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‘Big Brother on Steroids:’ Lawmaker Questions School Surveillance of Families
School districts across the Chicago area are hiring private investigators to follow families and spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to do it, but one lawmaker is questioning whether they should be allowed to do so. An NBC 5 Responds investigation found dozens of local school districts are using increasingly sophisticated tools to verify where families live, including license plate reader cameras.
Now, some lawmakers and privacy advocates are questioning whether those tactics have gone too far. Those questions come after three single mothers were each followed, tracked and watched for months. Through public records requests, NBC 5 Responds verified each of these families were under surveillance by their local school districts.
Documents show the districts spent thousands of dollars on residency verification investigations focusing on each family. “[School administrators] just let me know that my car was being tracked,” said Thalia Sanchez of suburban Alsip. Tatiana Phillips, also from Alsip, says her kids school district had someone take photos of her car while at work, at her mother’s house and even at a local mall.
‘We’re Not Big Brother’: Flock CEO Unveils New Privacy Guardrails After Backlash
Flock Safety plans to establish new guardrails for its technology following backlash over allegations that its automated license plate readers are being misused and enabling mass surveillance. The company said it will announce on Thursday changes that are intended to strengthen privacy protections and reduce instances of abuse.
Default settings for data retention will be changed to seven days from 30 to limit exposure of potentially sensitive information. Customers will also be able to control which offense types captured on Flock cameras can be searched by others.
Searches of data by Flock cameras will require a case code to justify the reason — it was previously optional — and an audit log tracking user activity will be mandatory. When Flock detects abnormal search patterns, a new feature allows them to block users from accessing the system pending a review.
The changes exceed what is currently required by most states, the company said.
“We’re not Big Brother,” Chief Executive Officer Garrett Langley said in an interview. “We’re focused on protecting people.”
Meta Claims Allegations in Latest Social Media Addiction Trial Are ‘Unsubstantiated’
Meta is pushing back on claims made by several state attorneys general in its latest social media addiction trial, saying allegations it misled users about the safety of its apps and that the platforms’ features harmed users are “unsubstantiated.”
“The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News on Thursday. “The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification.”
The company claims damages in this case could reach $1.4 trillion. “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout,” the spokesperson said. “We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court.”
Data Centers Want Pennsylvania’s Farmland — This Bill Could Protect It
A new state bill in Pennsylvania aims to restrict construction of data centers on prime farmland. If passed, House Bill 2588 will prohibit local officials from designating farmland as the only type of land where a municipality can build hyperscale data centers. It will also ban data centers of any size from being built on land where at least half of the soil is suitable for farmland, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s soil classification for land use.
House Representative Marla Brown introduced the Bill. It was referred to the Pennsylvania House of Representative’s Local Government committee, but has not yet been voted through, according to Brown.
“I have a large farming community in my district in Western Pennsylvania,” Brown tells Food Tank. “I started investigating data center development, and in my community one of them is actually in a residential area, and some of it would be on farmland. That raised huge red flags for me in terms of the risk for future development.”
Meta Smart Glasses Quietly Enter Florida Law Enforcement
Two Florida sheriff’s offices have purchased Meta smart glasses, but the public record provides sharply different accounts of why they were acquired. In Broward County, the glasses were purchased for an undercover unit investigating internet crimes against children, but the sheriff’s office has declined to explain whether or how they are used.
In Okeechobee County, officials say the devices are simply a hands-free IT support tool that lets technicians troubleshoot equipment remotely. Public records obtained by surveillance researcher Dave Maass and first reported by Miami New Times show two Florida sheriff’s offices purchasing Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses through Amazon, but with strikingly different levels of transparency about how the devices are used.
Meta Hit With Criminal Complaint in Germany Over AI Smart Glasses Privacy
On Wednesday, August 12, HateAid, a German digital rights organization, filed a criminal complaint against Meta and several partner companies with ZIT, the digital crime prosecution unit inside the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office. The complaint argues that Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses let people record others without their knowledge, in violation of German privacy law.
The filing names the management of Meta Platforms Technologies Ireland Limited, the Ray-Ban and Oakley eyewear brands owned by EssilorLuxottica, and four retail chains selling the glasses across Germany: Fielmann, Apollo-Optik, Mister Spex and MediaMarkt.
HateAid’s complaint rests on Germany’s Telecommunications and Digital Services Data Protection Act, known as the TDDDG. Section 8 of the law prohibits placing devices disguised as everyday objects on the market when they are built to record people unnoticed, and Section 27 turns that into a criminal offense carrying fines, up to two years in prison for responsible executives, and confiscation of profits already earned.
