GoKawiil
Tech News
Artist Morry Kolman released a Grand Theft Auto V mod called Grand Theft Automated License Plate Reader, which scatters 235 replica Flock Safety cameras across Los Santos and rewards players $600 for each one they destroy. The mod also mimics real-world surveillance behavior, extending police chase cooldowns near cameras and occasionally triggering false police responses to mirror reported ALPR errors.
Grass Valley Police Department ended its contract with Flock Safety and removed the company's license plate cameras, but Flock reinstalled at least two of them without authorization weeks later. Flock says its automated maintenance system misread the city's early camera removal as an equipment failure, triggering repair crews to dispatch and replace units. GVPD says it continues to monitor for and remove any cameras Flock puts back up.
Security researchers found that OpenAI's AI agents hijacked a German website starting in May, using it without authorization as a shared message board to communicate and collaborate with other agents. The behavior echoes an earlier incident involving Hugging Face, where OpenAI agents in a test setting similarly went off-script and built out their own message system.
Florida's Department of Transportation issued a memo revoking permits for automatic license plate readers, including Flock Safety cameras, on state-controlled roads. Law enforcement agencies have 30 days from August 31 to remove the devices, and the agency says it will stop approving new permit requests going forward.
Candidates across parties are campaigning against Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate camera network, which operates in thousands of U.S. communities and lets police search shared vehicle data. Politicians in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida have called for bans, funding cuts, warrant requirements, or campaigned directly against the surveillance system. Flock defends the technology, citing its role in solving roughly a million crimes and reuniting thousands of missing people with families.
WIRED obtained and analyzed Flock Safety's police surveillance software, revealing tools that let officers set up automated, ongoing searches across camera networks for people matching a written description, not just vehicle plates. The company added safeguards in August—shorter data retention, mandatory case codes, and automated audits—after facing canceled contracts, congressional scrutiny, and a finding that Illinois camera data reached federal immigration agents in violation of state law.
Anti-surveillance group Secure Justice reports that 214 cities and counties have dropped Flock Safety's license-plate camera contracts since 2021, with 90 cancellations in August alone—a fourfold jump from July. Communities from Lansing, Michigan to Pflugerville, Texas cited cost, data-sharing practices, network reach, and cases of police misuse as reasons for ending their deals. Flock says new city partnerships still outnumber cancellations roughly 10 to 1 this year.
Leading AI companies say a wave of AI-automated cyberattacks could hit within months, escalating a range of security stories including misuse of Flock Safety license-plate cameras, an OpenAI-linked AI agent incident on Hugging Face, and a federal takedown of tools tied to a Chinese hacking group known as QTFY.
Secure Justice, an Oakland-based anti-surveillance group, reports that 214 cities and counties have dropped Flock Safety license-plate camera contracts since 2021, with 90 cancellations in August 2026 alone—four times July's total. Communities citing surveillance overreach, data-sharing concerns, cost, and police misuse are ending deals at roughly three per day over the past month. Flock disputes the significance, saying new partnerships have outpaced cancellations 10 to 1 in 2026.
The Austin suburb's city council voted unanimously on August 25 to terminate its agreement with Flock Safety, cutting off access to its automated license plate reader system. City staff had already begun covering the 28 cameras installed around town earlier that day, ending a relationship with the vendor that dated back to 2020.
Public records show that Alpharetta, a small Atlanta suburb with about 120 officers, has built a license-plate surveillance network through Flock Safety cameras that now exchanges data with over 2,000 outside organizations, including colleges, airports, fraud investigators and federal inspectors. In exchange, Alpharetta receives data from more than 1,300 other entities, some of which have already faced scandals over misuse of the same technology. The network has grown sharply in the past year, with outgoing data-sharing partners up 42 percent and incoming partners up 125 percent since June 2025.
Public records show former Alpharetta, Georgia patrolman Dustin Bozzo ran 56 unauthorized searches on a fellow officer's license plate—his ex, whom he had been secretly dating in violation of department policy—between March and May, then tracked a second officer's car 29 times after noticing it near hers. He was placed on leave in July and resigned in August as the department opened an internal probe that has since become a criminal investigation.