Matthew Guariglia's Avatar

Matthew Guariglia

@mguariglia.bsky.social

Historian of race, policing, surveillance, and technology. Senior Policy Analyst at EFF. Sometimes teach at Emory. Book on race and the origins of modern policing out now! My views are not my employers. MatthewGuariglia.com

11,430 Followers  |  963 Following  |  1,697 Posts  |  Joined: 26.04.2023  |  2.1084

Latest posts by mguariglia.bsky.social on Bluesky

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07.10.2025 20:59 β€” πŸ‘ 3    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

Thanks for sharing EFF's work!

07.10.2025 20:28 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.

NEW: In May, a Texas police department said they used the powerful Flock surveillance network against a woman who had an abortion "for her safety"

Newly obtained court records show it was a 'death investigation,' and they considered charging her with a crime

www.404media.co/police-said-...

07.10.2025 13:04 β€” πŸ‘ 1173    πŸ” 654    πŸ’¬ 25    πŸ“Œ 75
Assistant Professor Assistant Professor, , <p style="text-align: center;"><em><span>LSE is committed to building a diverse, equitable and truly inclusive university</span></em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><spa...

🚨 New assistant prof job posting at LSE with a focus on crime and criminal justice

jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...

07.10.2025 18:19 β€” πŸ‘ 9    πŸ” 11    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
Flock Gives Law Enforcement All Over the Country Access to Your Location – The Data for Justice Project | ACLU of Massachusetts

New: Records obtained by the @aclum.bsky.social show police across the state are conducting dragnet surveillance of motorists and sharing their location information with cops in states that have banned abortion and gender affirming care, and those that work w/ICE data.aclum.org/2025/10/07/f...

07.10.2025 18:43 β€” πŸ‘ 19    πŸ” 17    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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Camden County commissioner pleads guilty to misdemeanor for removing Flock camera A Camden County commissioner has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge stemming from taking down a Flock camera on Highway 54.Todd Isaac Skelton pleaded guilty

A county commissioner tried to take down a License Plate Reader in his jurisdiction where elected officials had ended their contract w/ Flock. Police arrested him.

Who really runs these counties? Politicians gave blank checks to police and are now learning the genie is out of the bottle.

07.10.2025 16:12 β€” πŸ‘ 128    πŸ” 53    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 4
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Flock’s Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for Human Voices Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product ...

What could possibly go wrong with putting giant microphones in cities, funded by law enforcement?

via @mguariglia.bsky.social for @eff.org

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

07.10.2025 14:11 β€” πŸ‘ 12    πŸ” 10    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1
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Flock Safety and Texas Sheriff Claimed License Plate Search Was for a Missing Person. It Was an Abortion Investigation. New documents and court records obtained by EFF show that Texas deputies queried Flock Safety's surveillance data in an abortion investigation, contradicting the narrative promoted by the company and ...

EFF found the documents, here's our blog:

07.10.2025 13:11 β€” πŸ‘ 26    πŸ” 11    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0
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Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime Court records show that the narrative Flock and a Texas Sheriff's Office has told the public isn't the whole story, and that police were conducting a 'death investigation' into the abortion.

🚨🚨 Both the police and Flock's defense for why Texas police searched the entire country for License Plate Reader data to find woman who had self-administered an abortion was because she was a missing person and family was concerned with her health. Now documents reveal they wanted to charge her.

07.10.2025 13:10 β€” πŸ‘ 37    πŸ” 14    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

To put it another way, I have represented thousands of people. I cannot think of a single instance in which the initial police report was entirely correct. Not one.

Journalists, please stop copying them down as if they were. Or at least give context re credibility!

07.10.2025 12:16 β€” πŸ‘ 410    πŸ” 134    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 4
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Texas and Florida have become national models for using the police state to wage culture war battles From library books to abortion, gender, and even food, the culture war is now feeding the police state.

"The ability for law enforcement in some states to get access to data and digital surveillance data from other states is going to be a massive problem," EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told @Reason.com. reason.com/2025/10/06/...

07.10.2025 00:02 β€” πŸ‘ 140    πŸ” 58    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 3

We'll see how much longer it's available after this!

06.10.2025 23:27 β€” πŸ‘ 4    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

A lot of people who have ignored this are also about to learn really *really* quickly that when police control when cameras turn on, footage storage, and release of footage, body-worn cameras are much more a tool of surveillance and state propaganda than accountability.

06.10.2025 23:22 β€” πŸ‘ 15    πŸ” 2    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0

Whether you're a casual news reader or a breaking news reporter at the NYTimes, I implore you--please, please, please--do not believe or report DHS/ICE/CBP's side of events uncritically. End the state's monopoly on legitimate storytelling. They are not the objective arbiter of what really happened.

06.10.2025 23:04 β€” πŸ‘ 1192    πŸ” 339    πŸ’¬ 23    πŸ“Œ 10
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AI-powered security systems invite 'Minority Report' comparisons Generative AI has become a much bigger player in the security sector. But privacy experts worry that it's introducing a civil liberties nightmare.

β€œIf (AI crime prediction is) paired with invasive technologies such as face recognition, which itself reflects biases and makes errors that have led to false arrests, the potential harm is exponential," EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told @Mashable.com.
mashable.com/article/ai-...

06.10.2025 21:58 β€” πŸ‘ 76    πŸ” 31    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 3

Who could have predicted that third party verification programs collecting IDs to age gate content would have all their data hacked?! Oh right…..everyone!

05.10.2025 17:05 β€” πŸ‘ 44    πŸ” 12    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 1
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Hey, San Francisco, There Should be Consequences When Police Spy A San Francisco supervisor has proposed that police and other city agencies should have no financial consequences for breaking a landmark surveillance oversight law. In 2019, organizations from

A San Francisco Supervisor wants to amend a landmark surveillance law so it is harder to sue police when they spy on you illegally. Police are not above the law and this policy change will result in one thing: more illegal surveillance. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...

04.10.2025 19:59 β€” πŸ‘ 172    πŸ” 56    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 2
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Amazon Ring Cashes in on Techno-Authoritarianism and Mass Surveillance Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices....

My response to Ring's decision to roll back reforms and go back to surveillance on behalf of police as a business model.

This is part of a trend of companies bending over backwards to get in on the techno-authoritarian money/power grab that comes with being a lapdog of the carceral state.

18.07.2025 16:14 β€” πŸ‘ 676    πŸ” 272    πŸ’¬ 26    πŸ“Œ 32

I should fill you in on that RTCC convention I went to.

04.10.2025 14:57 β€” πŸ‘ 1    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 0
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NYPD turns public housing Internet program into surveillance network | Biometric Update Officers are now able to watch New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents through a live feed connected to NYPD’s Domain Awareness System (DAS).

Folks need to be paying attention to the growth of Real-Time Crime Centers. It is not just NYC, but they tend to lead on these things. www.biometricupdate.com/202510/nypd-...

04.10.2025 14:08 β€” πŸ‘ 33    πŸ” 23    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 1

Of course! Wild stuff.

04.10.2025 00:51 β€” πŸ‘ 0    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 0    πŸ“Œ 0

I’m watching the Jonathan Demme/Denzel Washington Manchurian Candidate remake and not only do I think it’s fantasticβ€”I also think it might be a defining film to capture the era of the endless war on terror.

04.10.2025 00:28 β€” πŸ‘ 7    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
An add that says "Safety you can see and now hear: Detect sounds of human distress and cover the blind stops that cameras miss with Distress Detection" with an alert that says "screaming" and an address.

An add that says "Safety you can see and now hear: Detect sounds of human distress and cover the blind stops that cameras miss with Distress Detection" with an alert that says "screaming" and an address.

Ads reveal that Flock, makers of automated license plate readers and other surveillance technology, are promising to introduce "Distress detection" into their gunshot detection devices which will alert police when it hears human voices in distress, including screaming.

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

02.10.2025 15:52 β€” πŸ‘ 61    πŸ” 25    πŸ’¬ 23    πŸ“Œ 40
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Chula Vista, police reports and AI: What you need to know San Diego County's second-largest city is embracing AI tools for policing as California considers new regulations.

β€œThe judge or the prosecutor doesn't know which portions were written by the AI and which portions were written by the officer,” EFF’s @MGuariglia.bsky.social told KPBS News. β€œIt interjects a lot of uncertainty β€” and a lot of deniability for the officer.” www.kpbs.org/news/public...

03.10.2025 18:56 β€” πŸ‘ 65    πŸ” 22    πŸ’¬ 7    πŸ“Œ 2

It amazes me that politicians continuously sell us the idea of policing as the only route to peace and safety when with our own eyes, everyday, from the Punisher logo to this, we are forced to confront the fact that they outwardly present themselves as a death and violence cult.

03.10.2025 16:25 β€” πŸ‘ 49    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 3    πŸ“Œ 0
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ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team Documents show ICE plans to hire dozens of contractors to scan X, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to target people for deportation.

NEW: ICE is planning to hire a team of nearly 30 people to surveil social media 24/7, build dossiers on people, and flag them for arrest and deportation. @dell.bsky.social has the scoop: www.wired.com/story/ice-so...

03.10.2025 13:22 β€” πŸ‘ 6488    πŸ” 4910    πŸ’¬ 795    πŸ“Œ 1020

The false positive rate on this is going to be 450%.

7000% once people see the recorders and start pranking them.

Which will eventually mean the false positive rate will be zero, bc the cops will start ignoring them altogether.

03.10.2025 00:34 β€” πŸ‘ 36    πŸ” 13    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 0

Major corporations stop making products designed to violate wiretap laws challenge

03.10.2025 00:17 β€” πŸ‘ 29    πŸ” 8    πŸ’¬ 1    πŸ“Œ 1

Flock to receive the prestigious Joey Skaggs Public Disturbance Award for inventing an omnipresent device that can endlessly tie up police investigative resources using only the power of protected speech.

02.10.2025 22:13 β€” πŸ‘ 92    πŸ” 15    πŸ’¬ 4    πŸ“Œ 1

Truly unclear how this will work!

02.10.2025 18:28 β€” πŸ‘ 2    πŸ” 0    πŸ’¬ 2    πŸ“Œ 0

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