Graciela Gómez Hernández, 30, crossed from Tijuana into Southern California on September 14, 2025, hoping to work and support her three children and parents in Mexico. She sent voice messages to family as she hiked through the rugged Otay Mountain Wilderness, but stopped responding by mid-afternoon, saying she could not continue. Her remains were not recovered until two weeks later, despite the area being heavily monitored by border surveillance cameras and technology.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-21
An investigation involving over 45 interviews with officials, Border Patrol agents, medical examiners and tech workers found that Anduril's AI-powered surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border are both failing to detect migrants and, when detections do occur, agents are failing to respond in time. Anduril says CBP operates the towers post-delivery and that surveillance range depends on terrain and privacy-related boundaries CBP itself sets.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-21
An investigation by MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego found that people have died undetected near AI-enabled surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, including sites using technology from defense contractor Anduril. The reporters documented broken equipment, detection algorithms that missed people, and agents who failed to act on alerts, even as CBP plans to spend $1 billion to triple the system's size by 2034.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-21
A 15-month joint investigation by MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego produced the first comprehensive map linking migrant deaths to US Customs and Border Protection's surveillance tower network along the US-Mexico border. Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of government records, conducted over 45 interviews, and analyzed cases dating back to 2015 to examine why fatalities cluster near towers built to detect and apprehend crossers.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-21
Flock Safety introduced a voluntary severance program on Friday, described internally as the most generous package it has offered, aiming to shrink its roughly 1,500-person workforce. Wired reports the company anticipates strong interest and plans to approve buyouts for most who apply, likely averting the need for outright layoffs.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-19
A Taiwanese husband suspected his wife of an affair after finding a stray toothbrush and garage footage of an unknown man driving her to their holiday home. Months later he opened his robot vacuum's companion app hoping to talk to his wife remotely and instead watched a live camera feed capturing her with another man. The incident highlights how ordinary smart-home devices now silently collect footage and data that can become unexpected evidence in personal disputes.
fastcompany.com
· 2026-09-19
Flock Safety launched a voluntary severance program on Friday, giving employees until October 2 to decide whether to leave with a package the company called generous. Insiders expect a large share of its roughly 1,500 workers to apply, as the surveillance firm faces mounting customer losses and public criticism over its network of license plate cameras.
wired.com
· 2026-09-19
An Electronic Frontier Foundation investigation found numerous police officers logging nonsensical or joke reasons—like 'LMAO,' 'LOL,' or keyboard-mashed text—when justifying searches through Flock's nationwide license plate camera network. One Indiana officer wrote 'LMAO' before searching over 19,000 cameras across 1,500-plus cities, while an Oklahoma officer typed gibberish to access more than 83,000 cameras. When EFF followed up with departments about these entries, few offered meaningful accountability.
futurism.com
· 2026-09-18
In a widely shared essay, free software advocate Richard Stallman argued that the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington could trigger a far more damaging 'secondary' harm: sweeping new government surveillance of phone calls, email and physical movement. He distinguished basic weapons screening at airports, which he considers a minor inconvenience, from mass data collection, which he says threatens core civil liberties regardless of whether it actually improves security.
news.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-17
A hacker collective called stegan0gram physically removed a Flock Safety roadside camera, extracted its stored data, and recovered an on-device encryption key meant to protect it. They shared the material with 404 Media and Distributed Denial of Secrets, which passed it to WIRED for joint analysis showing the camera logged roughly 50,200 vehicles and 1.6 million images over about 21 days.
yro.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-17
A group called stegan0gram removed a Flock roadside camera and dissected its Android storage, finding an encryption key inside the 'media' partition that unlocked another partition holding all recorded files. That data included about 1.6 million images and 27,321 short video clips gathered over 21 days, capturing roughly 50,200 vehicles and 11 people.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-17
Waymo says its robotaxi detected a terms-of-service violation involving a firearm, pulled over, and alerted emergency responders, leading police to arrest two teenagers after allegedly finding a loaded AR-style ghost gun inside the car. The incident adds to a growing list of episodes where Waymo vehicles have supplied footage or triggered law enforcement action, including hit-and-run evidence and protest surveillance concerns.
theverge.com
· 2026-09-17
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