Elgin Community College installed six Flock Safety surveillance cameras in April 2025, but asked the company to remove them in October after learning Flock had shared Illinois camera data with federal immigration authorities and after ICE detained a student on campus. Flock rejected the removal request, and when the college offered in December to pay out the remaining five months of the contract just to have the cameras taken down, the company did not respond.
news.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-11
Thomas Kennedy, an Argentinian-American writer and immigration advocate, has sued the federal government alleging that a Customs and Border Protection agent searched his bags and phone upon his re-entry into the US at Miami International Airport. He says the agent took his phone for about 45 minutes, during which he believes data was copied, before releasing him without charges. Kennedy is seeking a court order requiring the government to delete any data taken from his device.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-30
According to GitHub documents reviewed by The Washington Post, US Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, will deploy Google AI tools to recommend redactions on FOIA requests. By the end of September, AI will handle documents covering over 10 percent of FOIA requests—roughly 100,000 to 140,000 cases—with DHS staff reviewing the AI's suggestions afterward. Other agencies are pursuing similar tools: the Interior Department uses Microsoft software for attorney-client redactions, the DoJ uses Veriton's aiWARE for video redaction, and HHS is building its own tool called FRED.
engadget.com
· 2026-09-28
A wave of new regulations covering customs duties, AI disclosure, packaging, deforestation and privacy is hitting consumer markets this year, each with firm compliance deadlines. Though the rules appear unconnected, they share a common requirement: companies must be able to document and prove what they know about their prices, products and systems.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-09-21
The FBI has charged Terry "Jiajia" Liu, a Customs and Border Protection IT supervisor in Calais, Maine, with stealing processors, memory, and hard drives from at least 46 Homeland Security computers across three border facilities. Liu allegedly replaced the components with cheaper, often outdated parts and traded the originals to Newegg's trade-in program for store credit, causing an estimated $105,800 in damage.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-12
The Trump administration's new tariffs took effect September 3, imposing rates as high as 100% on drones over 55 pounds, thermal-imaging models, docking stations, and critical parts like airframes and control boards. Smaller, less-capable drones and other components face a 25% rate, while allied nations such as the EU, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan and the UK get preferential rates of 10-15% if their supply chains are substantially domestic or American.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-05
The Trump administration enacted tariffs on foreign drones this week, with thermal-imaging or heavier models facing a 100 percent duty and smaller consumer drones facing 25 percent. Allied nations including the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan face tariffs ranging from 10 to 15 percent, while a broader 25 percent levy on non-sensitive drones takes effect in 2027.
arstechnica.com
· 2026-09-03
New analysis of trade data breaks down the 2025 tariff exchange between Washington and Ottawa into three measurable pieces: duties U.S. importers have actually paid on Canadian goods, Canada's retaliatory tariffs on American exports, and a modeled estimate of how much of that cost gets passed on to American households through higher prices. The household figure is explicitly flagged as an estimate rather than a hard count, since no government dataset tracks how much of a tariff businesses pass on versus absorb.
thetariffcost.com
· 2026-08-26
Federal contractors are moving forward with border wall and road construction across private ranchland in West Texas, threatening thousands of years' worth of Native American artifacts and rock art. While public pressure halted a planned steel bollard wall inside Big Bend National Park, DHS and Customs and Border Protection still intend to build barriers and roads through mountains and canyons on private land nearby. Ranchers like Jeff Fort, whose property hosts ongoing excavations led by archaeologist Bryon Schroeder, worry the construction will split their land and destroy sites that haven't even been fully studied yet.
wired.com
· 2026-08-25
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