Wilmington Ditches Flock Cameras. This should be done statewide.
As the debate over Flock cameras grows across the country, some officials in the Philadelphia region are taking action.
Wilmington City Council says it is decommissioning four Flock Safety automated license plate readers.
Wilmington will still use license plate readers from other vendors for public safety.
RELATED: License-plate readers outside stores raise privacy concerns
New Jersey State Senator Michael Testa announced plans last week to introduce legislation establishing guardrails on Flock cameras.
Police say they have been a gamechanger for solving crimes, but critics call it a mass surveillance system.
Newsweek reports that officers in at least a dozen states have faced allegations of misuse, including a North Carolina police officer, accused of using it to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife.
Ah, yes, police abusing their power. They are engaging in criminal activity. Stalking, at the very least. Say, I have an idea–in addition to doing away with their personal stalking assistant, how about arresting and prosecuting them for stalking?
BTW, Here’s how the Forces Of Evil have used Flock cameras:
On May 9, 2025, a deputy with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas queried Flock Safety’s nationwide license plate reader network. The reason entered into the search log, according to documents obtained by 404 Media: “had an abortion, search for female.” That single query swept across 83,000 cameras in 6,809 law enforcement networks — including cameras in Washington and Illinois, states where abortion is legal and protected. A small-county Texas deputy, hunting for a woman suspected of self-administering an abortion, had just searched a surveillance apparatus stretching from Spokane to Springfield. No warrant was required for the search.
After 404 Media broke the story, Sheriff Adam King and Flock Safety insisted this was a “welfare check” for a missing person. Flock called the reporting “false” and “clickbait.” Documents and court records obtained by EFF tell a different story: deputies discussed potential criminal charges with prosecutors, and the investigating officer’s own affidavit contradicts key claims officials used to justify the welfare framing.
Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund told 404 Media that anti-abortion activists have long secretly tracking users recorded plates at clinics, and large ALPR databases now make it easier to “cross-reference and track those vehicles over time and across state lines.” Living in a so-called safe state offers little protection when the surveillance grid has no state lines.
Representatives Sylvia Garcia and Raja Krishnamoorthi sent a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley in August 2025 demanding answers on warrant requirements and data safeguards. No comprehensive federal law governs any of it.
The real problem isn’t one deputy’s blunt search term. If he had typed “investigation” instead, nobody would have ever known.
In Delaware, State Senate candidate Shay Frisby has already called for their elimination. A bill to do just that should be near the top of the legislative agenda in 2027.
I Told You It Was Kabuki Theatre. Blanche’s confirmation was never in doubt. Collins and Murkowski got their hall passes:
A bitterly divided Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general on Saturday, elevating President Trump’s former defense lawyer who has presided over a Justice Department that has ceded much of its independence to the White House.
Mr. Blanche — the No. 2 official at the department who has served as acting attorney general since his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was fired in April — was confirmed after a bruising battle that centered on concerns about his ability and willingness to rein in Mr. Trump. But as they have time and again during Mr. Trump’s second term, Republicans ultimately swallowed their reservations and fell in line behind the president’s wishes.
The vote was 50 to 49, with two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joining all the chamber’s Democrats in opposing the nomination. Both of them said they had fears that the Justice Department had become increasingly political and that Mr. Blanche would do little to stop any further erosion of its independence from Mr. Trump.
Their dissent briefly cast Mr. Blanche’s nomination in doubt given Republicans’ narrow Senate majority. But a third skeptical Republican, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, threw his support to Mr. Blanche on Friday, effectively salvaging his bid.
Blanche, who is Trump’s Vengeance Officer, is singularly unqualified to be AG. Every senator knows it. Nevertheless…
ICE, ICE, Baby. Their new body-cam policy:
After years of delays, ICE said its field officers nationwide will have body-worn cameras by the end of September. The rollout comes after recent fatal shootings by officers enforcing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown have intensified pressure for accountability that the cameras could provide.
But the agency’s body-worn camera policy could mean taxpayers who are pitching in tens of millions of dollars to pay for the cameras may be kept in the dark about some high-profile confrontations, at least in their immediate aftermath.
The policy says ICE will promptly release video of shootings and other encounters in which its agents cause death or serious injury only after determining “it is in the best interests of the agency” to do so. That gives its director discretion to release recordings that reflect well on the agency’s image while working to keep others secret, experts on body camera policies said.
Such selective releases are routine in some law enforcement agencies but usually not so clearly contemplated in policy, according to professor Christopher Schneider of Brandon University in Canada, a co-author of the new book “Police Body-Worn Cameras: Media and the New Discourse of Police Reform.”
“In some ways, ICE is saying the quiet part out loud,” he said. “Body-worn cameras are being used as contemporary image-work tools to present the police to the public in the most favorable way possible.”
New Mexico, At Least, Seeks To Hold Zuckerberg Accountable. Unlike Delaware:
A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million and make changes to the way young people can use its platforms, the largest financial penalty yet against the tech giant in its ongoing legal battles over social media harm and addiction.
The ruling, issued late Thursday, was in addition to $375 million that Meta was ordered to pay in the same case in March, when a jury found that the company misled users about the safety of its platforms and enabled the sexual exploitation of young people.
The $567 million will go toward a fund to remedy damages caused by the company, including money for treatment of young people who have been harmed by social media.
“Although Meta is not alone in this regard, its social media platforms are a significant contributing factor to the current mental health crisis among New Mexico’s youth established by the substantial evidence in this case,” Judge Bryan Biedscheid, of State District Court in Santa Fe, wrote in the ruling.
If Bryan Townsend and Krista Griffith lived in New Mexico, legislation would already be speeding to the Governor’s desk to keep judges from judging.
Trump Pays Out $1.2 Billion To…:
The Trump administration will pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana, the company announced on Thursday.
It was the fifth such deal the government has reached this year to halt the development of offshore wind, a source of renewable energy that President Trump has derided for decades.
Under the agreement, RWE will voluntarily surrender three leases it owned for wind farms in federal waters. Those projects were in the early stages of development and had little chance of moving forward under the Trump administration, which has halted all federal permitting for offshore wind.
The government would reimburse RWE roughly what the company had paid for the leases under the Biden administration. The settlement would also resolve any legal disputes over the leases, the company said. The company will invest about the same amount in new natural gas projects in the United States, it said.
What do you want to talk about?
So Democratic leadership wants “affordability” to be their issue? Here’s why that’s uncommonly stupid, even for them: People already know about inflation. You’re telling them something they know better than any asshole running for office. But by harping on it, Democrats are strongly implying they can bring prices down. They can’t.
The things people notice and talk about are gasoline prices – mostly outside government control – and groceries, also outside government control. Democrats are promising to fix something they can’t fix, so in the next cycle people will have the same reason to throw out the Democrats that Democrats are using to throw out Trump.
And I haven’t even gotten to the part where “affordability” is vague bullshit meant to obscure the fact that they’re promising to bring down prices. The word suggests that, but doesn’t actually say it, meaning it’s a lie. And that’s exactly why people hate the Democrats in the first place – they promise to make things better but mostly don’t.