"Scientists have discovered a virus that is a tiny bit human, carrying a gene it stole from our ancestors about 100,000 years ago," writes the New York Times. "And this virus may be using our own gene to infect us."
Phys.org explains that it's "both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes."
BC200 is found only in humans and related primates and was discovered in the late 1980s as an abundant noncoding RNA in human neurons. Although BC200's physiological function is poorly understood, evidence suggests it may be involved in regulating the translation of neuronal messenger RNAs into proteins... The researchers also suspect that BC200 jumped in skin cells because these are the only cells known to be infected by molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV). The gene is also abnormally expressed in some tumors and overexpressed in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease, suggesting its jumping ability could play roles in these diseases.
[Cedric Feschotte, a senior author of the study] said he and his colleagues would like to explore whether the molluscum contagiosum virus uses BC200 to manipulate human host cells. They are also interested in better understanding the gene's role in disease, including breast and other types of tumors in which it is abnormally expressed, and whether it jumps in cancer cells and causes mutations.
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
En 1992 asistí a una conferencia en la Cámara de Comercio dictada por Michael Kaye, un norteamericano que llevaba años viviendo en Costa Rica y que fue uno de los grandes pioneros del ecoturismo en la región. Aquel encuentro intensificó mi interés en el sector y, poco tiempo después, pasé dos semanas recorriendo el país vecino. Regresé con la mente llena de ideas. Una de ellas terminaría convirtiéndose en el Canopy Adventure, ubicado en El Valle de Antón e inaugurado en 1994, antes de entrar propiamente en la hotelería con la apertura del Canopy Tower en 1999.
De las lecciones de Kaye, hubo un consejo que definió mi carrera y que hoy, tras recibir a miles de huéspedes en nuestros lodges, comprendo en toda su dimensión: el secreto del éxito de un hotel es conseguir que el huésped quiera quedarse una noche más y, si fuera posible, otra más.
Además de advertirme con humor que a la gente le encantan los baños grandes y con buena luz —un detalle que la experiencia me ha confirmado—, su tesis central era clara: la meta dorada es prolongar la estadía lo más posible.
Un destino turístico no se construye simplemente creando lugares donde dormir, sumando hoteles o multiplicando habitaciones. Se construye creando razones para no querer irse. Un visitante puede llegar a un gran hotel de cinco estrellas y, si alrededor encuentra poco que hacer, marcharse al día siguiente. En cambio, puede alojarse en un modesto lodge en el interior del país y descubrir que mañana quiere observar aves, pasado mañana montar a caballo, al día siguiente visitar una finca agroturística, conocer un museo local o simplemente pasar la mañana conversando con la gente.
Entonces el hotel deja de ser el destino; se convierte en la puerta de entrada al destino.
Esta distinción debería tener consecuencias profundas para nuestra política pública. Durante demasiado tiempo, los incentivos al turismo se han concentrado casi exclusivamente en la inversión física: infraestructura, edificios, mobiliario y equipos. Todo eso es necesario, pero una habitación por sí sola no produce una estadía larga. Lo hacen las experiencias.
Hay poderosas razones económicas para cambiar este enfoque. Un estudio de la cadena turística de Kasane, Botsuana, encontró que las excursiones y el transporte representaban conjuntamente casi la mitad de los ingresos turísticos analizados, mientras el alojamiento aportaba aproximadamente una cuarta parte. Hay una enorme economía que ocurre fuera de la habitación. Además, el huésped que permanece más tiempo empieza a conocer a la gente y crea un vínculo de lealtad. Ya no regresan solo a una habitación; regresan a un lugar donde conocen personas y donde las personas los conocen a ellos, activando la recomendación personal, que sigue siendo la forma más poderosa de promoción turística.
La pregunta obligada es si nuestra política de incentivos refleja esta realidad. Actualmente reposa en la Asamblea Nacional un proyecto de ley que reemplazaría la Ley 80 de 2012. ¿Qué contempla ese documento? El artículo 7 reconoce la importancia de los productos turísticos para enriquecer la experiencia y menciona innovaciones virtuales o museos interactivos. Sin embargo, el problema principal está en otra parte: para acogerse a estos incentivos se requiere una inversión mínima de B/.500,000, excluyendo el valor del terreno.
Este umbral puede ser razonable para una atracción de alta tecnología, pero deja fuera a las pequeñas experiencias del interior. Un mariposario, un centro de interpretación o un sendero administrado profesionalmente pueden ser excelentes razones para quedarse un día más sin requerir medio millón de balboas. Esto es crítico para las áreas rurales, donde el desarrollo no depende de una gran atracción, sino de la suma de pequeños emprendimientos que generan empleo local, oportunidades para microempresarios y razones para que los pobladores no tengan que emigrar a las ciudades.
Existe además una asimetría alarmante en los beneficios. Mientras los grandes hospedajes reciben exoneraciones sobre importaciones, inmuebles e impuesto sobre la renta, el artículo 7 concentra los estímulos a los productos turísticos solo en la importación de materiales y la exoneración del FECI.
¿Por qué estimular mucho más la cama que la experiencia que logra que esa cama se ocupe una noche adicional? Midamos el éxito con indicadores más complejos. No contemos solo cuántos visitantes llegan o cuánto dinero gastan; observemos cuántas noches se quedan. Entre enero y junio de 2026, Panamá recibió 1,755,998 visitantes internacionales (un 17.4% más que el año anterior) y los ingresos alcanzaron US$3,791.6 millones. Si la tendencia se mantiene, cerraremos 2026 cerca de los US$7,500 millones. Para dimensionarlo: Costa Rica generó US$5,543.7 millones en todo 2025. El turismo ya aporta el 10% de nuestro PIB y sostiene más de 236,000 empleos.
El siguiente gran salto de Panamá no consiste en buscar más volumen de masas, sino en lograr que quienes ya vienen descubran razones para aplazar su regreso. Necesitamos buenos hoteles, por supuesto, pero también guías, cultura y pequeñas empresas capaces de transformar un lugar donde uno duerme en un lugar que uno quiere conocer. Quizás toda nuestra política turística debería comenzar con esas tres palabras: una noche más.
I am starting a tech agency that will offer WordPress and website development SEO digital marketing AI solutions virtual assistant services and automation.
I am looking for a name that feels professional modern trustworthy memorable and easy to pronounce and spell. I also want the name to be broad enough for the agency because I may offer more services in the future.
The main problem is finding an exact .com domain. I have already found some names that I liked but the .com was already taken. I do not want to choose a random name only because the domain is available.
I am looking for a unique and meaningful name that people can easily remember and connect with the agency.
If you were naming a tech agency today what kind of name or naming approach would you suggest?
I would really appreciate your ideas and suggestions.
Hey folks, Over the last few years, I’ve spent a lot of time building custom software, web applications, and CRMs for different businesses. One major pattern I’ve noticed is that off-the-shelf software rarely fits a growing business's exact workflow. When businesses try to force their processes into rigid tools, things slow down. That’s why custom development (building things tailored strictly to user needs) changes the game. I mainly handle full-stack development (web, apps, CRMs, and even games). If you're a founder or developer trying to scale a product or figure out the tech stack for your next big idea, feel free to drop a comment or reach out. Let’s talk tech!
While most magnets have two poles (north and south, or positive and negative), recent advances in quantum mechanics have revealed an "octupolar order," writes Phys.org, where a pattern of particles in a crystalline structure "behaves as if it has eight magnetic poles rather than the familiar two."
Now, a team led by quantum physicists at the University of Toronto has established a new method for observing quantum magnetic states using light to probe the atomic vibrations produced as electrons spin. The work is a critical first step toward harnessing multipolar magnetism for practical technologies, including next-generation data storage and computing devices.
"We identified new signatures of a hidden type of magnetic state which cannot be detected using ordinary probes," says Arun Paramekanti, a professor in the Department of Physics and the Center for Quantum Information & Quantum Control in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, and senior author of a study published in Physical Review Letters that describes the findings.
"Our research opens up the possibility for using higher-order magnets in several applications including controllable read-write memory elements found in everyday computers...."
By directing a special type of rotating light at magnetic materials, the team observed a clear optical fingerprint of the otherwise hidden magnetic order.... The findings offer a new tool for uncovering and manipulating previously inaccessible forms of magnetism, opening new avenues for quantum technology development.
404 Media reports:
"We will not add facial recognition to our devices," Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent video. But other, third-party companies are telling cops that they are willing to add facial recognition to data gathered by Flock cameras in order to "close that gap." A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds. VIDIZMO is a several decades-old video analysis and database company that has started offering facial recognition technology to cops within the last six months. In a May email to Johnson City, Tennessee, deputy police chief Michael Adams, a salesperson from VIDIZMO wrote that the company's product could do facial recognition on both Flock and Axon [body-worn camera] data in "one searchable platform...."
VIDIZMO's CEO, Nadeem Khan, told 404 Media on a video call that the company has not yet started running facial recognition tech on footage from Flock cameras, and that it has not actually built the specific tool that would export data from Flock's system to its own platform (though the company advertises this capability online, and the company already sells other facial recognition products). But Khan said VIDIZMO "would love to do the integration," and that he believes facial recognition "is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be," and that he thinks Flock should offer the capability itself in a way that "balances privacy, security, and the freedom that we enjoy in this country."
The article notes that VIDIZMO says on its website, "You can identify individuals from seven races: White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino Hispanic." VIDIZMO adds that stores or cities can also then do "demographic analysis" for marketing purposes by determining the races or ages of people showing up....
I’m planning to upgrade a WordPress site from PHP 7.2 to 8.3.
I bought this theme in 2018 called 'Soprano - Minimalistic Multi-Purpose WordPress Theme' and it had 2 plug-ins included: Soprano Theme - Custom Post Types and WPBakery page builder. Apparently the theme was not updated since 2019.
Both plug-ins are breaking when updating to any higher PHP version than 7.2.
I see 2 options now: either I go for a completely renewal of theme with one that is already compatible to 8.3 or I try to refactor the current code with LLM assistance to suit the 8.3 requirements.
None of the options looks facile to me, what would you do?
Spaceflight Now reports:
"A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from Florida Thursday night on a classified mission for the National Reconnaissance Office, America's spy satellite agency... The NRO has previously flown payloads on 22 Falcon 9 rockets but this is the first time it has used the heavy-lift Falcon Heavy, which consists of three Falcon 9 boosters and an upper stage, topped by a payload fairing.
The powerful rocket, which lifts off under the power of 27 Merlin 1D engines, was introduced to great fanfare in 2018 and made its 14th flight Thursday night... NROL-97 was SpaceX's third Falcon launch of the day. In addition to the Crew 13 mission, the company launched 130 payloads on the Transporter 13 rideshare mission from its West Coast pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It was the first time the company has landed four boosters in a single day.
CNN reports:
As Starship flights ramp up, SpaceX has made clear that the company will phase out the use of two of its most iconic creations: the Dragon spacecraft, which ferries astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and the Falcon 9 rocket, which for a decade has dominated the global launch market.
These vehicles not only revolutionized the space industry in their own way, they're also still very much essential to ongoing work in Earth orbit, without clear backup options in place. The prospect of this loss is already spurring panic among some satellite operators, said Caleb Henry, director of research at analytics firm Quilty Space... Henry said he expects that most of the remaining space on board Falcon 9 rockets has already been sold and — beyond early 2029 — such flights may be reserved solely for the US government. Even NASA, which currently counts the Dragon capsule as the only US-made spacecraft capable of getting its astronauts to and from the ISS, has also acknowledged the looming retirement of SpaceX's workhorse vehicles....
Despite the success of Falcon and Dragon, a peek at SpaceX's business book may hint at financial reasons for retiring the vehicles. In its first quarterly earnings report, SpaceX revealed its space segment — which includes Falcon, Dragon and Starship — lost $542 million. By comparison, its Starlink internet and connectivity business made nearly $1.7 billion. Starship is expected to continue to cost SpaceX untold millions as it moves out of the prototyping phase. But one reason SpaceX is willing to bet big on Starship is that it's simply "much better" for achieving the company's own long-term goals, said SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell at a recent conference. So it makes sense to shift resources toward the megarocket's future....
This rocket supply crunch has been looming since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine — which immediately removed Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets from the commercial market, Henry noted. On top of that, Amazon — which is deploying a space-based internet constellation to rival SpaceX's Starlink — stepped in to buy more than 100 launches from various rocket makers.... Though some satellite manufacturers are hopeful that space onboard future Starship launches will be offered to satellite operators, it's not clear when or if that will happen.... It is possible that a launch supply crunch could be averted, noted Micah Walter-Range, a space analyst and contributor to the VettaFi Space Index. But satellite operators may be wary because newer rockets that have for years promised to step up to compete with the Falcon 9 have not yet begun flying with any regularity.
"The space industry hates uncertainty, particularly when it comes to planning of launches," Walter-Range said.
The article notes that Rocket Lab, Firefly Aerospace, United Launch Alliance, and the Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin "have not yet reached the scale or launch cadence that the industry is demanding."
U.S. President Donald Trump "doxxed" a U.S. senator today, writes the Washington Sun, by posting his cell phone number "as part of a plea for his Truth Social followers to badger his Republican ally into making daylight saving time permanent."
When The Washington Sun called the number minutes after Trump's post, a recording said the mailbox was full and could not receive messages...
[Senator Tom] Cotton has long detested the idea of making daylight saving time permanent. In a Senate floor speech last year, Cotton said doing so would "make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans," particularly harming kids. The Senate was only able to unanimously pass the bill in 2022 because Cotton was reportedly unaware the vote was taking place, though the measure stalled out from there. The Arkansas Republican didn't back down in a post on Saturday. "Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first," he posted on X.
Trump continued his tear against Cotton soon after. "If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so," he posted on Truth.
Se trata del
MoviLab Solar
, presentado por la
Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua (USMA)
, a través de su Instituto Técnico Universitario Multisectorial (ITUM), con apoyo de la
Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Senacyt
The site in this case is a woocommerce store in construction products and also a lead magnet for construction projects. Over the years the website got messy, mostly because i didn't have time to maintain and optimize it back then.
Now i do have time and energy, at first i wanted to optimize and update the current site but i decided something else.
A clean start, redeveloping my site from 0. Discussing ideas and strategies with Claude and building it with Claude code.
I am sure there are other people who tried this before, and i'm curious about your experiences, maybe some advice or findings?
Hi , I'm the developer of LinkGuard. Most link checkers I tried either send your URLs to an external service or lock the useful parts behind a pro plan, so I made one that does neither. What it does: - Scans posts, pages, any public custom post type, and optionally menus, comments and text widgets - Status for every link: Broken, Warning, Redirect, Healthy - Fix a URL inline (the post/menu/comment is updated for you) - One click "Use target" replaces a redirect with its final URL - Unlink a broken link but keep the anchor text - Bulk recheck/dismiss, dismissed false positives stay dismissed, CSV export - Throttled, batched checking so it won't hammer your server Everything runs locally. No ads, no upsells, every feature included. WordPress.org: https://wordpress.org/plugins/naveencodes-linkguard/ I'd love honest feedback: what does your current link checker do that this one doesn't?
Phoronix reports:
Steam on Linux use in March hit an all-time high of around 5.33% marketshare. Since then it pulled back to around 4% while for September 2026 the Steam Survey results... indicate a rather steep decline of 0.85%, down to 3.05%. Meanwhile macOS is at 1.92% and Microsoft Windows at 95%... Steam's Survey reports a 7.42% increase in Chinese use, up to 31.39% overall of the Steam population. Usually those large month-over-month swings where Steam China use shoots up dramatically is a boost to Windows and a detriment to Linux. Some attribute the large increases in Simplified Chinese use to being a reporting/sampling issue.
When diving into the Steam Linux data exclusively, CachyOS has spiked by another 2.65% to now account for 18.12% of the sampled Linux gaming population. That even outperforms SteamOS Holo coming in at 17.37%. Among Linux gamers on Steam, AMD CPUs still account for the high 60 percentage space thanks to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using AMD APUs and their open-source/Linux support being popular with enthusiasts.
"The winner of the Nikon Small World in Motion competition is under investigation," writes the photography news site PetaPixel , "after scientists accused Dr Ning Xu of using AI in his video."
The Nikon competition is about showcasing the beauty, complexity, and artistry of the microscopic world. The entries are abstract, often baffling to laypeople. But when Dr Xu was announced as the winner last month, members of the scientific community began to cry foul. "There are many serious problems with this video," Edward Phelps, associate professor at Florida University, says on LinkedIn. Phelps points out that "purple structures pop in and out of existence" and "green cilia also appear from nowhere and do not match the known size."
Dr Xu's video is supposed to show the movement of cilia, which are hair-like structures that line part of the lungs... However, since Dr Xu won the prize, Nikon Small World updated its LinkedIn post celebrating his triumph with a note that reads: "Regarding questions raised about this year's Small World In Motion winning video, Nikon is carefully re-reviewing the information provided during the initial vetting, along with additional supporting materials from the entrant." Nikon adds that Dr Xu is "respectfully complying and has provided detailed technical documentation outlining the microscopy equipment, imaging methods, and processing techniques used to create the source video."
Worse still, Ian Donovan, an MD/PhD Student at UT Southwestern Medical Center, says he ran the video through Google Gemini, and the result came back with an invisible Google SynthID watermark that indicates at least some of the video is AI-generated. Dr Xu, an optical engineering researcher at the National University of Singapore, reportedly responded to the LinkedIn post. According to Nature, Dr Xu accepted that he had used an AI model to assist with post-processing but denied breaking the rules of the competition, which clearly state that "AI-generated videos are not permitted."
"It was applied afterwards to the reconstructed grayscale data to distinguish and color structures with similar morphology," he wrote. However, Dr Xu's messages on the LinkedIn post can't be found as of today (October 1), and his LinkedIn profile now appears to have been deleted entirely.
Meanwhile, some college students "see a double standard when colleges penalize them for outsourcing academic work to AI but allow similar use by institutional leaders," writes Entrepreneur magazine:
According to a recent report from The New York Times, Dartmouth College students are calling out a top professor for allegedly using AI to help with writing... The school's provost, Santiago Schnell, faced allegations of AI use last week from the college's student-run newspaper, which detected AI in some of his published writing. The college said it was launching an investigation into the written work. Schnell said in a statement to the student-run newspaper, The Dartmouth, that he used AI "for language refinement, copyediting, improving clarity and organization and making writing processes more efficient." The newspaper ran his statement through an AI detector, which said that Schnell had used AI to write it, too.
I am not talking about clients or sales. I am talking about friends and family.
I am bad at remembering the things people tell me. A friend tells me about a job interview. Tells me about a friend’s kid’s name or says that a friend’s mom is having surgery and a month later the memory is gone. Then I. Do not follow up or I ask the same question twice. I do care,. The memory does not show.
I realized that this is the problem that a CRM solves at work: notes on each person the last contact and a reminder to follow up. But every time I have tried a CRM for this it felt wrong. Pipelines deal stages. The word "contacts" for my own friends feels weird and it is too much work to keep up.
I am curious about the people who know these tools best:
- Do you use anything, like this for your personal relationships?
- If so is it a CRM, a spreadsheet, Notion or just a notes app?
- What made it stick or why did you give up?
- Does it feel strange to "track" people you care about or do you get over that?
The Guardian reports that California governor Gavin Newsom signed laws on Wednesday "aimed at protecting California workers from the threats of artificial intelligence , including potential job losses and workplace surveillance."
The laws ban employers from using the technology to predict a worker's emotional state by using their biometric data, require employers to send written notices to workers if AI is responsible for mass layoffs and ban employers from relying on AI to decide to fire someone... The governor signed a law this month requiring operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and an executive order requiring the state to consult with experts to further improve oversight over the industry.
The law includes "expanded tracking of AI's economic effects" leading to recommendations on how to best "adapt job-training and public-benefit programs," according to the governor's office. "California has also launched an AI Unemployment Tracker and solicited statewide public input on AI's economic impacts through Engaged California."
But two weeks ago Politico reported that the governor also signed executive orders to "explore proposals like requiring that AI companies develop a 'kill switch' for their most advanced models."
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for a slowdown in AI development amid existential risk concerns, said... that while a kill switch "could be a good idea," it was no "panacea...." [California lawmakers] were generally supportive of Newsom's plan and showed signs of coalescing around the kill switch idea, which was stripped out of legislation proposed two years ago. Rep. Ted Lieu, who introduced bipartisan kill switch legislation in the House, boosted Newsom's call for Congress to mirror California's approach.
But not everyone supports this approach, including the Free Software Foundation's campaigns manager, Greg Farough:
FSF: Having control over the technology we use is a fundamental part of software freedom. Without it, you simply don't have the basic freedoms you deserve when doing any type of computing, large or small. Don't let "artificial intelligence" be an exception: all users everywhere deserve complete control over their own computing. While it's understandable to be pleased by this news from California, Newsom's executive order also invites questions about the "kill switch" itself that could matter a great deal for freedom. Assuming such a kill switch was developed, who would really control it?
We hope our readers understand the problems inherent in giving one single or a small number of kill switches to anyone. Newsom wisely wants an independent organization to verify their functionality, but even this still sets too dangerous of a precedent. We cannot allow such centralization of power over our computing to become commonplace, especially by the corporations that provide these models in the first place. We also cannot trust even the most well-intentioned "independent organization" to take care of its verification.
Giving users the freedom that they deserve over large languages models would be an enormous departure from how most are developed and used today. But, if any group is capable of coming up with such a plan, it's the experts mentioned in Newsom's order. Like he states at the beginning of his executive order, the vast majority of them are already right there in California. We urge the Government Operations Agency to consider the precedent they are setting, and ask them to write their recommendation to the governor in ways that puts the freedom and dignity of the individual user first and foremost.
The Guardian adds that Newsom also signed an executive order this week "to require state agencies to continue to refer to the technology as 'artificial intelligence' instead of the term 'super intelligence' as Donald Trump recently ordered US diplomats to use."
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Rendering Doom in a database is obviously a bad idea," Lukas Vogel writes in a lengthy blog post explaining how exactly he managed to render Doom using an SQL database. OK, that's not entirely accurate. The SQLDoom project uses a small Python client to handle input and output, drive the game's timing, and display each frame to the screen. Behind that, a series of CedarDB tables tracks the game geometry and state, while about 1,300 lines of SQL queries spread across 89 common table expressions implement the game logic and generate 35 bitmap framebuffers per second.
In this, SQLDoom is a major improvement over Vogel's previous DoomQL project, which last year set out to build "a multiplayer Doom-like shooter entirely in SQL." Unfortunately, that effort ended up with raycasting-based, grayscale ASCII graphics that were more akin to the simplistic 90-degree-angled maps of Wolfenstein 3D. The newer SQLDoom, on the other hand, generates full-color 640x480 frames that look like they could have come from the original Doom executable. [...] If you want to run a Doomtabase on your own local machine, you can do so simply with the GitHub code, a copy of CedarDB, and a Doom WAD file. Or you can jump into a free online hosted demo match to test it out without all the setup [...].
The U.K.'s domestic intelligence and security agency has warned that more than 100 academics have helped China boost its intelligence gathering efforts on behalf of Beijing's state security service.
In a "Security Service Espionage Alert" issued on September 30, 2026, MI5 said the "primary purpose of the China General Technology Research Institute (CGTRI) 中国通用技术研究院 is to fund research that
The suspected China-linked threat actor known as Warlock is still continuing to weaponize Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities, likely both old and new, in attacks targeting organizations in Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries.
The activity, observed by the Symantec and Carbon Black Threat Hunter Team, has hit critical infrastructure, government, and education organizations.
"In the
Flock's cameras offer "indiscriminate mass surveillance," a U.S. federal judge wrote in a ruling Thursday, as does any system with "continuously updated" location histories for all the vehicles filmed by automated license plate-reading cameras.
The judge's ruling included italics for emphasis when describing "the question of why is it the government's business where everyone goes all the time?"
Judge Hill: We might reasonably expect our friends and family to tell us something like: "Hey, I saw you out driving by the store last week." But we do not expect people we know — let alone strangers, and especially not law enforcement — to randomly approach us to say: "Hey, I have been following your car for the last 30 days, and here is a detailed log of every place your vehicle has been with supporting photographic evidence. I am also going to share this information with law enforcement throughout the country so they know your whereabouts, too...."
Cell phones also move in public places where people can see you in plain view. But it becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient... [I]t is also consequential that we are
not just dealing with stationary cameras. The cameras on [police officer] Alaniz's vehicle itself feed information into these systems... It is also no longer difficult to imagine law enforcement using a fleet of drones hovering over an entire city so they don't miss the movement
of a single vehicle.
Officer Alaniz had used Flock's travel history for a car when deciding to pull over its driver, which eventually led to a vehicle search and charges of possessing drugs with intent to distribute. But the judge wrote that because this violated reasonable expectation of privacy, "all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree." The judge granted a motion to "suppress all evidence obtained as a result of these unconstitutional searches
and seizures."
The Washington Post got this comment from a Flock spokesperson about the judge's ruling: "we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned." (Flock's spokesperson added that the ruling "does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies' continued use of these important public safety technologies.")
But meanwhile, on Friday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act. The proposed bill bans federal agencies in America from using automated license plate reader systems "without explicit statutory authorization". The bill also lets certain federal agencies (including the Homeland Security Department) withhold grant money from State and local governments that use automatic license plate readers.
TechCrunch reports:
Despite its title, the bill doesn't call out Flock in the text and covers any and all ALPR systems. The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and for uses that Congress approves in future legislation, which would have to limit data retention to no longer than 48 hours.... Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) are co-sponsors.
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