Privacy Watch STL

ShotSpotter mics are on schools, apt bldgs, public housing, private residences, alleys, public bldgs, and intersections. The mics do record voices, contrary to repeated denials by the company. There are at least two cases where prosecutors sought to use such voice recordings.

“The idea that the police are actively tracking the location of women they believe have had self administered abortions under the guise of ‘safety’ does not make me feel any better about this kind of surveillance,” EFF’s @evacide told @404mediaco. 404media.co/a-texas-cop-se…

This week, the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy, which means the genetic data the company collected on millions of users is now up for sale. If you do not want your data included in any potential sale, it’s a good time to ask the company to delete it. eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

USCIS is "seeking to access and review the social media accounts of any person applying for citizenship, residency or asylum in the U.S., in a move that they argue is necessary to comply with one of President Trump’s executive orders on immigration." bit.ly/41w1W8a

I have reported on tech that police currently use that has AI to scrape social media, create “target cards” on “suspects,” and uses cellphone ad ID it buys from data brokers to geolocate and build profiles on people. One is Israeli-made called Cobwebs. LAPD uses it.

The government enlisting AI to police speech online should scare the hell out of every American.

Cell-site simulators (CSS, also known as Stingrays or IMSI catchers) are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than a tower. Our new tool, Rayhunter, can help you find them. eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

“Your driving data goes to a half a dozen companies you’ve never even heard of for reasons you’d perhaps never agree to if asked directly,” EFF’s Thorin Klosowski told @ConsumerReports. consumerreports.org/electronics/pe…

Police want ShotSpotter because it increases their power, not because it "works." This report from Pasadena shows how police enable SoundThinking to lie about the effectiveness of ShotSpotter, keeping contracts in place and encouraging more to be signed. lapublicpress.org/2025/02/pasade…

At EFF we spend a lot of time thinking about the tech used by police and authorities to spy on you while you’re going about your everyday life, like cell-site simulators (CSS). Rayhunter is a new open source tool we’ve created that we hope empowers everyone to help search out CSS around the world. eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

THREAD. The assumption that the reasons people in power do things are the same as why *they say* they do things is one of the most important forms of propaganda. The greatest lie of all is that billions flowing for more militarized police surveillance is "to prevent crime."

DeFlock.me, a website fighting against automated license plate readers, received a cease-and-desist from one of the most notorious surveillance companies. Of course, EFF has the creator's back. eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

The campaign of invasive surveillance, intimidation, and malicious prosecution against Cop City protesters has not ended. It will become the new normal unless the public demands answers and accountability. Who is behind this conspiracy against dissent? theguardian.com/us-news/2025/f…

This tied those on monitoring to ShotSpotter alerts, bring amped up officers to those with no particular indication of wrongdoing. Huge numbers of innocent people. Where surveillance tech exists there's invariably expansion of how it's used and it goes beyond initial promises.

BREAKING: We are suing DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management to stop the brazen and illegal data sharing of federal employee data with the “government efficiency” group. eff.org/deeplinks/2025…

Little Rock joins other cities across the country who have said no to ShotSpotter in recent years, including Chicago, San Diego, Portland, Seattle, Durham, Buffalo, Dayton, Winston-Salem, Mobile, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Atlanta & Toledo: thv11.com/article/news/l…

Another reason to dismantle ShotSpotter (and all surveillance): Wild story about how Steven Levitt of @Freakonomics helped the Cook County Sheriff to build a system that mapped the proximity of people on electronic monitoring to ShotSpotter alerts. chicagoreader.com/news/electroni…

Making residents of subsidized housing “subject to increased levels of surveillance simply because that is where they live really highlights how inequitable and unjust these applications of surveillance can be,” EFF’s @_blip_ told @Gizmodo. gizmodo.com/clearly-discri…

Gotta love civil servants wired.com/story/federal-…

What's fun about this is that SoundThinking paid for the only existing "research" that says ShotSpotter has a meaningful impact on gun violence or saving lives.