Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Privacy’ Category

Chicago-area police officers investigated for misusing Flock camera searches for personal use

Posted in ABC7 Chicago, Big Brother, Clown Car, Ethics, Flock Cameras, Police Reports, Privacy, Public Safety, Transparency on August 29, 2026| Leave a Comment »

By Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones | ABC7

Amidst growing outcry and mounting privacy concerns over misuse of powerful police surveillance technology, the ABC7 I-Team found multiple Chicago-area law enforcement agencies are now investigating their own officers for unauthorized use of the location tracking software.

From tracking ex-romantic partners to searching a former employer, at least two agencies have now forwarded cases of their officers misusing Flock Safety license plate reading technology to county prosecutors for review of possible criminal charges.

The I-Team filed 130 public records requests with local law enforcement agencies across Illinois and Indiana for internal investigation reports into misuse of FLOCK automated license plate reading (ALPR) cameras and others that can track a person’s location in real time.

Responses are continuing to come in but have already revealed cases of misuse.

In Prairie Grove, Police Chief Michael Goins said he discovered one of his officers had conducted hundreds of Flock camera searches, but not for any official purpose.

Goins said Officer William Copp was searching “ex-spouses, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends of current girlfriends, people that had some sort of domestic relationship with him… One individual was searched approximately 140 times.”

Goins said he acted quickly and Copp was arrested and charged in McHenry County with official misconduct.

Prairie Grove is not alone.

The I-Team found at least 10 examples of local area law enforcement agencies investigating their own officers for misusing Flock and other license plate reading technology.

Report continues here.

Related: Some recent Daily Herald reports-

Read Full Post »

Editorial: The AI vultures are monetizing the dead. Your old emails might be worth millions.

Posted in AI, Chicago Tribune, Data Center, OP/Ed, Privacy on August 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Spirit Airlines data has never been more valuable | Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune

By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune

If you recently left a job, it’s likely you lost access to your old inbox and the saved records of those tedious Zoom or Teams meetings. Leaving such digital detritus behind now is part of life. But we doubt you anticipated your employer being able to make money from what you had to say while gainfully employed.

Consider what just happened with the remains of what used to be Spirit Airlines, the bankrupt ultra-low-cost air carrier. Earlier this month, Google was the winner of a highly competitive auction not for the dead airline’s planes or equipment but for the corpse’s data trove. Reportedly, the treasure included 100 million emails and 500 million Teams messages, not to mention a ton of lines of code.

Why did Google blow $10 million on such seeming scrap? To train its artificial intelligence agents.

We’ll try not to get too in the weeds here, but in essence the Spirit purchase was like buying a massive business-school case study with bots as the intended students.

By seeing what humans did in actual life, the AI creepy-crawlies can learn about, well, what humans did in actual life. It doesn’t matter if they did what they did well (and, in the case of Spirit, it all failed in the end). It’s all about using this specific business as a way for AI to learn how an airline actually operates in real life or, yet more generally, how humans typically work together in organizations.

And you thought those AI agents were merely ingesting books and newspapers. Nope. They are looking at your old out-of-office replies and ill-considered rants on Teams.

Read on here.

Read Full Post »

‘Not 1984’: Flock cameras watching millions of Americans spark bipartisan revolt

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Cell Towers, Clown Car, Data Center, Deception, Flock Cameras, Fox News, One Barrington Hills, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Transparency, VBHPD on August 26, 2026| 1 Comment »

A pigeon perches on a Flock Safety camera, mounted high on a traffic signal pole at the intersection of Chapman Avenue & Harbor Boulevard in Garden Grove, Calif., on Aug. 14, 2026. | Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

By Elizabeth Elkind, Alex Miller | Fox News

There’s a new frontier in the national privacy debate that’s uniting people on the right and left, and it’s a tool that millions of Americans encounter every day without even realizing it.

Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies have been brought under scrutiny by lawmakers in Washington as privacy hawks warn that the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is testing the bounds of what ALPR devices can legally learn about drivers on the road.

One company in particular, Flock Safety, has been taking hits in the media and political sphere as news of Flock cameras’ misuse — and occasional success — dominates headlines.

“There’s cameras everywhere, people know that, but if law enforcement has the ability to monitor the comings and goings of citizens, I think that’s wrong. I mean, we’re not the CCP, we’re not 1984 and an Orwellian society, and Americans have rights,” Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital.

LICENSE PLATE CAMERAS ARE TRACKING DRIVERS EVERYWHERE

He pointed to a recent incident in his district where a now-former Sarasota police officer was fired and arrested after being accused of misusing Flock camera technology, using it to spy on one particular license plate over 300 times.

FLOCK SAFETY CAMERAS NEED CONSTITUTIONAL GUARDRAILS BEFORE FURTHER DEPLOYMENT, TENNESSEE MAYOR ARGUES

“I don’t think you’re gonna be able to stop these cameras from being out there, but at the very least, there should be some type of legal parameters put in place to protect people’s Fourth Amendment rights,” he said.

ALPRs automatically capture and analyze vehicle and location data on public roads without drivers’ consent. Supporters have argued that it’s a critical tool for public safety that only collects minimal information, while opponents labeled it an alarming expansion of the mass surveillance state.

LICENSE PLATE CAMERAS AT HOME DEPOT AND LOWE’S SPARK PRIVACY FEARS

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital, “These cameras are well beyond an automated license plate reader today. AI has made them so capable that they are now capable of facial recognition, of seeing what you’re doing inside your car. So it’s well beyond the license plate reader…that’s the problem. Technology has moved these beyond just looking at the back of a car.”

On the other side of the aisle, a spokesperson for progressive Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., pointed Fox News Digital to her recent comments responding to news that Flock was updating its oversight standards. Ramirez wrote on X, “Private tech companies have amassed record-breaking profits off our pain and the use of technology for mass surveillance is a threat to our democracy, civil liberties, and privacy. Congress must stop the ever-expanding surveillance state.”

The debate even exploded onto the campaign trail ahead of November’s midterm elections, where ALPRs join AI data centers as Big Tech’s big boogeymen.

Article continues here.

Read Full Post »

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Cellular Service, Data Center, Ethics, Politics, Privacy, Public Safety, The New Normal?, WIRED on August 21, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. | Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images

By Dhruv Mehrotra | WIRED

Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.

Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.

The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own.

The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates.

Flock says it is testing the product with a small group of law enforcement partners and describes it as still in development, with capabilities that may not reflect what it eventually sells. It arrives as the company faces bipartisan political pressure, a growing record of officers caught misusing its platform, and a wave of vandalism that has left cameras sawed off and lenses painted over in cities across the country.

Privacy and legal experts say Flock’s tools already raise serious constitutional concerns by giving police broad, often warrantless access to a vast record of people’s movement. But the prompts WIRED examined go further, turning a tool for finding a known vehicle into one that casts suspicion on drivers based on where and how often they drive, regardless of whether they are wanted for a crime.

Article continues here.

Read Full Post »

Surveillance company Flock moves to increase oversight after police misuse

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Ethics, NBC News, Police Reports, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Topics Of Interest, Transparency, Unions on August 14, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A Flock Safety camera mounted to a light pole on Aug. 3 in Beverly Hills, Calif. | Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

By Kevin Collier | NBC News

Flock Safety, the police tech company that tracks Americans’ vehicle movements through a line of cameras, announced Thursday that it would implement several new safeguards to its products.

The changes that Flock outlined include shrinking the period for how long it holds people’s movement data by default, going from one month to one week, the company said in a news release. In cases where an officer wants to hold data longer, they will be prompted to enter a case number.

To address potential police abuse of Flock’s data on people, the company also plans to fully deploy a system it began testing earlier this year, called Audit Assistance, that will lock out a user whose searches display “abnormal activity,” the release said.

A spokesperson told NBC News that the changes are meant to help address privacy concerns and to stem officer abuse of the cameras, which have prompted some cities to cancel their Flock contracts amid a national wave of vandalism against them. But the American Civil Liberties Union, a long-standing Flock critic, downplayed the new changes as minor.

“My biggest concern was and will continue to be that they are a mass surveillance company that collects billions and billions of license plate scans every month on people who have done nothing wrong,” said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the ACLU.

Flock makes a range of high-tech surveillance products but is best known for its nationwide fleet of automated license plate readers, pole-mounted cameras that log cars as they pass popular roads and intersections, creating a massive database of each car’s movement, license plate number, make and model, and time of travel.

While the system has been championed by many police forces, privacy concerns have grown. Law enforcement offices that contract with Flock do not need a warrant to access travel information and can opt to share their data with local law enforcement offices, statewide or nationwide, creating a database of Americans’ real-time movements accessible to a range of police officers that spans much of the country.

Report continues here.

Related: “Flock boss admits surveillance firm took too long to act over police abuse,” “Despite ‘New’ Updates, Flock’s Creepy Cameras Remain Major Civil Liberties Threat – ACLU,” “Public pushback to Flock cameras spark variety of government responses,” “Hundreds of police departments use camera company accused of breaking state law,” “Editorial: Do those multiplying license plate readers mean Big Brother is watching?,” “Privacy concerns raised over proliferation of license plate cameras”

Read Full Post »

Flock camera map: How many are in your neighborhood?

Posted in AI, Big Brother, Data Center, Privacy, Public Safety, Transparency, WGN9 on August 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

A Flock Safety camera is shown mounted to a light pole on August 03, 2026 in Beverly Hills, California. | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

By Spencer Gustafson, Alix Martichoux | WGN9 News

Flock Safety, a surveillance equipment company, says it partners with more than 5,000 law enforcement agency partners across 6,000 communities. Is your city one of them (answered here)?

The Flock cameras are solar-powered license plate readers that collect data as they record. Agencies that partner with Flock can then search the database for license plate numbers, car make and models, or identifying features like bumper stickers.

Proponents argue the cameras help law enforcement solve crimes, but critics say they data could be misused to track anyone, even those not accused of crimes, with little oversight.

“They’re just collecting data as an active surveillance system, and every car that passes through, the data is collected from that car license plate, using AI. They make a vehicle fingerprint of the car that includes distinguishing features, make, model, color, bumper stickers, roof racks, all these different things,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs in an interview with NewsNation.

“And then it’s retained for sometimes 30 days or more and then in a searchable database, which really turns the whole concept of a license plate reader on its head in that they’re not looking for one specific vehicle or specific vehicles. They’re just pulling everything in.”

Founder Garrett Langley said his surveillance equipment manufacturing company started out of frustration with crime rates in his home city of Atlanta.

“Crime felt too easy to get away with,” Langley said during a TED talk in April. “It didn’t make sense that you could steal someone’s car … or you could kill someone and have a 50 percent chance of getting away with it. … So I did what engineers do. I built a license plate-reading camera.”

How can I check the location of Flock cameras?

According to Flock, nearly 100,000 cameras are in place across more than 6,000 communities in 49 states. The company, however, doesn’t have a detailed list of camera locations publicly available.

That’s where DeFlock comes in. The organization says it wants to raise awareness about automatic license plate readers and “the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties.”

DeFlock maintains a crowd-sourced map showing the alleged location of Flock cameras around the U.S. “Camera locations come from volunteers and the OpenStreetMap community, not a private company or government agency,” DeFlock says. Nexstar could not independently verify the camera locations.

You can zoom into the map below (ACTUALLY, to open the map below in a new tab, click here) to explore the reported locations of cameras in your neighborhood, according to DeFlock’s crowdsourced data.

The map includes cameras made by other tech companies, not just Flock.

Report continues along with video and survey here.

Related: “What are Flock cameras and where are they in the Chicago area? What to know”

Read Full Post »

Barrington Hills Park District (Riding Cult) meets tonight

Posted in Agendas, Algonquin Rd, Animal Welfare, Aunt Blabby, Barrington Hills Park District, Barrington Hills Polo Club, Countryside Elementary School, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Elections, Ethics, Fox River Valley Hunt, FPDCC, FRVPC, Horizon Farm, Horse Boarding, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Land Use, Massbach Hounds, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Real Estate, Riding Center Advisory Committee, Riding Club of Barrington Hills, Taxes, Transparency, Unions on August 12, 2026| Leave a Comment »

The Barrington Hills Park District Board/Riding Cult of Barrington Hills will hold their monthly meeting this evening in person and via Zoom at 6:00 PM. Some topics on their agenda include:

  • Donation by Jenny Drecol Kalaway Cup to replace the BHPD bleachers
  • Conservation Gathering with Trail Ride, Oct. 24

A copy of their agenda can be viewed here. Instructions for accessing the meeting remotely can be found here.

Read Full Post »

What are Flock cameras and where are they in the Chicago area? What to know

Posted in AI, Big Brother, News Media, Privacy, Public Safety, Transparency on August 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Flock camera/Shutterstock

By Alex Dvorak | NBC 5 Chicago

If you’ve heard about Flock cameras lately, you’re not alone.

The controversial technology has been at the center of debate in recent years, with some touting the technology and others questioning what it means for privacy.

The cameras have been the target of criticism from Illinois officials, but they remain present around numerous suburbs.

Here’s what to know:

What are Flock cameras?

Flock cameras are license plate readers operated by Flock Safety, the nation’s largest automated license plate reader system.

“Flock is designed to help authorized users find relevant evidence for investigations without compromising safety and compliance,” the company’s website states.

What is the debate over Flock?

Advocates of the system said it was designed to aid law enforcement by capturing vehicles on camera and using those images to help with investigations.

“We build technology that helps law enforcement, businesses, schools, and communities find relevant information, respond faster, and make better-informed decisions,” Flock’s website states.

But while the systems are touted as a tool for good, some question the privacy concerns surrounding such technology.

“Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are a powerful surveillance tool increasingly being purchased and deployed across many communities and on expressways across Illinois. It is clear that for-profit manufacturers and operators of these cameras systems are aggressively marketing them to law enforcement and elected officials as a means of reducing violent crime,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said in a statement earlier this year. “While some observers question the claim of reducing crime, there is little doubt that these cameras systems require careful attention to address privacy concerns. But many communities are deploying these systems without appropriate privacy policies or practices for protecting personal information.”

Those concerns came to a head last year when Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said the camera company allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access reader data in violation of state law.

Report continues here.

Read Full Post »

PUBLIC NOTICE: Election for Park District (Riding Club) Commissioner-Candidate Filing Information

Posted in Animal Welfare, Aunt Blabby, Barrington Hills Park District, Barrington Hills Polo Club, Big Red, Clown Car, Commercial Horse Boarding, Cook, Countryside Elementary School, County, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Don't Change Barrington Hills, Elections, Equestrian Commission, Ethics, Fox River Valley Hunt, FPDCC, FRVPC, Goat Rodeo, Horizon Farm, Horse Boarding, Illinois State Board of Elections, Immigration, Intergovernmental agreements (IGA), Lake, Land Use, Look For The Union Label, Massbach Hounds, McHenry, Politics, Privacy, Property Taxes, Public Safety, Real Estate, Riding Center Advisory Committee, Riding Club of Barrington Hills, Save 5 Acres, SOS Party, Taxes, The Other Half, Unions, Your Barrington Hills on August 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

PUBLIC NOTICE

Consolidated Election to be held April 6, 2027

To The Residents of The Barrington Hills Park District Cook, Lake and McHenry Counties, Illinois

Elections will be held to fill the following office:  Park District Commissioner

Number of positions: Three (3)  

All positions are for a four-year term

The candidate services provided here will assist prospective candidates locate the information and forms required to run for office.

Information contained within this section is for informational purposes only. Candidates are advised to seek appropriate legal counsel for any campaign issues. 

Candidates must file their certificates of nomination with the Barrington Hills Park District designated representative.

Petition Circulation Period: August 25, 2026 – November 23, 2026. Petitions may NOT be circulated prior to August 25, 2026

The filing of nomination petitions will be accepted at 361 Bateman Road, Barrington Hills IL 60010, in the Riding Center’s Meeting Room, November 16, 2026 through Monday November 23, 2026.  Office Hours will be posted here and on the online calendar.

Petitions may be filed in person by the candidate, a representative, or by mail to: Barrington Hills Park District, 364 Bateman Road, Barrington Hills, IL 60010. Nomination papers received in the mail before the first day of filing period will be returned to the sender as not filed.

Candidate’s Guide

Petition Documents:

Nonpartisan Petition Form (Petitions may NOT be circulated prior to August 25, 2026)
Statement of Candidacy: Nonpartisan
Loyalty Oath (optional):
Statement of Economic Interests: Filed with the Cook County Clerk. See page 22 in the Candidate’s Guide regarding filing the receipt.
Fair Campaign Practices Act (voluntary): Filed with the State Board of Elections.,

Source

 

Read Full Post »

Naturalists, botanists and restoration volunteers spotlight Grigsby Prairie in Barrington Hills

Posted in Chicago Tribune, Citizens for Conservation, Going green, Land Use, Privacy, Real Estate, Resident Spotlights, Topics Of Interest on July 22, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Far right, leading a tour group is volunteer and CFC board member Jim Vanderpoel of Arlington Heights on July 20, 2026 at the restored tallgrass Grigsby Prairie in Barrington Hills, managed by the volunteer group (CFC) Citizens for Conservation of Barrington. | Karie Angell Luc/Pioneer Press

By Karie Angell Luc | For the Chicago Tribune

As environmentalists from around the world convened at the Aspen Ideas: Climate event in Chicago from July 20 to July 22, the conversation about conservation moved to Barrington Hills on July 20.

There, local and national conservationists toured the 44-acre Grigsby Prairie in Barrington Hills, managed by the volunteer group (CFC) Citizens for Conservation of Barrington.

Describing Indian Hemp, a native white flowering plant to a tour group, is volunteer and CFC board member Jim Vanderpoel of Arlington Heights on July 20, 2026 at the restored tallgrass Grigsby Prairie in Barrington Hills, managed by the volunteer group (CFC) Citizens for Conservation of Barrington. | Karie Angell Luc/Pioneer Press

CFC is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization that restores and maintains more than 732 acres across 14 separate nearby locations, according to https://citizensforconservation.org.

“CFC first started with response to a lot of land development that was happening in the seventies, so they came to be in 1971,” said Abigail Derby Lewis of Glenview, CFC executive director.

Grigsby Prairie is “the oldest prairie restoration that CFC has and one of the oldest in the State of Illinois,” Derby Lewis said. “It is incredible.

“Every plant you see, every animal you see, all of the habitat there, that is the result of people putting in the time and the energy and the love to that land over decades,” Derby Lewis said.

CFC volunteer Wendy Paulson of Barrington Hills said of Grigsby Prairie (a prairie which was lost), “That’s an example of hope.”

The walk of the tallgrass prairie included tour leader and CFC board member Jim Vanderpoel of Arlington Heights, Dwayne Estes of Dickson, Tennessee, co-founder and executive director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute (SGI) of Clarksville, Tennessee, and a professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

SGI is building a movement,” according to https://www.segrasslands.org.

Right, leading a tour group is volunteer and CFC board member Jim Vanderpoel of Arlington Heights on July 20, 2026 at the restored tallgrass Grigsby Prairie in Barrington Hills, managed by the volunteer group (CFC) Citizens for Conservation of Barrington. | Karie Angell Luc/Pioneer Press

Also interpreting Grigsby Prairie on the tour were Derby Lewis, Paulson, plus author and renowned forest preserves site steward Stephen Packard of Northbrook.

Many experts identify prairie grasslands as the most threatened ecosystem in eastern North America, with scattered acres, islands and pockets around the United States unattended to and basically forgotten.

Article and photos  continue here.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »