Todd Feathers

Schools use AI to monitor kids, hoping to prevent violence. Our investigation found security risks Schools are turning to AI-powered surveillance technology to monitor students on school-issued devices like laptops and tablets.

apnews.com/article/ai-s...

‘Clearly Discrimination’: How a City Uses Fusus to Spy on Its Poorest Residents Fusus’s technology allows police to tap into live feeds from public and privately owned surveillance cameras. In Toledo, Ohio, cops use the power to watch one particular type of location.

3) Living in subsidized housing shouldn’t mean you’re more surveilled. @gizmodo.com @toddfeathers.bsky.social

gizmodo.com/clearly-disc...

‘Clearly Discrimination’: How a City Uses Fusus to Spy on Its Poorest Residents Fusus’s technology allows police to tap into live feeds from public and privately owned surveillance cameras. In Toledo, Ohio, cops use the power to watch one particular type of location.

Horrifying story from @gizmodo.com about how Fusus police tech enables wildly disproportionate surveillance of public housing residents in Toledo, Ohio.

@toddfeathers.bsky.social

If you're a reporter in D.C. interested in doing a similar analysis, I may have some data for you.

👀

If your local police or sheriff's department uses Fusus, you can request an audit log to see where and when cops are surveilling your city. Here's the request I sent:

www.muckrock.com/foi/toledo-4...

Fusus_audit_log_excerpt.xlsx

This story is based on Fusus audit logs we obtained from TPD through a public records request. Here's an excerpt of the Toledo log:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

A map of toledo with the 12 affordable housing complexes surrounded by half-mile yellow buffers. Crimes are represented on the map by red dots (indicating homicides), purple dots (indicating reports of shootings), and orange dots (indicating other crimes). The map shows that crime was distributed throughout Toledo and not primarily near the affordable housing complexes.

Here's a map showing the 12 subsidized housing complexes and where crime occurred from Jan 1 - Oct 8, 2024.

Red dots are homicides
Purple dots are reports of shootings (mostly Shotspotter alerts)
Orange dots are other crimes.

api.mapbox.com/styles/v1/tf...

Meanwhile, residents of McClinton Nunn and other complexes say that sometimes they have to wait 15 minutes for police to respond to shootings and that when they report other crimes, police don't respond at all.

“You can watch all you want, but you gotta do something,” one resident said.

During September 2024, only two crimes were reported within half a mile of McClinton Nunn Homes. But TPD officers streamed 150 hours of live footage across 11 different days from just the four cameras watching over the developments’ playgrounds.

A photograph of a playground with a swing set and slide surrounded by tan, two-story apartment buildings. In the foreground is a silver telephone pole with a surveillance camera sticking out toward the playground.

Take the playgrounds at the McClinton Nunn Homes, where thousand dollar camera systems watch over swing sets with no swings.

That surveillance was disproportionate to the amount of crime near the complexes.

And contrary to police claims that the cameras would only be activated in emergencies, we found TPD officers often watched feeds from the complexes for hours on end at times when no crimes were reported in the area.

We obtained audit log data showing that Toledo police spent more than 18,000 hours during a nine-month period watching live footage from the subsidized housing developments—more than twice as much time as they spent watching all the other Fusus-enabled cameras combined.

There are more than 700 Fusus-enabled cameras in Toledo. Some are owned by the city and mounted on government buildings or intersections. Others watch over gas stations, convenience stores, and motels.

275 of the cameras are on the properties of 12 subsidized, low-income housing developments.

‘Clearly Discrimination’: How a City Uses Fusus to Spy on Its Poorest Residents Fusus’s technology allows police to tap into live feeds from public and privately owned surveillance cameras. In Toledo, Ohio, cops use the power to watch one particular type of location.

When Toledo police rolled out their Fusus system, allowing officers to tap into the live feeds of privately owned cameras, they promised to only use the power in emergency situations.

We obtained data that tells a very different story about when, and who, TPD watches.

gizmodo.com/clearly-disc...

And facial recognition is notoriously accurate at identifying people's ages based on facial features. So accurate.

The insight of a CEO is unmatched fortune.com/2025/01/14/w...

AI Financial Advisers Target Young People Living Paycheck to Paycheck AI finance apps are reaching Gen Z and millennial users with personalized chatbots that offer money advice—and upsell them big time.

cool, cool cool

www.wired.com/story/ai-fin...

Federal Agencies Lack Critical Information About Some of Their Riskiest AI Systems From facial recognition tools to algorithms that identify diseases, agencies reported that they didn't know enough about what they're acquiring from commercial vendors.

For at least 25 safety or rights-impacting systems, agencies reported that “no documentation exists regarding maintenance, composition, quality, or intended use of the training and evaluation data.”

gizmodo.com/federal-agen...

I'm writing a piece for my Spine Tingler newsletter and iso folks with a professional POV on #rabbits and/or their symbolic use in #horror media. Any academics, creatives, trainers, handlers, vets, or misc experts out there up for a brief interview in the next week or two? #journorequest

Betteridge's law of headlines

At the scene of the Amazon strike:

The NYPD has now erected barricades to allow Amazon contractors to enter and leave the distribution center, helping Amazon break the picket line.

On the scene of the Amazon strike in Maspeth, the NYPD is trying to break the picket, engaging in arrests of union members and engaging in physical confrontations with workers and their supporters.

Hell Gate is on the scene at the protest of Amazon union members at the distribution center in Maspeth.

Just moments ago, NYPD officers pulled an Amazon worker out of his car after he stood up out of his seat and attempted to join the strike.

Question for folks who use screen readers/accessibility experts: When do you advise describing a person's appearance in alt text?

For example, I might purposefully choose an image of a Black scientist or a CEO for a story even though the story isn't about race. Should alt text specify that?

Let’s put a smile on that face On shiny happy people

Issue 4 of Spine Tingler (my 2x monthly, only slightly spooky newsletter for storytellers of all stripes) is out today! It's all about playing in the liminal space between grinning and (not) bearing it.

Read it here: spine-tingler.beehiiv.com/p/let-s-put-...

Ffs no

seems like this is a flat violation of the TX shield law, which requires Paxton to exhaust reasonable efforts to get the information elsewhere (ie, from GOOG). not surprising that Ken Paxton is using any shred of an excuse to bully a news org, though.

I'm currently reading, and would recommend, "Ways of Being" by James Bridle, which is about exactly this!

A Hospital Helped a Beloved Doctor’s Practice Flourish Even as It Suspected He Was Hurting Patients Hailed as a savior upon his arrival in Helena, Dr. Thomas C. Weiner became a favorite of patients and his hospital’s highest earner. As the myth surrounding the high-profile oncologist grew, so did th...

Incredible reporting

www.propublica.org/article/thom...