Things a reader can use: the map of the cameras, the portal for the records, the deadline for the comment, the guide for the protest. One or two of these run in each issue of the brief under Useful, chosen against the day's stories. Every link here was opened and read before it went on the list; write to newsletter@crowsnest.report with one that belongs.
Maps, registries and portals that show what has been bought and what it holds.
Crowdsourced map of automated license plate readers. Check your commute, then add the cameras you pass that are not on it yet.
EFF's searchable record of which surveillance technologies each police department has bought, by city and agency.
Flock publishes a page per customer agency. It shows how long your city keeps plate reads and which outside agencies can search them.
Every broker that sells Californians' data has to register here. The list is public and works as a directory for everyone else too.
One request that tells every registered data broker to delete what they hold on you. California residents only, for now.
A plain-language guide to what data brokers hold and how to opt out of the big ones, state by state.
Enter an email address and see which breaches it appeared in. Useful the day a breach story runs.
Where the contracts, filings and records are, and how to ask for the ones that aren't.
File a public records request in any US jurisdiction and it tracks the response for you. Search first: someone may already have your city's Flock contract.
Where newsrooms publish the documents behind their stories. Search it for the filing or contract a story quotes but does not link.
Free federal court dockets and opinions. Install the RECAP extension and every PACER document you open becomes free for the next person.
The Reporters Committee's guide to every state's public records and open meetings law, with what is exempt and how to appeal a denial.
Track a bill in any state legislature, read its text, and see who sponsored it and how each vote went.
A public database of police officers by department, so a badge number or a photo can be matched to a name.
Who sits on whose board, who lobbies whom, who donated. The map behind the vendor that just won a contract.
Comment periods, model ordinances, and the people already working on it where you live.
Federal rules take public comments, and agencies have to answer them. This is how to find an open docket and file one that counts.
Rules and notices the day before they are published, which is the earliest a deadline can be known.
The ACLU's model ordinance that makes a city council vote in public before police buy surveillance tech. Two dozen cities have passed a version.
Every state has one, and the affiliate is who to write when a local story needs a lawyer or a records request with weight behind it.
EFF's directory of local digital-rights groups. The people who already go to your city's surveillance hearings.
Which states have a comprehensive privacy law, which bills are moving, and what each one actually gives you.
EPIC's reading of the state privacy laws, including what is weak in them and which ones let you sue.
Guides for the day you are the one being watched.
EFF's guides to protecting yourself from surveillance, written for people, not engineers. Start with the one for your situation.
What your phone gives away at a demonstration and how to carry it so it gives away less.
The ACLU's plain statement of what police can and cannot do at a protest, and what to do if you are stopped or arrested.
The green-hat legal observers. Each chapter runs a mass-defense hotline; find yours before the day you need it.
Freedom of the Press Foundation's guides for reporters and their sources: devices, accounts, crossing borders.
Shows how identifiable your browser is to trackers, then tells you what to change.
The groups whose reports explain how each technology is actually used.
EFF's explainers on each police technology: what an ALPR, a drone, a cell-site simulator or a face recognition system actually does with your data.
The running reporting on how Flock's network is used, searched and shared, most of it from records requests.
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project: New York's watchdog on police tech, whose reports travel well to any city.
The coalition that got predictive policing out of Los Angeles. Its reports show how to take a program apart with public records.
The group behind the country's first civilian privacy commission. The model for getting a city to say no.
A nonpartisan group organized around the Fourth Amendment, with local chapters that show up at council meetings.
Chicago's police-transparency collective: the records, the tools, and the fights over the city's surveillance spending.
Crow's Nest is independent and lists these because they are useful, not because anyone asked. Nothing here is sponsored.