The surveillance & liberty brief

Crow's Nest tracks license-plate readers, facial recognition, police surveillance and the wider civil-liberties beat, town by town. One free email each weekday morning, every line linked to the reporting it came from.

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Western Australia Police Force scanned…

Tuesday, September 22, 2026 · 18 stories · view as email

Top

Western Australia Police scanned 905,117 faces using live facial recognition.(Qazinform)

Western Australia Police deployed live facial recognition across 36 locations, scanning over 905,000 faces and triggering eight false alarms and 79 arrests, Qazinform reports. Police Commissioner Col Blanch told 6PR that the trial's core purpose is deterrence through visible surveillance.

COUNTERPOINTWestern Australia Police Praise Deterrence Success of AI Facial Recognition Trial (6PR)

Cottage Grove voted to cancel its Flock contract and ban license plate readers.(WKOW)

Six Indiana communities moved to cancel automated license plate reader contracts with Flock.(WNDU)

Ireland's privacy regulator fined Google €403 million over user location tracking.(courthousenews.com)

North Yorkshire Police will deploy live facial recognition in York city centre.(Your Harrogate)

School monitoring tools follow students home according to 42% of surveyed teachers.(TheBlaze)

Flock watch

Federal court rules Flock database queries are not searches(reason.com)

Springfield, Mo. rejects oversight rules for license plate readers(OzarksFirst.com)

Blaine County, Idaho orders Flock to remove unannounced camera(East Idaho News)

Sterling, Ill. terminates Flock license plate reader contract(rockfordnewsfirst.com)

Stoughton, Wis. cancels Flock contract after officer tracked ex(La Crosse Tribune)

Surveillance & Privacy

The FTC proposed rules barring companies from using personal data for surveillance pricing.(Dallas Observer)

Dallas garbage trucks equipped with AI cameras captured 20,000 neighborhood photos.(dallasobserver.com)

Australia's privacy commissioner found tracking software on 96% of tested health sites.(Medium.com)

Flawed border surveillance towers left over 1,000 migrant deaths undetected.(MIT Technology Review)

Coming Up

Tue Sep 22

DeadlineBureau of Indian Affairs — Deadline for vendors to submit capability statements challenging the Bureau of Indian Affairs sole-source Clearview AI facial recognition contract (biometricupdate.com)

Tue Sep 22

HearingBernalillo County, NM — Preliminary hearing for Jevon Martinez on felony charges for dismantling Flock surveillance cameras (KOB.com)

Tue Sep 22

MeetingBoerne, TX — Boerne City Council discusses using automated license plate-reading technology (MySA)

Tue Sep 22

MeetingKosciusko County, IN — Kosciusko County Commission meets following county council motions to restrict Flock surveillance funding and development (ABC57)

Tue Sep 22

MeetingMonterey County, CA — Monterey County Board of Supervisors considers an agreement with Flock Safety for automated license plate readers (The King City Rustler)

Tue Sep 22

VoteMonterey County, CA — Monterey County Board of Supervisors considers an agreement between the Sheriff's Office and Flock Safety (Salinas Valley Tribune)

Full calendar and .ics feed →

Speech & Press

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by 4chan and Kiwi Farms against British regulators.(reason.com)

Television networks suspended White House pool coverage after officials barred CNN.(electionlawblog.org)

Lawmakers demanded body-camera footage after an ICE officer shot someone in Austin.(kpic.com)

Useful

Atlas of Surveillance(atlasofsurveillance.org)

EFF's searchable record of which surveillance technologies each police department has bought, by city and agency.

All the tools and guides →

Past issues

Fri, Sep 25

India's Ministry of Home Affairs directed…

Thu, Sep 24

Massachusetts and Wisconsin fusion centers…

Wed, Sep 23

Carey bans ALPRs and facial recognition

Mon, Sep 21

Las Cruces adds Flock camera privacy rules

Fri, Sep 18

LiveView and Axon let police stream cameras

Thu, Sep 17

El Paso votes to remove Flock cameras

Wed, Sep 16

Hackers dump Flock camera data

Tue, Sep 15

Flock Safety gave feds Boston ALPR data

Mon, Sep 14

Minnesota jurisdictions drop Flock cameras

Fri, Sep 11

Tempe proposes license plate reader ban

Each issue is the day's brief as it went to subscribers. The feed has everything we tracked that did not make the email.