u/V3R1F13D0NLY

CalPrivacy came out swinging, fining 2 data brokers in 2 days. But is it really enough?

LocateSmarter was fined $116,490, but they had an annual revenue of $6 million. Is a fine of less than 2% really enough to dissuade this behavior? Or will it just be written in as a budget line item?

Massachusetts data broker Cybba was fined $52,400 out of $27.1 million in annual revenue. That fine amounts to less than 1 day of revenue.

With such miniscule fines, data brokers are able to keep breaking the rules, with hardly any consequence.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/jkCad

404 Media reported on August 10th that newly published procurement records show ICE moving to keep buying commercial data from LexisNexis. Two products are named in the documents.

LexID is the identity resolution layer. It decides which scattered records belong to the same person and assigns an identifier. Accurint Virtual Crime Center is the search platform built on top of that. LexisNexis says the pool behind them runs to more than 82 billion public and proprietary records from over 10,000 sources.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/Gfrxv

404 Media obtained four law enforcement intelligence bulletins on August 12th through public records requests. The documents came from six different agencies, plus a summary that circulated on an email list of FBI headquarters employees. Several instruct police to increase patrols around Flock cameras.

The practical takeaway if you organize locally: assume your public posts can end up in an intelligence product and act accordingly.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/cUBdT

Live today at 4pm ET on Hide & Speak, six local groups from the DeFlock and anti-ALPR movement are comparing notes on one panel: DeFlock UA, No Flock in Troy, DeFlock Connecticut, DeFlock Tulsa, DeFlock Dahlonega, and Flock OUT of El Cerrito.

They're at six different points in the same fight. El Cerrito's cameras are coming down right now. Troy's mayor declared a public safety emergency to keep a contract alive. Connecticut saw Windsor cancel sixteen cameras and Killingworth pull all four inside about a month. Upper Arlington went from six to twenty and had just started their chapter before our first DeFlock Stars stream.

Most of the conversation is practical: records requests, what flips a council vote, how you verify a police claim about federal data sharing, what someone with no group does first and what's going on for DeFlock's National Week of Action Against ALPRs, which starts tomorrow.

Live link ready: https://www.youtube.com/live/Jq0xq4HOE8E

A contract vote is the moment the public has leverage. There is an agenda item, a public comment period, and a recorded decision. Under an all-inclusive subscription, that moment occurs once. Capabilities added to the plan afterward arrive as product updates, and product updates do not go on an agenda.

Some specifics:

• Axon sells an all-in bundle it calls the AI Era Plan, which agencies subscribe to and which the company continues to expand. Its own Axon Week material describes the plan as evolving, with additions previewed to existing customers.
• At Axon Week 2026 in Nashville the company announced three AI solutions, including Axon Vision, which uses AI to recognize activity in live video from CCTV networks as it happens.
• This compounds with a hardware issue raised elsewhere in the same discussion: cameras already installed frequently support more than the current subscription enables, so unlocking a capability can be a software change rather than a new deployment.

One vote to start one subscription to open up a surveillance tech backdoor with minimal oversight.

Full recorded livestream on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

DeFlock Stars 2 Livestream: Saturday, 8/15 at 4pm ET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

On the 1st Hide & Speak: DeFlock Stars livestream, an anti-ALPR organizer pulled up their own city's Flock agreement and read the relevant line: a perpetual, royalty-free license to use aggregated, de-identified data for improvement, marketing, development, and diagnostics.

Watch episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Episode written summary: https://s.vp.net/7kkVb

Next DeFlock Stars livestream, Aug 15 at 4pm ET, opening the National Week of Action Against ALPRs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTdIJrxtOY

Syracuse revoked Flock's access after learning its police database had been made searchable across the company's national network, including CBP-related searches of local drivers' data. Lawmakers then approved a new license plate reader contract with Axon.

Roughly 53 cities have cancelled Flock contracts. Many are replacing the vendor rather than dropping the technology. The surveillance footprint does not shrink, it rebrands.

Nobody objected to a logo. The objection is to a searchable record of where ordinary people drive, held privately and reachable by agencies a city never voted for. That description does not change when the nameplate does.

If your group is drafting local language, write it against ALPRs generally.

Full recorded livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

DeFlock Stars 2 livestream: August 15, 4pm ET, with 6 x DeFlock & Anti-ALPR activists. Set a reminder and watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

After the city deactivated all 19 cameras and gave termination notice, Flock reinstalled stationary cameras without city authorization. Evanston issued a cease-and-desist, then covered them with black bags and tape.

Two remained installed until March, removed shortly after a local newsroom asked why. Verona, Wisconsin had to cover its cameras too.

The cameras are never the city's property. Cancelling ends your access, not the installation.

Watch the full DeFlock Stars livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watc

DeFlock Stars 2 livestream: August 15, 4pm ET, with 6 x DeFlock & Anti-ALPR activists. Set a reminder and watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

Four bills cleared the Senate Commerce Committee on August 5th: the Kids Online Safety Act, the Youth AI Privacy Act, the Chatbot Act, and the Children's AI Toy Safety Act. All by voice vote.

Read one at a time they look unrelated. But, combined, they set the stage for a far-reaching age-verification framework.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/cEswO

Nearly every proposal to make plate readers acceptable is a proposal about behavior. Warrant requirements. Audit logs. Search justifications. Community advisory boards. Restrictions on data sharing. All of it treats the danger as coming from people inside the system doing the wrong thing with a fundamentally sound tool. But that's only part of the risk...

Full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Full breakdown: https://s.vp.net/7kkVb

No ALPRs Livestream this Saturday at 4pm ET, DeFlock Stars 2: Six Activists on How to Fight Flock in Your Town. Set a reminder and watch live here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

The arrest happened in San Diego the day before Thanksgiving last year. Police had a description of a red Alfa Romeo, a witness who identified one man at a curbside lineup, and a hit from the city's Flock plate reader system that appeared to confirm the identification.

According to the men's attorney, the hit could not have been the right car. The man was five miles from the crime scene, and the plate reader capture was timestamped before any police pursuit had begun. The contradiction was in the system's own data.

He spent close to a month in custody on an armed carjacking charge.

Watch the full stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Full write-up: https://s.vp.net/7kkVb

Next stream, Aug 15 at 4pm ET, opening the National Week of Action Against ALPRs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

The pattern continues....

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/MTc7j

I raised the hijacking scenario directly with Flock on a previous livestream, a camera network taken over and used to kill someone. It was dismissed as ridiculous.

The Financial Times later reported that Israel had been inside nearly all of Tehran's traffic cameras for years, with footage routed to servers in Israel, and used it to build a pattern of life on Khamenei's security detail. On the day of the strike it helped confirm his meeting was running on time.

Domestic surveillance built for one thing... can potentially be used for something much more sinister.

Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Next stream, Aug 15 at 4pm ET, opening the National Week of Action Against ALPRs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

Credentialed misuse is documented. In Dunwoody, Georgia, Flock employees including a company vice president are reported to have accessed cameras inside a children's gymnasium hundreds of times.

The other problem needs no credentials at all. The cameras are reachable over wireless without much effort, and the footage is not encrypted.

Watch the full discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Next stream, Aug 15 at 4pm ET, opening the National Week of Action Against ALPRs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

Written breakdown here: https://s.vp.net/7kkVb

Flock's CEO used the word terroristic to describe DeFlock. DeFlock is a volunteer project that maps automated license plate readers, using cameras mounted on public poles in plain view.

This came up on a Hide & Speak panel with local anti-ALPR organizers. None of them used that word in their own description of what they do. One called it a grassroots effort to protect Fourth Amendment rights.

Apparently, the watchers don't like being watched either.

Watch the recorded livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKgQTkTpFz4

Read the breakdown here: https://s.vp.net/7kkVb

Next stream, Aug 15 at 4pm ET, opening the National Week of Action Against ALPRs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E

Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk published this on August 4th. Three features inside WebKit ignore whatever proxy the browser has set and send traffic straight out of the device, which means Private Relay never sees them and a site can log the real address.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/21eHH

The feature is sold as drowsiness detection. What's actually running is facial recognition, and it's taking your biometrics every time you drive.

Watch the full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jNnv2ygJ7g

Blog write-up of episode: https://s.vp.net/CX25H

The target is zero traffic deaths. Not fewer, zero. Traffic deaths require traffic, so hitting the stated number means removing people and their vehicles from the road.

Watch the recorded livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jNnv2ygJ7g

Full write-up here: https://s.vp.net/CX25H

Four more cities ended or moved to end their Flock Safety contract over a period of just 5 days:

1. Littleton, Massachusetts: the Select Board ordered all six Flock cameras powered down in May. In late July, the board chairman asked police to log in and verify they were disable. 5 out of 6 had been reactivated by Flock, with no notice to the town.
2. Binghamton, New York: the city passed a resolution August 6 calling on the mayor to terminate. Majority Leader Rebecca Rathmell put more than 80 municipalities across 28 states on the record as having already ended contracts with the company.
3. Stanford University: the California school ended it's contract on August 4. Vice Provost Patrick Dunkley said Flock being built as a shared network with the capability for data to move beyond a single institution, whether or not that is how you intend to use it.
4. Narragansett, Rhode Island: the council voted unanimously August 3 to pay an early termination fee. The contract had already auto renewed for two years, so the choice was keep the cameras or pay to leave.

Full write-up + our source list: https://s.vp.net/5h3oe

DeFlock Stars 2: Anti-ALPR Activist Livestream:
We're running a livestream on this Saturday 8/15 at 4pm ET, DeFlock Stars 2: Activists on How to Fight Flock in Your Town, with six DeFlock and anti-ALPR groups. It's the day before DeFlock's National Week of Action Against ALPRs starts, and the focus is legal ways to fight back against Flock and other ALPR companies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq0xq4HOE8E