena, for instance), and how long companies are allowed to maintain it. But what happens when these companies simply ignore the law?

She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down

Electronic Freedom Foundation 

By Rindala Alajaji

May 30, 2025

In a chilling sign of how far law enforcement surveillance has encroached on personal liberties, 404 Media recently revealed that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. The officer searched 6,809 different camera networks maintained by surveillance tech company Flock Safety, including states where abortion access is protected by law, such as Washington and Illinois. The search record listed the reason plainly: “had an abortion, search for female.”

This is where we are heading! Toward... North Korea. Toward... China.

This case underscores our growing concern: that the mass surveillance infrastructure—originally sold as a tool to find stolen cars or missing persons—is now being used to target people seeking reproductive healthcare. This unchecked, warrant-less access that allows law enforcement to surveil across state lines blurs the line between “protection” and persecution.

"The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and ... for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better."*

But it goes even deeper than that. As Wired reported back in 2022, tech companies have been systematically ignoring state privacy laws, illegally handing over private license plate data to federal agencies like ICE and CBP.

The Danger of License Plate Readers in Post-Roe America

Known as ALPRs, this surveillance tech is pervasive across the US—and could soon be used by police and anti-abortion groups alike.

Since the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, America’s extensive surveillance state could soon be turned against those seeking abortions or providing abortion care.

[...]

However, anyone can become a first party by purchasing the company's cameras. (Its customers often include neighborhoods and home owners associations.) Flock Safety says its cameras are installed in more than 1,500 cities in 42 states, which are connected to Flock's centralized camera network. A March 2021 Vice investigation based on Flock-related emails obtained from nearly 20 police departments allows anyone who administers a Flock camera to “make the data Flock captures available to, say, the police, the home owner association's board, or the individual members of an entire neighborhood.” In addition to private customers, Flock has also reportedly partnered with hundreds of police departments across the US.

These corporations think they can play semantics and word games with our legal rights.

Look at what the State of Illinois recently uncovered:

August 25, 2025

Giannoulias’ Audit Finds License Plate Reader Company in Violation of State Law

Flock Safety Shared Illinois Data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Secretary Orders Flock to Shut off Data Access

Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias’ office recently discovered that U.S. Customs and Border Protection gained access to Illinois license plate camera data – a violation of state law his office initiated.

During a recent audit, Giannoulias’ office found that Flock Safety, which operates the largest automated license plate reader (ALPR) system in the nation, allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois license plate cameras on Illinois roads and surveil drivers. As a result, Giannoulias immediately ordered the company to shut off access to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

“This sharing of license plate data of motorists who drive on Illinois roads is a clear violation of the state law. This law passed two years ago aimed to strengthen how data is shared and prevent this exact thing from happening,” Giannoulias said. “I take my responsibility as Secretary of State seriously. It’s why we spearheaded this legislation, which now gives us the tools needed to hold Flock accountable for its actions.”

In June, the Secretary of State’s office announced it would conduct a sample audit of Flock Safety data sharing with local law enforcement. As a result of the sample audit that included a sampling of 12 local law enforcement agencies, the office discovered late last week that Flock did not have proper safeguards in place for data sharing, which was compounded by the fact that the company was running a pilot program with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which Flock leadership was unaware of. This was uncovered as part of the Secretary of State’s audit, and Flock has also since paused its pilot with CBP and other federal agencies, not only in Illinois but nationwide.

Consider these two terrifying scenarios:

Scenario #1: A woman of childbearing age travels north to visit her sister who is giving birth in a hospital. A nosy neighbor reports her to a state abortion tip line. Using an interconnected, nationwide camera network, hostile state authorities track her vehicle directly to an out-of-state hospital.

Scenario #2: The family of a transgender child travels north to visit relatives in a state like Connecticut, where gender-affirming care is legally protected. Texas authorities get a tip, abuse the ALPR database to track their vehicle all the way to New England, and launch an aggressive child welfare investigation into the parents the moment they return.

This is only the beginning. Federal agencies like ICE and CBP are now deeply reliant on this commercial data to track political dissidents and build psychological profiles on activists.

In fact, this dark playbook was rolled out years ago during the first Trump administration.

Alarm over leaked US database targeting journalists and immigration activists

Secret database listed 59 advocates and journalists tied to the migrant caravan, according to leaked documents

The Guardian

Amanda Holpuch and Lauren Aratani

Wed 20 Mar 2019

Photojournalist Ariana Drehsler was stopped for a secondary screening three separate times in one week while crossing the US-Mexico border to cover the migrant caravan in Tijuana this winter – unaware that the journey she had taken countless times before was suddenly more complicated because her name was logged in a secret government database.

[...]

Drehsler was grouped in the database as “media/journalist”, alongside others identified as “instigator” and “organizer”. Her image in the database, like those of several others, is marked with a bright green X on her face to indicate an alert has been placed on her passport. NBC 7 reported that the database included a dossier on each person.

Civil rights activists and members of Congress have expressed alarm about this database, as well as the arrest of more than 37 other immigration activists by Donald Trump’s administration. They see it as a politically motivated crackdown on media and campaigners as Trump seeks to ramp up the pressure to build a border wall.

“I have not seen this kind of systematic targeting of journalists and advocates in this way,” said the ACLU staff attorney Esha Bhandari. “I think it is very troubling, very disturbing.”

This is the exact behavior of fascists and dictators. This is not supposed to happen here in the United States.

As I said at the beginning, we cannot put the technological genie back in the bottle. We have passed laws limiting data retention, restricting access, and requiring warrants. But if these private surveillance corporations refuse to obey the law, then we need to put real teeth into our legislation.

If tech companies choose to bypass our constitutional rights for profit and political alignment, maybe it's time to start throwing some of these corporate big-wigs into jail.

"The object of power is power."*

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*George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

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On a related topic facial recognition...

Man sues Florida cops over arrest spurred by “93% match” in facial recognition

Lawsuit: “Police let an error-prone AI system stand in for an investigation.”

ARS Technica

Jon Brodkin

Jun 10, 2026

A man suing Florida police alleges that cops relied on a faulty facial recognition match and concealed exculpatory evidence when they arrested him on a charge of attempting to lure a child in August 2024. The plaintiff, Robert Dillon, was arrested after a facial recognition system flagged him as a 93 percent match to a suspect filmed by a McDonald’s surveillance camera.

“This case is about what happens when police let an error-prone artificial intelligence system stand in for an investigation,” said the lawsuit filed today. “A facial recognition algorithm flagged Robert Dillon as the man who tried to lure or entice a child under twelve years old at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald’s. It was wrong. Mr. Dillon, a fifty-two-year-old resident of Fort Myers, had never set foot in Jacksonville Beach. But rather than test the machine’s answer against the evidence that would have cleared him, the officers built a case to confirm it. Mr. Dillon was arrested and prosecuted for one of the most stigmatizing crimes a person can face.”

The lawsuit said that “Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife” and “accused of attempting to lure a child—a charge carrying devastating social stigma and permanent reputational destruction. He was held overnight in jail, forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, subjected to months of criminal prosecution, and publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped.”

The arrest was carried out by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and recorded by a deputy’s body camera. Dillon’s wife told the deputy that her husband had never been to Jacksonville Beach, and Dillon told the deputy that he hadn’t left Fort Myers in two years, the lawsuit said.

And it is only going to get worst!

Is This Our Future?

More and more license plate readers are going up around the country, and speed cameras are the newest rage! These speed cameras can bring in millions in fines. However, we are now seeing ICE abusing these cameras and circumventing state laws. Furthermore, states are using these cameras to track trans children when they travel north to receive medical treatment.

And I have to wonder if this is our future here...

New Chinese surveillance leaves foreigners nowhere to hide

A Chinese cybersecurity expert has revealed to DW details of China's new high-tech policing. From ski resort facial recognition to seats on a train, the system can track anyone and compile a "holistic profile."

DW News

De Zheng

May 21, 2026

When a cybersecurity researcher known by the pseudonym NetAskari recently clicked on a tab labeled "Inquiry for journalist files" on an unsecured Chinese web dashboard, he expected to see a jumble of auto-generated mock data.

Instead, familiar faces popped up on the screen. It was a comprehensive database of almost every foreign journalist based in the Chinese capital Beijing around 2021, including official passport photos taken at the entry/exit bureau, private cell phone numbers, visa details, and dates of birth. He also found his own exact personal information lying dormant on this Chinese police watchlist.

Is this what ICE and CBP are creating?

"It was more interesting than shocking," NetAskari told DW. "When you work as a journalist in China, you basically assume you are always on their radar. But what surprised me was simply how easy it was to access this highly sensitive system."

Are US citizens who are trans activists being tracked here in the US?

Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

In a bizarre but familiar turn, the document also blames transgender people for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

DW News goes on to report on how invasive the Chinese system relay is!

This system no longer relies solely on police cameras on street corners. It accurately records the specific train carriage and seat number a target occupies when arriving from Beijing or Shanghai.

It even synchronizes photos taken by facial-recognition ticket gates at local ski resorts directly into its tracking mechanism. The movements of the researcher's acquaintances who recently skied in Zhangjiakou were precisely flagged and mapped out with detailed trajectories in the system.

"The idea is simply to process as much data as possible from as many sensors as possible in real time," the researcher noted.

The system logs daily behaviors like gasoline consumption, regular shopping locations, and whether an individual frequently visits "petition areas."

This massive data-fusion effort attempts to stitch together a person's physical whereabouts, consumption habits and digital footprints into a flawless "holistic personnel archive."

The website for the Coram company reports that there are a number of surveillance companies beside Flock...

Why Organizations Are Moving Away from Flock Safety

Most teams don't leave Flock over a single issue. The reasons tend to cluster around three structural limitations that become harder to work around as security requirements grow.

Privacy and Data Control

Flock operates on a shared network, which means vehicle data collected at one deployment can be accessible beyond a single jurisdiction. For many organizations, that's acceptable. For municipalities, schools, and regulated industries, it's increasingly not.

The pressure isn't theoretical. In Norfolk, Virginia, a court ruling questioned the use of automated license plate readers under the Fourth Amendment. The ACLU has challenged the broader implications of large-scale license plate data collection at the national level. Richmond and Saratoga in California have already moved to replace Flock deployments through new RFPs. For organizations that need clear boundaries around data access and sharing, the shared network model is a structural limitation.

We are finding that businesses are using Flock to track customers who drive into their store parking lots. DW goes on to report:

China's granular system of social control

What NetAskari had stumbled upon is part modern China's emerging system of "holographic profiles."

He had unwittingly accessed a demonstration version of a remote tracking system designed for the Public Security Bureau in Zhangjiakou, the Hebei province city that hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Though it was only a test panel, it was populated with real datasets, clearly outlining the trajectory of China's state surveillance machine, which is rapidly evolving from a network of simple street cameras into a data-fused, 24/7, predictive social control behemoth.

For years, China has operated the world's most extensive CCTV network. A massive initiative known as the "Xueliang" (Bright Eyes) project aims to merge these isolated islands of surveillance spread across the country.

But the data on the Zhangjiakou police dashboard shows the granular detail with which authorities can track an individual.

Here in the US, with our gun laws, is gun violence going to be the vector used to implement a state surveillance machine? Is this Trump's ultimate goal... to establish a state surveillance network?

“Counterterrorism” Now Officially Means Targeting Trans People

The White House will prioritize the “neutralization” of groups it considers “anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

Mother Jones

Sophie Hurwitz

May 6, 2026

On Wednesday, the White House released a new “United States Counterterrorism Strategy,” the first such directive since a 2021 Biden-era memo emphasizing the need to combat white supremacist violence, which has now been scrubbed from the White House website.

Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

In a bizarre but familiar turn, the document also blames transgender people for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

Gorka told reporters at a press conference Wednesday that the administration would “crush” any threat, “whether it is the cartels, the jihadists or violent left-wing extremists like antifa—and like the transgender killers, the nonbinary, the left-wing radicals who killed my friend, Charlie Kirk*, we will take them on, head on.”

Funny how the right-wing terrorist are not mentioned!

The feds already won a case to get the medical records of trans from a Rhode Island hospital, the hospital has to give all their trans children patient's anonymized records.

So here is a scenario:

In Texas, authorities use LPRs (License Plate Readers) to track a trans child's family as they drive to the airport. Through airport surveillance, authorities track the family as they board a plane, follow them as they land at Bradley Field, and monitor them as they pick up their rental car. From there, they are tracked through the network of LPRs here in Connecticut all the way to Yale New Haven Hospital!

Far-fetched? No, it is already being done! In late 2023, the Texas Attorney General's office sent a subpoena to Seattle Children’s Hospital in Washington and a nearly identical demand for patient records to QueerMed, a telehealth clinic based in Georgia that had previously served youth in Texas before the state's ban took effect.

Here is another scenario:

An LGBTQ center holds a weekly trans youth night. Texas authorities obtain traffic camera video of the road outside the peer support group meeting. Because the LGBTQ center is not a healthcare provider, surveillance of the peer support group is entirely legal.

Is China leading the way for a US national surveillance system?

---

*While the individual responsible for Kirk's death was cisgender, early right-wing reports falsely claimed the shooter used bullets engraved with pro-transgender messages. The Trump administration seized on this narrative—along with an August 2025 mass shooting in Minneapolis committed by a transgender individual—to frame the broader transgender movement as a domestic terror threat, culminating in the official counterterrorism policies enacted this year

Duh!

[Editorial]

You know how we are installing Flock LPR (license plate recognition) and red light cameras everywhere?

Well, do you know how they recently targeted the Iranian leaders? Surveillance cameras! Yep, they hacked right into the network.

Iran built a vast camera network to control dissent. Israel turned it into a targeting tool

AP News

By  DAKE KANG and SAM MEDNICK

March 23, 2026

The role of Israel’s hijacking of Iran’s street cameras in the killing of the country’s supreme leader underscores how surveillance systems are increasingly being targeted by adversaries in wartime.

Hundreds of millions of cameras have been installed above shops, in homes and on street corners across the world, many connected to the internet and poorly secured. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have enabled militaries and intelligence agencies to sift through vast amounts of surveillance footage and identify targets.

On Feb. 28, Israel vividly demonstrated the potential of such systems to be hacked and used against adversaries when Israel tracked down Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the help of Tehran’s own street cameras - despite repeated warnings that Iran’s surveillance systems had been compromised, according to interviews and an Associated Press review of leaked data, public statements and news reports.

Do you think Trump’s team has considered that this exact 'trick' could be used against us by Iran or other adversaries... to track political targets on our own soil?

Big Brother is watching you... but who knows who else is watching Big Brother?

[/Editorial]

Part Two: The Open Door

The genie isn't just out of the bottle; he’s looking for a paycheck. You know how in Sports they have something called Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rules? In that world, players own their "brand." They control where their face appears and who gets to profit from their stats. We need the exact same rules for ALPRs and other surveillance databases! If my car’s "image" and my "location stats" are being harvested, shouldn't I have the NIL rights to that data?

We are currently witnessing a massive expansion of the "Open Door" policy. It is no longer just law enforcement that needs to be controlled; it is the commercial interest. Suppose in the future—a future that is closer than we think—a business wants to buy a list from a data broker to advertise their store to everyone who drives by based on their license plate history? Or a grocery store that installs facial recognition software to track exactly how you walk through the aisles, what you look at, and what you put back?

But more troubling is Big Brother's use of the data;[

ICE has spun a massive surveillance web. We talked to people caught in it

NPR News

March 4, 2026

By Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, & Meg Anderson

On an evening in late January, Emily was driving through her Minneapolis neighborhood doing something that had become part of her routine in recent weeks: patrolling for ICE.

Emily, who NPR is only identifying by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government, says she followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot. "And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV and took a picture of me and my car," she says.

Emily says she decided to leave at that point, but the SUV made a sudden U-turn and barreled towards her, braking next to her driver's side window. A female agent wearing a gaiter-style mask rolled down the window, leaned out — and addressed Emily by name.

]Creepy, scary! Big Brother is watching you!

"She yelled, 'Emily, Emily, we're going to take you home!' Then she looked at her phone and she recited my home address," she says.

Emily says she didn't acknowledge the agents and drove away, but was so shaken that she didn't drive home, afraid the agents might follow her there. Instead she went to a nearby restaurant and waited for hours.

If that does freak you out... I don't know what will.

They are using databases to identify you and scare you out of your Fist Amendment rights of free assembly or protest.[

Emily's experience mirrors that of many other people across the country. To understand how federal agents are using various Department of Homeland Security surveillance tools in real time, NPR collected dozens of accounts — through interviews and court documents — describing confrontations with federal immigration officers in recent months.

Activists and journalists spoke of tactics they felt were intimidating: agents photographing their faces or license plates; calling them by name; or leading them to their homes. Immigration lawyers told NPR their clients had been subjected to facial recognition technology. One ICE agent, testifying under oath, spoke of an app that showed the likely home addresses of people targeted for deportation.

]And that is exactly what they are trying to do! They are treating to remain silent on the oppression of our Constitutional rights![

In Minnesota, the ACLU is suing the administration for violating the First Amendment rights of protesters and observers like Emily. In the lawsuit, more than 30 people gave statements under oath describing similar encounters with immigration agents.

In the lawsuit, attorneys for the government denied that the conduct of federal agents has violated the Constitution.

DHS did not respond to a question about why its agents are demonstrating they know the names of observers and where they live, but the agency did say in a statement, "DHS will not reveal law enforcement methods or tactics."

]Those facts alone show a consorted effort to suppress the votes from address grievances, We have seen an outright attack to our abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.[

But federal immigration agents are using a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify and U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently signed a contract with Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that has accessed billions of images of peoples' faces off the internet.

]Stop right there! did you get the part where they say " a facial recognition company that has accessed billions of images of peoples' faces off the internet." you know those horrible driver license photos, well they are all on ICS's database now![

"Part of what's so pernicious about it is that people don't know what's going on," Wessler says. "Nobody should have to wonder if they are merely being intimidated or actually being subjected to an invasive biometric scan that's really just incredibly corrosive in what is supposed to be a free and open society."

In a statement to NPR, DHS stressed that Mobile Fortify, which was developed under the Trump administration, "does not access open-source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data."

]All to suppress your Constitutional Rights! Surveillance has become a business; surveillance for policing and now to surveillance for profit. Do you remember when Madison Square Garden uses facial recognition to keep out enemy lawyers in 2023?

Since then we have made a quantum leap forward in the networking of databases! And many companies are jumping in to make money off that knowledge![

In a hearing in the farmworker case, an ICE agent identified by the initials J.B. testified about another app, called ELITE made by Palantir, that he described as being similar to "Google Maps" that shows locations of people who may be deportable and the likelihood they live there.

J.B. described using the app as providing "leads" to choose where to do an operation.

]That is what is really scary! Tying databases and using unverified can lead to arresting and detaining the wrong person. Our TIL is for sale to anyone who got the cash!

Data Privacy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Cleveland State University College of Law Blog

In an age when our identity seems constantly accessible online, how do we protect our personal data from those who eagerly collect every sliver and cache it away for potentially disturbing purposes?

According to an article published by Science Direct, “Today, data is captured, produced, and reproduced with such regularity that its collection, utility, and value can go largely unnoticed.” Professor Shoshana Zuboff coined the phrase “surveillance capitalism” to describe this phenomenon of massive personal information collection for profit in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

[...]

Zuboff defines the term as “the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data.” The data gets computed, packaged as prediction products, and sold into behavioral futures markets. These markets teem with business customers who have a vested commercial interest in knowing our every movement, both now and in the future. 

In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Zuboff called for new laws and regulations “that specifically address the mechanisms and imperatives of surveillance capitalism.” Existing privacy and antitrust laws are not sufficient to address the pervasive threats of this new industry.

So that trip to the abortion clinic or the trans girl who visited her doctor's office can be access by Texas! This causes erosion of privacy, when governments or companies routinely collect and share personal data it causes people begin to assume they are constantly watched. People cut back on attending protest rallies when they fear government surveillance, people cut back on political discussion, and cuttings back political discussion! Fear is the commodity that ICE deals out 

Part One: The Open Door

The genie is out of the bottle:

We can't put him back; surveillance is here to stay. It started in the 60s in London with the CCTV cameras around the city, and now we find surveillance cameras in doorbells!

Eyes that never blink: Cal Poly’s Flock license plate readers spark student backlash

In March of 2025, Cal Poly signed a contract with surveillance company Flock Safety

Mustang News

by Grace Gillio

March 3, 2026

Every time a vehicle, bike or motorcycle enters or exits Cal Poly’s campus, it’s being tracked, often without the driver knowing. 

Its license plate is scanned and make and model noted, along with the exact date, time and location by a network of license plate readers monitored by the Cal Poly Police Department.

The readers also record each car’s color, any present damage, bumper stickers and type of tire, allowing cameras to identify vehicles based on cosmetics rather than just a license plate. 

In March 2025, Cal Poly signed a contract with Flock safety, installing license plate readers and live video cameras at all campus vehicle entrances and exits, according to university spokesperson Matt Lazier. The decision, which was made with limited community input, incited condemnation from students and staff who are concerned about Flock’s potential to have a negative impact on the security of the Cal Poly community. 

[...]

On Feb. 26, 2026, nearly a year after Cal Poly signed a contract with Flock Safety, CPPD decided to opt-in to a transparency portal. The cameras have detected 55,070 vehicles in the last 30 days, and CPPD has made 21 searches of the data, according to the portal. CPPD conducted 406 searches through Flock data from June 2025 to Feb. 3, 2026, according to Kevin Cushing, public records access officer. 

What does that mean? It means that every single person entering a supposedly "open" center of learning, students, faculty, and visitors, is being indexed into a searchable database. As the Mustang News report notes, in just a 30-day period, these cameras detected over 55,000 vehicles.

Cal Poly had “general discussions” with ASI leadership before the Flock cameras were installed, according to Lazier. However, Mustang News found no formal Cal Poly announcement that Flock’s license plate recognition technology was to be utilized on campus. 

Some students and staff are left wondering where the line is drawn between safety and surveillance. 

Ryan Jenkins, philosophy professor and associate director of the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group, says he is worried about the normalization of surveillance in general, especially the expectation that citizens have to “submit” to technology like Flock without knowledge or consent.

“We’re told that it’s being done in our interest and for our benefit. I think that it’s fair to demand more than that in terms of an explanation,” Jenkins said. “I think it’s fair to understand how the data are used, who has access to them, what real kind of technical safeguards we have.”

But I don't think that having unfettered access to the databases is good. We cannot have open databases that can be accessed by any law enforcement agencies!

If we cannot put the genie back in the bottle, we must at least build a cage for it. We need a "gatekeeper"—strict legal guardrails and oversight—to ensure that "safety" doesn't become a permanent excuse for the end of privacy. There needs to be a gate keeper!

LAPD’s relationship with Flock Safety under scrutiny from oversight body

L A Times

By Libor Jany

March 3, 2026

The Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday said it wants to know more about how data captured by the controversial license plate reader company Flock Safety is stored and shared.

Commissioner Jeff Skobin requested a report from the department about its relationship with Flock, citing his conversations with city officials and residents, as well as news reporting detailing how federal authorities had repeatedly accessed Flock’s surveillance data as part of their nationwide deportation crackdown.

Speaking during the civilian oversight panel’s meeting Tuesday, Skobin said that, for the sake of transparency, he wanted the department to explain how it was “so confident” that its data wasn’t being accessed by federal authorities as part of their immigration roundups.

[...]

The chief added that the department was aware of news reports suggesting that a “configuration error” by Flock had allowed out-of-state law enforcement agencies, including federal agents, to access license plate data from Ventura County in violation of state law.

McDonnell said he ordered an internal audit to determine whether similar inadvertent sharing had occurred within the Los Angeles Police Department.

Ops... "Sorry about that boss!"

Plate-reading technology has been around for decades. But as the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown has ramped up, residents, privacy advocates and officials in some cities across the country have mounted campaigns urging their local governments to stop using the technology.

Before the commission meeting, several dozen activists gathered outside LAPD headquarters in downtown L.A. to demand that the department cut ties with Flock.

"It won't happen again boss, promise! Cross my heart."

Ding Dong... ICE Calling!

Amazon's Ring ends deal with surveillance firm after backlash

BBC News

13 February 2026

Kali Hays

Amazon's smart doorbell company is dropping a partnership with a firm known for its surveillance services, after facing scrutiny over its privacy practices.

The decision cancels a deal announced in October between Amazon's Ring and Flock Safety, a firm that operates a network of cameras and license plate readers in the US used primarily by police and law enforcement agencies.

The agreement would have allowed agencies working with Flock to retrieve video captured on Ring devices, if needed for investigations and allowed by customers.

The decision not to move forward came days after a Ring advertisement aired during the Super Bowl sparked widespread backlash for being "creepy".

You know that speaks volumes on their mindset... that they didn't think people would think that it was "creepy" that Big Brother was staring out their front door!

In George Orwell book Nineteen Eighty-Four he never dreamed of computers and databases would lead us down the path to Big Brother and fascism.

Orwell’s 1984 warned of a world where Big Brother’s face was on every corner. He never imagined we would buy the cameras ourselves and mount them on our doors. We are reaching a tipping point where the "Search Party" for a lost dog becomes a "Search Party" for a political dissident or an immigrant neighbor. If we don't demand a "gatekeeper" now, we aren't just leaving the bottle open—we’re handing the genie the keys to our homes.

Just like in Nineteen Eighty-Four pictures of "Big Brother" are appearing all over Washington DC, on the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, and Department of Agriculture there are portraits of Big Brother on them.

Wait! There's More!

Yesterday I wrote about what ICE is doing to children in Minneapolis, but there is far more happening across the country.

ICE is building a surveillance network rivaling those of North Korea, China, and Russia.

The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects — and protesters

Biometric trackers, cellphone location databases and drones are among the surveillance technologies that federal agents are tapping in their deportation campaign.

The Washington Post

By Eva Dou, Artur Galocha and Kevin Schaul

January 29, 2026

Federal immigration officers fanning out across Minnesota and other parts of the country are newly equipped with an array of state-of-the-art surveillance technologies, thanks to a bill passed last summer that transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country’s most highly funded law enforcement agency. ICE has wasted no time spending its war chest, buying new tools ranging from biometric trackers to mobile phone location databases, spyware and drones, while loosening restrictions on how it uses some of these technologies.

These new surveillance powers come at a time when ICE is also pushing the bounds of its traditional role of immigration enforcement. In recent months, ICE leaders, backed by top Trump administration officials, have asserted the authority to use all available tools to monitor and investigate anti-ICE protester networks, including U.S. citizens. Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups say the agency’s expanding use of its surveillance tools infringes on privacy and free speech rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.

Big Brother is watching you—checking to see if you are naughty or nice!

ICE started using facial recognition technology on the streets over the past year. A new app made by NEC, Mobile Fortify, enables ICE officers to immediately compare phone scans of faces and fingerprints they encounter in the field against databases containing individuals’ immigration status and other biographical information. In the fall, ICE purchased an iris-scanning mobile app that its manufacturer, BI2 Technologies, says can get an identifying read on a person’s eye within seconds from a distance of 15 inches.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.” George Orwell 1984.

ICE ordered mobile license plate readers from Motorola Solutions in the fall and renewed a contract for Thomson Reuters’s database, which boasts more than 20 billion plate scans, including from private surveillance video feeds. Thomson Reuters has said this data can show, for instance, when an individual registered at one address regularly parks his or her car at another location.

The ACLU reported that Flock is sharing their data with ICE!

There’s been more news recently about the driver-surveillance company Flock. The company has recently been feeling the heat after the revelation that data from its national license plate scanner network was (and likely still is being) shared with Trump Administration agencies including ICE. Recently my colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts carried out a broad statewide open-records project, and among their findings is that Flock’s default agreement with police departments gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for “investigative purposes” even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers.

Even in states that bar the distribution of data from speed and red light camera... they are just ignoring the state laws!  That is the scary part, DHS is building a database of "troublemakers" those who are using their Constitutional rights are being monitored by ICE!

Cell-site simulators, also called Stingrays, masquerade as cell towers and trick nearby cellphones to connect, allowing ICE officers to track a phone’s location in real time. The devices, often mounted atop vehicles, are used in two ways. If officers already know the identifying number of the target phone, they can use the cell-site simulator to look for it. They also can scan for all cellphones in the area.

Pro tip: If you are protesting, set your phone to Airplane Mode. This stops location broadcasting while still allowing you to record.

And then there are the drones—not hobby drones, but military-grade systems. The Post writes,

Drones are an increasingly ubiquitous part of federal law enforcement agencies’ field operations, providing real-time aerial video back to a base. One compact model purchased by ICE, the Skydio X10D, is advertised as being able to detect individuals from 7.5 miles away and identify them from 0.8 miles. Many models are equipped with night vision and thermal cameras.

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place.” George Orwell 1984.

The Tale of Two Cities opens with the famous, lines:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

And so it is today.

And today, darkness is winning.

---

ALPR

Big Brother is tracking us. They tracked us to the No Kings rallies. State laws limiting access to the ALPR... screw them... we're the feds and we can do what we want!

How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

By Dave Maass and Rindala Alajaji

November 20, 2025

It's no secret that 2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol agents—were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car. 

Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate.

This is what totalitarian governments do, governments like Russia, North Korea, and China do!

During the October No Kings rally police departments used ALPRs to track peaceful protesters in Illinois, Arizona, and Tennessee!

2025 was an unprecedented year of street action. In June and again in October, thousands across the country mobilized under the banner of the “No Kings” movement—marches against government overreach, surveillance, and corporate power. By some estimates, the October demonstrations ranked among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, filling the streets from Washington, D.C., to Portland, OR. 

EFF identified 19 agencies that logged dozens of searches associated with the No Kings protests in June and October 2025. In some cases the "No Kings" was explicitly used, while in others the term "protest" was used but coincided with the massive protests.

Law Enforcement Agencies that Ran Searches Corresponding with "No Kings" Rallies

Anaheim Police Department, Calif.

Arizona Department of Public Safety

Beaumont Police Department, Texas

Charleston Police Department, SC

Flagler County Sheriff's Office, Fla.

Georgia State Patrol

Lisle Police Department, Ill.

Little Rock Police Department, Ark.

Marion Police Department, Ohio

Morristown Police Department, Tenn.

Oro Valley Police Department, Ariz.

Putnam County Sheriff's Office, Tenn.

Richmond Police Department, Va.

Riverside County Sheriff's Office, Calif.

Salinas Police Department, Calif.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office, Calif.

Spartanburg Police Department, SC

Tempe Police Department, Ariz.

Tulsa Police Department, Okla.

US Border Patrol

Big brother is watching!

Just looking at the list what is see is a majority of the states are Republican controlled, only three states are Blue. And many law enforcement officers ignore state laws...

 Some agencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like "protest" without articulating an actual crime under investigation.

We can't put it ARLPs back in the box. But can definitely end this abuse and invasion of privacy!

And once again, this network can be used by states to track trans people as they get their needed healthcare form trans friendly states. Or women with say, Texas license plate around women's clinics.