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  new: A third-party surveillance company is telling cops that it wants to add facial recognition to Flock footage and ALPR reads to help them "close the gap" in what Flock offers. Company offers racial analysis, gender analysis, behavior analysis https://www.404media.co/surveillance-company-tells-cops-it-wants-to-add-facial-recognition-to-flock-cameras/

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  Exclusive: We obtained a leaked playbook that Flock gives to cops to coach them on "how to speak to city council" to avoid getting their contracts canceled. Includes strategies like "own the narrative" by talking to mayor "before public comment periods" https://www.404media.co/own-the-narrative-leaked-flock-guide-shows-how-it-teaches-cops-to-promote-its-tech/

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  A company that makes a no-tech, repairable tractor is having trouble keeping up with demand from farmers sick of John Deere's repair monopoly and simply want a tractor that turns on and works: https://www.404media.co/demand-is-booming-for-ursa-ag-new-no-tech-repairable-tractor/

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  New: Public records show how a city that ended its Flock contract spent months trying to get the company to remove or turn off the cameras. They were told Flock "objects" to the city removing the camera itself. Eventually city put trash bags over them: https://www.404media.co/flock-objects-to-our-removing-their-equipment-emails-reveal-why-a-town-put-bags-over-its-flock-cameras/

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  New Orleans published a document saying its police could put weapons on their drones, deleted it, now says it was a mistake. But it aligns exactly with when the drone manufacturer began musing about allowing police to weaponize their drones: https://www.404media.co/new-orleans-cops-published-policy-document-allowing-weaponized-drones/

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  New: The LAPD regularly pulls over innocent people because their license plates have been put on a license plate reader hotlist. In a two-month period, it "investigated" 161 innocent people whose cars were improperly put on Flock or Motorola hotlists: https://www.404media.co/lapd-regularly-pulled-over-innocent-people-because-license-plate-readers-flagged-their-cars-as-stolen/

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  New: Hackers have been stealing high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI support chatbot to change the email associated with the account they want to steal. Shockingly easy, terrible flaw associated with offloading support to AI: https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/

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  Canvas hack is extremely bad, the "biggest student data privacy disaster in history" because it contains billions of messages between students and their professors, which can be extremely sensitive: "There's personal circumstances, medical circumstances, accessibility accommodations, disputes, sexual assault allegations, like all sorts of stuff would be getting reported to the instructor using Canvas." https://www.404media.co/the-biggest-student-data-...

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  The last few weeks have really highlighted just how fragile corporate social media is, and just how beholden to political power it is. To build any sort of ground-up power we must continue to invest in decentralized alternatives that are resistant to intervention https://www.404media.co/decentralized-social-media-is-the-only-alternative-to-the-tech-oligarchy/

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  Beloved Apple blog TUAW was shut down in 2015, sold to private equity, then sold to a company in Hong Kong. It recently relaunched as an AI content farm using the stolen identities and bylines of its former human staff. A nightmare: https://www.404media.co/a-beloved-tech-blog-tuaw-is-now-publishing-ai-articles-under-the-names-of-its-old-human-staff/

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  Good news: Rather than deal with tariff logistics, some international eBay and Etsy sellers have simply jacked their shipping costs up to $2,000 for Americans buyers: https://www.404media.co/2-000-shipping-international-sellers-charge-absurd-prices-to-avoid-dealing-with-american-tariffs/

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  New: We have just sued ICE to demand it turns over a secretive spyware contract that it refuses to release: https://www.404media.co/were-suing-ice-for-its-2-million-spyware-contract/

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  The much-hyped SIM farm the Secret Service seized uses readily available off the shelf tech that, very interestingly, has also become critical to ticket scalping. I, like others, am extremely not buying the idea that this was intended to take down the cell network https://www.404media.co/the-sim-farm-hardware-seized-by-the-secret-service-is-also-popular-with-ticket-scalpers/

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  Spent many (many!) hours pulling legal explanations and apologies from lawyers who were caught using AI that hallucinated in which they explained to a judge why they used AI. The explanations are astonishing and extremely good: https://www.404media.co/18-lawyers-caught-using-ai-explain-why-they-did-it/

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  Some exciting news: 404 Media just won a grant via Muckrock to investigate book bans and educational censorship in the U.S. The plan is to file hundreds of public records requests around the country and to report on and archive all the documents for public use: https://www.404media.co/help-us-investigate-book-bans-and-educational-censorship-around-america/

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  The end of Windows 10 support is going to be an environmental and security disaster, an egregious example of planned obsolescence that doesn't have to be this way: https://www.404media.co/the-end-of-windows-10-support-is-an-e-waste-disaster-in-the-making/

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  this is very cool: Kodak quietly relisted Kodak Gold and Ultramax on its website and confirmed to me it is selling the films directly to photography stores again. this is a big deal because for the last decade, Kodak has not controlled distribution of its own film https://www.404media.co/kodak-quietly-begins-directly-selling-kodak-gold-and-ultramax-film-again/

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  New: The FBI filed a subpoena trying to unmask the person or people behind archive.is/archive.today, which have been running anonymously for 13 yrs. Site was widely used by GamerGate, and then to bypass paywalls but has become kind of core archiving infrastructure https://www.404media.co/fbi-tries-to-unmask-owner-of-infamous-archive-is-site/

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  The long-running ideological war on libraries, education, and government workers is not separate from AI boosterism. It is the same ideological war on human knowledge and expertise. In some cases AI is being used to directly supercharge this effort: https://www.404media.co/ai-is-supercharging-the-war-on-libraries-education-and-human-knowledge/

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  New: A judge in Washington has ruled images from Flock surveillance cameras are public records and that anyone can request them. Highlights the pervasiveness of this tech and just how much surveillance is being done. Very notable ruling https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-flock-surveillance-images-are-public-records-that-can-be-requested-by-anyone/

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  404 Media is making a print zine! About the surveillance technologies used by ICE. 16 pages, riso printed. Shipping early January. Features reworked versions of our best reporting and a few new things. We're very excited! And hope to do more if people like it: https://www.404media.co/404-media-is-making-a-zine/

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  Porn is being injected into dozens of government websites across the country using malicious PDFs. A separate attack is hijacking govt websites to redirect to penis enlargement scams and animal vagina masturbators. Cool stuff: https://www.404media.co/porn-is-being-injected-into-government-websites-via-malicious-pdfs/

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  SCOOP: Flock left at least 60 of its AI-powered, people-tracking surveillance cameras exposed and livestreaming to the open internet. We tracked ourselves. The exposure highlights the power of these cameras and types of things they're tracking. Not just cars. https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/

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  New: DHS now says that two weeks of missing surveillance footage from ICE's Broadview Detention center isn't "missing," it was never recorded in the first place and thus can't be produced in an abuse lawsuit. An utter shitshow: https://www.404media.co/dhs-says-critical-ice-surveillance-footage-from-abuse-case-was-actually-never-recorded-doesnt-matter/

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  This project from @codinghorror is so needed & good - well-organized guaranteed minimum income projects around the world keep showing huge promise so I'm excited to see what happens here: https://blog.codinghorror.com/launching-the-rural-guaranteed-minimum-income-initiative/

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  Was so fun to go on Close All Tabs to talk about how farmers have fought for right to repair! Thought this episode turned out really great and the show in general is amazing: https://www.kqed.org/news/12077465/to-hack-a-tractor-how-farmers-won-the-right-to-repair

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  extremely broad and alarming drone no fly zone designed to protect ICE agents just dropped. notable in part because some folks have used drones to film law enforcement abuses: https://www.404media.co/feds-create-drone-no-fly-zone-that-would-stop-people-filming-ice/

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  ICE has recently bought the capability of monitoring the location histories of entire neighborhoods worth of phones. The data is likely harvested from apps that sell your data, which filters up through data brokers and eventually to companies that sell to ICE: https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/

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  X's location "transparency" feature showing many MAGA accounts are based internationally reveals what we already knew: The world is using American social media and American politics as a slot machine and social media companies are directly incentivizing this: https://www.404media.co/americas-polarization-has-become-the-worlds-side-hustle/