Geofencing allows the government to draw a virtual fence around a geographic area where a crime was committed. After that, the government seeks a warrant not to search a home or office, but to require a tech company to search its data to identify any of its millions of users who were within the geofence line at the time of the crime.
In late 2023, unbeknownst to many users including PAPD, Flock added a new 'Nationwide Lookup' search feature. Using this feature, an out-of-state local law enforcement or federal agency could perform a broad search of data from Flock's entire nationwide network of over 6,000 cameras, including the 20 cameras then-deployed in Palo Alto.
Councilmember Ysabel Jurado stated that she expected City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto to provide detailed answers regarding the data breach, but instead received an internal report that left many questions unanswered.
Morpheus, a new malware identified by Osservatorio Nessuno, masquerades as a phone updating app and is capable of stealing a broad range of data from an intended target's device.
Civil liberties experts warn the expanding use of those systems risks sweeping up citizens and noncitizens alike, often with little transparency or meaningful oversight. Over the past year, Homeland Security and other federal agencies have dramatically expanded their ability to collect, share and analyze people's personal data, thanks to a web of agreements with local, state, federal and international agencies, plus contracts with technology companies and data brokers.
Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not designed to reliably identify people in the streets and was deployed without the scrutiny that has historically governed the rollout of technologies that impact people's privacy, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The Department of Homeland Security launched Mobile Fortify in the spring of 2025 to "determine or verify" the identities of individuals stopped or detained by DHS officers during federal operations, records show.
Cell-site simulators ICE has a technology known as cell-site simulators to snoop on cellphones. These surveillance devices, as the name suggests, are designed to appear as a cellphone tower, tricking nearby phones to connect to them. Once that happens, the law enforcement authorities who are using the cell-site simulators can locate and identify the phones in their vicinity, and potentially intercept calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
Police-tracked crime, "contrary to what you have been told in the news every single day for the last several years, is actually down," says Karakatsanis, but fearmongering mainstream media narratives are "designed to make people so afraid that they support repressive institutions that infringe on their own liberty, that don't make them safer, but that give people in power in our society more ability to control and manipulate."