Alexander Howard

Axon Tests Face Recognition on Body-Worn Cameras Axon Enterprise Inc. is working with a Canadian police department to test the addition of face recognition technology (FRT) to its body-worn cameras (BWCs). This is an alarming development in governme...

Now, Axon will test face recognition into police bodycams in Edmonton:
www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Black Boxes Archives Body-worn cameras were supposed to deliver a revolution in transparency and accountability to policing. But in cities across America, the revolution never arrived.

Police body cameras have often been deployed for surveillance and investigation, not tools for transparency & accountability:
(Citizens exercising our right to bear witness to public policing using our smartphones provides transparency.)

One future is already here, its contours defined by geofences & invisible strands of barbed wire connected to wearable computers forcibly strapped to refugees, migrants, & inmates.

Watch for adoption of smartwatches for ATD: tracreports.org/immigration/... …& smartglasses for ICE officers in 2026.

ICE is using smartwatches to track pregnant women, even during labor: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’ Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labor and delivery

If it wasn’t already clear how “smart” infrastructure would be used for far more in the USA than surveillance capitalism & optimizing public transit & home automation, ICE’s location-aware smartwatches make it crystal clear in December 2025.

If the Justice Department is in fact compiling an “enemies list” & directing FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to map networks “inside & outside the United States,” news outlets should confirm & advancing the story — and Congress should be holding hearings: www.kenklippenstein.com/p/leak-fbi-l...

Trump’s Enemies List Meets Media Blackout Why the NSPM-7 fueled FBI blacklist isn’t considered news

Fair criticism by @kenklippenstein.bsky.social
of one of the worst practices of newsrooms (not publishing a source document as evidence for skeptical publics) & of mainstream US news outlets failing to cover policy shifts at the Justice Department that pose a danger to our constitutional rights.

Trump Confronts His Political Reality The president has entered the lame-duck era of his career.

🩼🦆 www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

The Very Official 2025 FOIA Advent Calendar

STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING EVERYONE (or everyone who is a FOIA nerd): There's a public records request advent calendar.

h/t Cam Rodriguez docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Immigration Agents Have Often Grabbed and Mistreated Citizens, Congressional Investigators Find Prompted by ProPublica’s reporting, an investigation by Senate Democrats documented the experiences of nearly two dozen citizens wrongly detained by immigration agents, contradicting the Trump adminis...

“What most struck me is the brutality and physical violence involved in every story,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal. “This is stuff that should be unrecognizable as America. It should make everyday Americans outraged.”

By @nicolefoy.bsky.social

The U.S failing to respond when its own citizen is deliberately targeted sends a dangerous message that attacks on American journalists abroad will carry no consequences.

The international community must step in "by ensuring effective war crimes investigations are opened." @pressfreedom.bsky.social

The first paragraph of Judge Breyer‘s opinion granting an injunction in the California National Guard case is a banger.

Or that Americans are paying closer attention to coverage the physical and mental health of the man who demands to be the “main character” in public life every day? We can see he’s making more mistakes, becoming more disinhibited, & may be receiving IV treatment (bruised hand).

House GOP erupts over health care as leaders hunt for a plan Speaker Mike Johnson presented a list of concepts that did not include extending expiring Obamacare subsidies.

December 10, 2025, DC — Speaker Johnson presented a list of 10 health care policies that could get votes from Republicans.

“Some were more specific. Others were vague, including one bullet point that simply said, ‘Innovation.’

The list did not include an extension of the expiring tax credits.”

President “Biden & his team were slow to act, hoping the problem would go away on its own.”— @cflav.bsky.social

“More than anything, the former Biden officials I spoke with said they were worried that their party had still failed to decide on a coherent set of views and policies on immigration.”

He will make it up, just like he made up the lie that my team censored 22 million tweets. Except this time, he’ll be making up lies about people living outside of the US, pretending they are “linked to the CIA” —his usual bullshit trope, which has real consequences in some countries. He won’t care.

Great list! I’d swap out the last as an electoral reform, & put in a national beneficial ownership register with open data.

Articles of Impeachment Against Secretary Peter B. Hegseth | U.S. Congressman Shri Thanedar The Official U.S. Congressional website of Congressman Shri Thanedar

thanedar.house.gov/resolution

At will? Whose will? Removing independent agency heads is part of a broader assault on a nonpartisan government

“the judiciary will kill key parts of the working model of American governance, built up over time to adapt to the needs of the country, with no functional alternative beyond handing unprecedented power to an eager authoritarian.”— @donmoyn.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni... Good mourning

At will? Whose will? Removing independent agency heads is part of a broader assault on a nonpartisan government

New, from me: by embracing unitary executive theory, the Supreme Court is moving towards making all public employees fireable at the will of the President.

This will not just hurt government competence, it will aid democratic backsliding. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/at-will-wh...

Despite that Cava bag and obvious conflicts resulting from having run a consulting business that helped companies get DHS contracts, Tom Homan is still involved in DHS procurement. And his former clients are doing great. We partnered with POGO on this. www.pogo.org/investigatio...

Border czar’s former clients cash in on Trump’s immigration crackdown “So we’ve been trying to get access to Tom Homan…”

Spoke with @dfriedman.bsky.social about Tom Homan & corruption at DHS.

The fact that Homan’s acceptance of $50,000 cash did not disqualify him from a govt job sends the message to companies seeking to feed at the DHS trough that they can use such corrupt methods to obtain government contracts.

One theme here is the speed of American institutional collapse.
“It took Erdoğan 15 years to do what Trump did in 100 days. If [Americans] do not accept the fact that this is a long game, and it will be brutal, I think you won’t have the patience and stamina to bear it.”

This is awesome. Print is such a good way to get around a bunch of distribution (and surveillance!) mechanisms that seem otherwise mandatory in this very gross economy. It is really nice to see it spelled out like this.

It works great for us, and it'll work great for other places!

The EU’s Fine Against X is Not About Speech or ‘Censorship’ | TechPolicy.Press The €120 million fine under the Digital Services Act is just the EU enforcing some normal, boring requirements of its law, writes Stanford's Daphne Keller.

The EU fined X for lying to users about blue checks, failing to disclose basic info about ads, and impeding researchers from studying publicly available info. "This is not about censorship," says @daphnek.bsky.social, who'd be the first to call it out if it were. www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine...

I see Oversight.Gov is online again! Great news for everyone who cares about overweight, transparency, accountability, ethics, efficiency, & anti-corruption across the U.S. government. It should never have gone offline.

ICYMI!

@noupside.bsky.social & I had a great chat today on @lawfaremedia.org about the EU fining X €120 M for violations of the Digital Service Act (DSA)

We run down:

* what the DSA is (and isn't)
* what these fines are actually about & how they'll play out
* why this isn't about censorship

There is an even more explicit historic antecedent to Trump’s “America First” that mirrored the white nationalism today with historic archives that can help inform Americans today, beyond the Know-Nothings, as apt as they are.
exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-an... NB: The Nazis studied Jim Crow laws

Neo-Confederates

‘Civilisational erasure’: US strategy document appears to echo far-right conspiracy theories about Europe Official text, signed by Donald Trump, outlines plan to ‘cultivate resistance’ in EU nations to their ‘current trajectory’

The US govt is screaming—in words, actions, and now a strategic document—that America has switched sides in the world, preferring authoritarians and a transnational white nationalism over liberal democracy.

Like Russia, a US foreign policy goal is to undermine the EU.

Will Europe finally listen?