A DFR program features a fleet of camera-equipped drones, which can range from just a couple to dozens or more. These are deployed from a launch pad in response to 911 calls and other calls for service, sometimes operated by a drone pilot or, increasingly, autonomously directed to the call location. The appeal is the promise of increased "situational awareness" for officers headed to a call.
In 2025, elected officials across the country began treating surveillance technology purchases differently: not as inevitable administrative procurements handled by police departments, but as political decisions subject to council oversight and constituent pressure. This shift proved to be the most effective anti-surveillance strategy of the year. Since February, at least 23 jurisdictions fully ended, cancelled, or rejected Flock Safety ALPR programs (including , , , Hays County , , Eugene, Springfield , and ) by recognizing surveillance procurement as political power, not administrative routine.
Across ideologically diverse communities, 2025 campaigns against automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance kept winning. From Austin, Texas to Cambridge, Massachusetts to Eugene, Oregon, successful campaigns combined three practical elements: a motivated political champion on city council, organized grassroots pressure from affected communities, and technical assistance at critical decision moments. The 2025 Formula for Refusal Institutional Authority: Council members leveraging "procurement power"-local democracy's most underutilized tool-to say no.
It's no longer surprising when the shoes you've been eyeing pop up on your feed multiple times a day, or when the resort you casually mentioned to your partner appears on their socials. At this point, even your nephew's Christmas wishlist somehow finds its way into your ads. Yes, online advertising has become persistent - and honestly a little unnerving - but it doesn't have to be. AdGuard blocks ads, trackers, malware risks, and more at the network level,
It seems like everywhere we turn we see dystopian stories about technology's impact on our lives and our futures-from tracking-based surveillance capitalism, to street level government surveillance, to the dominance of a few large platforms choking innovation, to the growing efforts by authoritarian governments to control what we see and say-the landscape can feel bleak. Exposing and articulating these problems is important, but so is envisioning and then building solutions. That's where our podcast comes in.
Contact import has always been the most effective way to find people you know on a social app, but it's also been poorly implemented or abused by platforms. Even with encryption, phone numbers have been leaked or brute-forced, sold to spammers, or used by platforms for dubious purposes. We weren't willing to accept that risk, so we developed a fundamentally more secure approach that protects your data.
The city will stick with a surveillance company that scans license plates to help law enforcement catch criminal suspects, a dramatic reversal of an earlier vote that had rejected the firm's new $2 million contract. The company, Flock Safety, will maintain an existing network of 300 cameras to monitor the city's busiest streets and local state highways for up to two years while the Oakland Police Department conducts a competitive search for a long-term vendor.
Age Range for Apps shares your age range with apps to help keep experiences age-appropriate. If you are 13 or older, you can set this feature up yourself. If you are under a Family Sharing group, a parent or guardian will need to help manage your age range and related controls in Family Sharing settings. app age rating system, which it updated in February in order to provide more granular categorization for apps, especially among teen audiences .
Behold: Ken Paxton will now demonstrate that broken clocks are indeed right twice a day. The Texas Attorney General is notorious for, well, a very long list of reasons. But in this case, he at least appears to be doing consumers a solid: He sued five television companies for using ad-targeting spyware on their TVs. Texas sued Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense and TCL for allegedly recording what viewers watch without their consent.
New Orleans is the first US city with real-time facial recognition: If you're wanted and walk past one of the system's cameras, it could flag you. The twist: it's a private system, and even though the new mayor and police chief are at odds about facial recognition, this non-profit says it's able to establish its own "guard-rails" as it feeds real-time tips to the police, side-stepping the debate about government regulation and privacy.
Atkins underscored that public blockchains are "more transparent than any legacy financial system ever built," with every transaction recorded on a ledger accessible to anyone. Atkins also said that chain analytics firms are already adept at linking on-chain activity to off-chain identities.
Privacy advocates have always argued that Google is an advertising company that just happens to build a browser. Most of us shrugged that off because, well, Chrome is fast, familiar, and hard to abandon. But Manifest V3 really does change the landscape. Google frames it as a technical upgrade for security and performance. Yet the underlying mechanics point to a different goal: reducing user control in ways that closely align with an ad-driven business model.
