#surveillance

Records released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other requesters under the Freedom of Information Act show the US Postal Service's internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored social media posts about protests in 2020 and 2021, with little record of oversight or legal justification, EFF says. Bulletins covered events across the political spectrum, including a planned "Million MAGA March," a Virginia gun-rights rally and counter-protest, a Save the Post Office protest and protests outside then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's home.

EFF sued in 2021 after Yahoo News revealed the program. The agency says it renamed the program and stopped issuing bulletins, but EFF notes the records don't say the monitoring stopped. Emails about the program were kept on an external hard drive that, officials said, someone dropped, making it unreadable; the originals had already been deleted under the retention schedule. Few documents on internal safeguards were released.

A Savannah, Georgia, police officer was fired after giving her husband, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, her login to the department's Flock license plate reader system, according to documents obtained by WJCL. The records say he did not have his own Flock account through the Department of Homeland Security.

An internal audit flagged an unusually high number of searches on Amber Harpe's account between January and July 2026: 983 search entries involving 97 identifiable plates from six states, most from South Carolina. Department documents noted that most registered owners identified in the audit were Hispanic. Harpe told investigators her husband did most of the searches and that she understood she was not allowed to share access.

Her husband, identified in interview audio as ICE agent Tyler Harpe, told investigators he used the account for about four months to locate people who already had active arrest warrants, and denied any personal use. The department concluded she had compromised safeguards meant to track who uses law-enforcement data.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt as protesters gathered outside, Flock CEO Garrett Langley argued that if society wants criminals held accountable, "we shouldn't pause progress," and compared the trade-offs to driverless cars. TechCrunch reports he deflected questions about the backlash that has cost Flock contracts and led to layoffs.

Langley also said Flock's gunshot-detection microphones detect "just gunshots." Flock's website says the audio product can also detect street takeovers, severe crashes, fireworks and sideshows, and when the feature launched the company said it would listen for "screaming" before changing that to "sounds of human distress" and later pulling distress detection.