404 Media

Over the weekend, more than a dozen local TV news stations ran a video report called “Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.” The report paints those opposing Flock not as a diverse, decentralized, bipartisan group of ordinary citizens who oppose mass surveillance, but as well-funded radical leftists who are spreading propaganda at the behest of China and rich billionaires.

We start this week with Joseph’s story about the secretive predictive policing units inside DHS that are analyzing Americans’ financial data and having local cops pull them over. After the break, Jason tells us about the funky shirt designed to fool AI-camera systems. In the subscribers-only section, we talk all about our third anniversary events. Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts,Spotify, or YouTube.

The first man in the country to be convicted of violating the Take It Down Act was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday, after investigators found more than 3,000 real and AI-generated abuse images on his devices.

If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. Just before Austin Gordon died, he left Megan Jones a letter telling her she was the love of his life. For months before he wrote that letter, he talked to, confided in, and poured his heart out to ChatGPT. “I don’t know.

For the last three years Jake Welch has been 3D scanning public restrooms and archiving their peculiarities on a website called The Restroom Archive. “It started as a joke,” Welch, the site’s creator and head archivist, told 404 Media. The Restroom Archive describes itself as “an ongoing repository of publicly accessible restrooms.” When someone first visits the Archive, the site serves them a random 3D scan of a public restroom, its location, and a brief written description.

Channel 5, the YouTube channel hosted by Andrew Callaghan, said it gave a list of its email subscribers to Hunter Biden, the former president’s son, who went on to promote his new memecoin, a move that a data privacy expert told 404 Media is likely illegal in some jurisdictions. Callaghan has repeatedly interviewed Biden on camera.

Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found. The units, the name of which 404 Media is revealing here for the first time, are called Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams (PITT).

When we launched 404 Media in August 2023, it was a leap of faith. We were leaving the world of big, corporate media — where we worked for years alongside exceptionally brilliant colleagues, but also under the constant turmoil of investor whims, executive decisions we had no say in, and "economic headwinds" that sounded a lot like excuses for lumbering, ineffective business models. When we each put in our notice and leapt into the unknown, we did so hoping we'd have support.

Welcome back to the Abstract! Here are the studies this week that transcended realms, switched sexes, went south, and expanded their range. First, scientists break new ground in trying to get the universe to fit nicely together into a little package for once. Then: a frog sex party, an invasion of pines, and the pumas of the past. As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.

Flock taught cops how they could surveil the No Kings protests and “small parades” using a mix of Flock’s technology and law enforcement’s own databases in a webinar last year. As Flock publicly downplays the power of its automated license plate camera network and highlights its use to solve violent crime, the company’s seemingly endless trove of webinars, training sessions, and blog posts show it offers far more invasive capabilities.