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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Today's issue

ICE plans contractor analyst program

Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 23 stories · view as email

Top

ICE plans a $100M program to deploy 142 contractor analysts across 24 field areas.(Nikshep Myle / Gadget Review)

ANALYSISICE Expands Surveillance Initiative That Could Sweep Citizens Into Intelligence Files (International Business Times UK)

Federal HIDTA programs aggregate local Flock and Axon license plate reader data.(aclu.org)

Cleveland school officials propose a $603,000 renewal of 201 Flock cameras.(Axios)

Delhi Police tender for 338 facial recognition cameras around a designated protest site.(Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF))

Supreme Court denies a Fourth Amendment challenge to mandatory boat GPS tracking.(KTAR.com)

The ICO reprimanded London's Metropolitan Police for unlawfully uploading data on 179 people.(theregister.com)

The pattern

Officers in three jurisdictions were fired, indicted, or found to have violated the law by misusing Flock camera data.

A Rhode Island town admitted an officer's Flock data sharing violated the law.(Smithfield Times)

Savannah police fired Amber Harpe after her ICE agent husband used her Flock login.(WJCL)

Ohio Rep. Karen Brownlee urges a pause on automated license plate readers.(WLWT)

Under the radar

Nye County manager reinstates sheriff database access after 102 undocumented searches.(Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Nevada ordered the Nye County Sheriff's Office to rewrite database policies.(Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Flock watch

Henrico County, Virginia terminates contract and removes 122 cameras(100percentfedup.com)

Penn State removes flock license plate readers(WPSU)

Morro Bay extends license-plate reader contract(KSBY News)

Florida exempts sheriff from removing plate readers(WPTV)

Flock CEO Garrett Langley said the firm terminated zero police contracts over misuse.(TechCrunch)

Surveillance & Privacy

OCC OCC review found banks restrict services(Cointelegraph)

Across the US, 25 states enact laws requiring IDs or face scans.(PC Magazine)

UK Home Office rules allow Immigration Enforcement to run live facial recognition.(biometricupdate.com)

Missouri sues Temu, alleging banned spyware code secretly harvests device data.(KCTV5)

Coming Up

Thu Oct 15

MeetingAuburn, NY — Auburn City Council meets to further discuss the Axon and Flock police camera contract (auburnpub.com)

Thu Oct 15

MeetingHarris County, TX — Harris County Commissioners Court discusses county Flock surveillance camera usage (Houston Chronicle)

Thu Oct 15

MeetingHarris County, TX — Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo holds a special meeting to examine Flock Safety camera surveillance and potential misuse (Houston Press)

Thu Oct 15

MeetingProvidence, RI — Providence City Council discusses an amendment to prohibit automated license plate readers including Flock cameras (WPRI.com)

Thu Oct 15

MeetingMontrose, CO — Public discussion of license plate reader technology hosted by a private citizen (montrosepress.com)

Thu Oct 15

MeetingSamoa — Samoa Bureau of Statistics hosts an online information session on the procurement of the National Digital Identification Information System (biometricupdate.com)

Full calendar and .ics feed →

Speech & Press

Eleventh Circuit panel finds Florida's social-media ban for under-14s likely constitutional.(reason.com)

Ninth Circuit blocks California from requiring ICE agents to wear visible badges.(thehill.com)

DHS rejected a recommendation to require automated activation on 4,800 ICE body cameras.(sourcenm.com)

Useful

OpenOversight(openoversight.com)

A public database of police officers by department, so a badge number or a photo can be matched to a name.

All the tools and guides →

Past issues

Wed, Oct 14

Missouri sues Temu, alleging spyware code

Tue, Oct 13

Davidson County votes to bag Flock cameras

Mon, Oct 12

UK Border Force launched facial recognition

Fri, Oct 9

Flock refused to remove college cameras

Thu, Oct 8

Internal reports show Homeland Security…

Wed, Oct 7

South Windsor ends Flock reader contract

Tue, Oct 6

FinCEN withdrew two rules on Oct. 5…

Mon, Oct 5

Hawaii plans to deploy 400 plate readers

Fri, Oct 2

West Yorkshire Police deployed live facial…

Thu, Oct 1

Cambridgeshire Police will deploy live…

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