News

In response to a call from two U.S. Senators, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has announced an audit of ICE surveillance and collection of citizens’ personal data. Read full articleSource: Alfred Ng - Politico (February 6, 2026) Photo Illustration: Madison Swart/Getty Images

In the December issue of the TRJC Quarterly Newsletter, we provided a helpful reminder for those who were traveling over the holiday season: How To Opt Out Of TSA’s Facial Recognition Scan | HuffPost Life. As Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells HuffPost LIfe: “If there’s no pushback, then [TSA is] just going to keep instituting more and more invasive

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.Read full articleSource: Byron Tau and Garance Burke - AP News (November 20, 2025)Photo Illustration: Wired Staff, Getty Images

An estimated 100 million people live with facial differences. As face recognition tech becomes widespread, some say they’re getting blocked from accessing essential systems and services.Read full articleSource:  Matt Burgess - Wired (October 15, 2025) Photo Illustration: Wired Staff, Getty Images

Trevis Williams was wrongfully arrested due to the NYPD relying on an erroneous facial recognition match, despite being eight inches taller than the perpetrator of the crime. The Legal Aid Society represented Williams, though the case against him was ultimately dismissed, and have since written a letter to the NYC Department of Investigation asking the agency to look into NYPD’s use of facial reco

In this issue of the TRJC Quarterly Newsletter, we have lots of exciting updates and events to share with our members.Victory!On August 13, 2025, Introduction 1020-2024 was enacted in New York. The new law will strengthen reporting requirements for the NYPD Office of the Inspector General so that the public and council members can be alerted to any obstacles the Office may be facing in executing i

A Florida man was wrongfully arrested based on an erroneous facial recognition match. Read full articleSource: Logan MacDonald - Action News Jax (July 10, 2025)

Circumventing regulations barring its own use of ClearviewAI, NYPD asked FDNY to run a facial recognition search using the software to identify a pro-Palestinian student protester. The judge overseeing the subsequent legal case ultimately dismissed the case, in part because of skepticism around how the student was identified with the technology.Read full article Source: Samantha Maldonado - The Ci

A new report by a court-appointed federal monitor shows that the NYPD’s Community Response Team has been unjustly stopping and searching New Yorkers. And these stops are disproportionately for Black and Brown New Yorkers, with the report finding that “97% of the individuals stopped, frisked, and searched were Black or Hispanic men.”Read full articleSource: Alfred Ng - Politico (April 8, 2025)Photo

A new AI model called Track, built by the video analytics company Veritone, that claims to identify people using attributes like body size, gender, hair color and style, clothing, and accessories, is being sold to police across the country as a way to evade bans on law enforcement use of biometric surveillance. Read full articleSource: James O'Donnell - MIT Technology Review (May 12, 2025)Photo: C

According to internal company materials obtained by 404 Media, the license plate reader company Flock is developing an advanced and highly invasive people-tracking technology. Concerningly, one of the sources of personal information referenced by this technology will be data obtained as a result of data breaches. Read full article online (see below for PDF) Source: Joseph Cox - 404 Media (May 14,

Data from a license plate-scanning tool that is primarily marketed as a surveillance solution for small towns to combat crimes like car jackings or finding missing people is being used by ICE, according to data reviewed by 404 Media. Local police around the country are performing lookups in Flock’s AI-powered automatic license plate reader (ALPR) system for “immigration” related searches and as pa

As the week of April 28th 2025 marks 100 days of the second Trump administration, we are extending solidarity to everyone working tirelessly to protect from the onslaught of attacks targeted against communities of color, immigrants, and protestors, among others. Within the current adverse environment, we remain committed to advancing our collective vision to foster a collaborative community of pra

NesherAI software, made with photos scraped from social media, is being used to identify protestors as targets for deportation.Read full articleSource: Chris Burt, Biometric Update (March 31, 2025)

DHS is using AI-enabled social media surveillance, as illustrated by public records showing the agency has contracted with four different companies selling social media monitoring software. This article quotes experts who highlight the heightened risk of “automation bias” where these companies are selling AI-enabled software.Read full articleSource: Alfred Ng, Politico (April 8, 2025)Photo Illustr

A law passed last year in Louisiana prevents the possibility of parole entirely for certain individuals based on a score generated by an algorithm, which fails to take into account efforts towards rehabilitation and likely relies on data that reflects racial disparities, leading to a discriminatory impact. Read Full ArticleSource: Richard A. Webster, Verite News (April 10, 2025)Illustration: Jiana

In the midst of the Trump administration targeting protestors for deportation based on activity protected under the First Amendment, the Intercept has received documents from the LAPD revealing a partnership with Dataminr to surveil social media, which in some instances included flagging protests before they actually occurred. Read full article (archive link)Origin Link (requires email address to

This reporting outlines how a 2023 audit of the NYPD Community Response Team found, among many other abuses, that officers in the unit were “frequently turning on their body-worn cameras too late to record full incidents, in violation of the patrol guide.” Additionally, in 2023, upon deployment of a new model of body-worn cameras, videos were being live-streamed to the mayor but not stored in the

In a move that will surely decrease transparency and reliability of evidence, Cellebrite has begun touting the integration of AI into its products, specifically to summarize logs or audio messages from seized mobile phones. Read full articleSource: Joseph Cox, 404 Media (March 5, 2025)Photo Credit: Cellebrite

Even law enforcement news sources are getting honest about the drawbacks of relying on artificial intelligence. This article from Police1, written by a police lieutenant, assesses the pros and cons of AI police reports. Read full articleSource: Lieutenant Ryan Davis, Police1 (March 3, 2025)Photo Credit: Bill Oxford/Getty Images