GoKawiil
Tech News
Florida's Department of Transportation issued a memo revoking permits for all automated license plate readers, including those made by Flock, installed on state highways. The agency says operators have 30 days to remove the devices, and it will no longer approve new placement requests on state roadways.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has frozen further state spending on Flock's AI-powered license plate cameras, a decision made shortly before a Texas Tribune investigation exposed that the state had already spent over $30 million on the technology. That funding came largely from a $1 fee added to insurance policies, ostensibly to combat catalytic converter theft.
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.
After a federal judge twice rejected requests for search warrants targeting the YouTube accounts of journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, the Department of Homeland Security pursued the same information through an administrative summons under a customs statute (19 USC 1509) that requires only internal DHS sign-off, not judicial approval. DHS also obtained six months of Fort's phone records without notifying her or giving her a chance to contest it. The customs law is intended for verifying import duties, not for investigations unrelated to trade.
A YouGov survey of 20,000 Americans shared with The Washington Post found 46% now oppose police license plate reading cameras made by Flock Safety, versus 38% in favor—a reversal from last year's majority support. Most respondents also said the cameras don't make them feel safer. The findings come amid mounting controversy over Flock, including a doxxing campaign against its CEO Garrett Langley and an Ohio grand jury's refusal to indict a man who destroyed one of the company's cameras.
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.
A Wall Street Journal report on the rapid expansion of Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate reading cameras drew sharp reactions from readers, who split between viewing the systems as vital crime-fighting tools and warning they enable mass surveillance. The debate centers on how widely law enforcement and communities are adopting the technology and what oversight, if any, governs its use.
A YouGov poll of 20,000 Americans shared with The Washington Post found 46% oppose license plate reader surveillance in their communities, versus 38% in favor, flipping last year's majority support. Flock, which operates over 120,000 such cameras nationwide, has faced backlash after reports of police misuse, prompting several communities to drop or reject contracts.
Security firm VulnCheck discovered three separate backdoor-like implants embedded in firmware made by Shenzhen Zhibotong Electronics (ZBT), whose hardware is resold globally under numerous brand names. The most severe, dubbed ENDLESSDOORS, disguises itself as a Linux kernel process, phones home to a hard-coded command server without authentication or encryption, and grants attackers root-level control over the router. VulnCheck confirmed the flaw is real by hijacking a test router's command channel themselves, and identified it across 20 ZBT-based router models.
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.
Meta announced new restrictions for users under 18 on Instagram and Facebook, including a default 2-hour daily time limit, a night mode blocking content from midnight to 6 a.m., and a school mode muting notifications during class hours. The changes come as part of a settlement in an $18 billion lawsuit, though Meta denies any wrongdoing and did not admit liability.
A wave of polls and news reports indicates widespread American opposition to data centers, Flock surveillance cameras, and Meta's AI-equipped Ray-Ban glasses, which critics have nicknamed 'pervert glasses.' Recent events, including a grand jury declining to indict a man filmed damaging Flock equipment and protestors against data centers gaining online praise, underscore how deep and public this hostility has become.