01 · The cameras
A camera network nobody voted for.
Flock Safety sells automated license plate readers to police departments, homeowner associations and businesses. Each camera photographs every passing car and logs its plate, location and time into a searchable database.
Flock Safety public statements · NPR, February 2026 · DeFlock. Camera estimates range from about 75,000 to more than 120,000 depending on the source.
Simulated feed with randomly generated plates. A real camera logs every car, not just suspects.
Most of the people photographed have done nothing wrong. Their movements are stored anyway, and through Flock's national lookup feature, an officer in one state can search cameras in thousands of other towns.
In most places, local councils approved the cameras for routine crime-fighting. What they could not see was where the data would go next.
02 · The searches
Local cameras, federal targets.
ICE has no direct contract with Flock. It did not need one. Records show local officers running searches on ICE's behalf, and the reasons they typed into the system are public.
After the reporting, Flock removed California, Illinois and Virginia from its national lookup, where state laws restrict sharing. In August 2025 it also paused pilot programs with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations, after an Illinois audit found CBP had accessed Illinois data.
Flock's CEO acknowledged the company had not built permissions to keep federal users within local law. Some agencies told reporters their "immigration" searches were not for immigration enforcement.
404 Media, 2025 · Illinois Secretary of State audit · Atlanta News First, August 2025
One officer, one search, every state that shares data. Officers learned they could not charge the woman with a crime for taking the pill, according to an affidavit, and still discussed possible charges with prosecutors.
03 · The contractor
Palantir sees what the government sees.
Co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir builds software that pulls scattered government databases into one searchable picture. Business has never been better.
Palantir revenue from the U.S. government
Palantir Q4 and full-year 2025 results. The 2024 figure is calculated from the reported 55% growth.
- HomeICE "ImmigrationOS"April 2025 · for "selection and apprehension operations" and near real-time tracking of self-deportation
- ~$30M
- HomeIRS "mega API" with DOGEApril 2025 · a single access layer over taxpayer databases, per WIRED
- n/a
- WarU.S. Army enterprise agreementJuly 31, 2025 · folds 75 contracts into one, over 10 years
- up to $10B
- WarMaven Smart System, Pentagon$480M award in May 2024, ceiling raised by $795M in May 2025
- ~$1.3B
- WarMaven Smart System, NATOMarch 2025 · AI for targeting and battlefield awareness
- undisclosed
- WarIsrael Ministry of Defense partnershipJanuary 2024 · technology for "war-related missions"
- undisclosed
Business Insider and TechRadar on ImmigrationOS · WIRED via PYMNTS on the IRS project · The Register on the Army agreement · Palantir earnings remarks and Breaking Defense on Maven · Bloomberg on Israel
04 · War comes home
Battlefield tools, pointed at neighbors.
The same company that builds AI for military targeting abroad now builds software ICE uses to select people for arrest at home. The logic of the battlefield, finding and tracking people at scale, has come home.
Abroad
- Maven fuses drone video, satellite images and intelligence to speed up targeting decisions.
- NATO bought the system in six months, one of its fastest purchases ever.
- A 2025 UN Special Rapporteur report found "reasonable grounds" to believe Palantir supplied technology used by Israel in Gaza. Palantir denies involvement in specific targeting systems.
At home
- ImmigrationOS is built to support ICE's "selection and apprehension operations," with visa overstays listed among the priorities.
- DOGE and Palantir engineers worked on one access point for IRS records on every taxpayer.
- Local plate-reader data reaches ICE through police searches, with no warrant and no federal contract.
Defense Update and Breaking Defense on NATO · Business & Human Rights Resource Centre on the UN report · ImmigrationOS contract reporting · WIRED
05 · The spying
The government watches its own people, too.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets agencies collect communications of foreigners abroad. Americans' messages get swept in, and the FBI can search them without a warrant.
Targets included people arrested at George Floyd protests, people tied to January 6, and a batch search of 19,000 donors to a congressional candidate. The FBI says it has fixed the problems.
Lawfare and EFF on the FISA Court's April 2022 opinion
April 2024: House vote to require a warrant before searching Americans' data
A tie fails. Americans' privacy lost by zero votes. In 2026, Congress passed only short stopgaps, and in June the House failed to extend the law. The surveillance court had already approved collection through March 2027.
ABC News, April 2024 · NPR and EPIC, April to June 2026
Buying what they cannot seize
A declassified intelligence report found agencies buy Americans' data from brokers, including information the Supreme Court said needs a warrant, and that the intelligence community does not know how much it holds or what it does with it.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence report, released June 2023
A fix that passed the House
The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would ban that loophole. It passed the House 219 to 199 on April 17, 2024, with support from both parties, then stalled in the Senate.
Office of the Clerk, Roll Call 136 · CyberScoop
The turn
Privacy is a right, not a setting.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable searches. It should not have an exception for anything a company is willing to sell or a contractor is willing to build. Communities are already fighting back.
06 · The fix
Put the people back in charge.
- Warrants for Americans' data. No searching Section 702 data, plate-reader logs or location history without a judge's approval.
- Close the data-broker loophole by passing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.
- Limits on plate readers: short retention, no out-of-state sharing, and no use for immigration or reproductive-health investigations.
- Community control. No new surveillance technology without a public vote by local elected officials and a published use policy.
- Open contracts. Public bidding, public reporting and independent audits for every surveillance contract, from Flock to Palantir.
- A federal privacy law that limits what companies can collect in the first place.
NPR, February 2026. DeFlock counts at least 56 more in 2026 alone, reported by Newsweek.
Community control laws
At least 15 jurisdictions have passed Community Control Over Police Surveillance ordinances, which require public approval before police buy new surveillance tools.
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and Hogan Lovells
07 · The mandate
Americans are worried, and getting more so.
Very or somewhat concerned about how the government uses data it collects about people
Pew Research Center, How Americans View Data Privacy, October 2023
The warrant amendment lost on a tie. The data-broker ban passed one chamber with members of both parties. The votes for privacy are close. Lawmakers who answer to constituents, not contractors, can win them.