Surveillance Todayhttps://surveillancetoday.news/A weekly record of who is watching and what they are allowed to do.en-us Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700 Seven clinics closed and 1,125 County positions were deleted. The Sheriff ran over budget by $98 million after the Board set aside $244 million to catch him. On Nov. 3, his deputies’ unions ask voters to give arbitrators the last word on their pay.https://surveillancetoday.news/#leadhttps://surveillancetoday.news/#leadSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3Since April 2025 Los Angeles County has shrunk the budgets of Health Services, Probation, the Public Defender and the District Attorney by $220 million, deleted 1,125 positions, closed seven of its thirteen public health clinics and begun drawing down Health Services’ reserves to keep its hospitals Plate readers are the part on the pole. The Sheriff’s Department also asked for a $1.4 million phone-tracking system, took federal money for Israeli phone-cracking and phone-locating tools, and runs a Fusion Center that has never had a privacy review.https://surveillancetoday.news/#machinehttps://surveillancetoday.news/#machineSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3Los Angeles argues about plate-reader cameras because they are the part anyone can see. They are the smallest part. Behind them the Sheriff’s Department and the LAPD hold tools that impersonate cell towers, copy phones past the passcode, map phones by the advertising data they leak, search nearly ni The deputies’ unions have their contracts. Measure A would make the next ones binding.https://surveillancetoday.news/#measure-ahttps://surveillancetoday.news/#measure-aSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3Measure A would send any deadlock between the County and the Sheriff’s and Fire unions to three arbitrators whose award the Board of Supervisors could not refuse. On Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s motion, the Board voted 4–0, with one abstention, on Feb. 10, 2026 to draft it, and adopted the ordinance Luna took the Commission’s subpoenas to court. Villanueva barred the Inspector General from the building. Neither has said a word about the fusion center or the plate readers.https://surveillancetoday.news/#sheriffhttps://surveillancetoday.news/#sheriffSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3In the June primary Sheriff Robert Luna took 44.2% and former Sheriff Alex Villanueva 21.7%. The runoff is between the man who locked the Inspector General out of the Department and the man whose Department kept him away from the shootings. On the systems that watch County residents, the two campaig The Police Commission approved $235 million for Axon ten weeks after its Inspector General said pause. The streetlight contract requires the cameras to feed the fusion center.https://surveillancetoday.news/#cityhttps://surveillancetoday.news/#citySun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3On July 10, 2026, the LAPD’s Inspector General reported 161 alerts in two months for cars that were not stolen, 210.6 million plate reads in the same two months, fifteen outside agencies receiving the data, and one audit since 2022, and recommended that the Department “suspend the deployment of new $112 million to defend the Sheriff in one year. Punitive damages the Board voted to pay. A deputy who shot a colleague, promoted to sergeant.https://surveillancetoday.news/#who-payshttps://surveillancetoday.news/#who-paysSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3In FY 2024–25 the County spent $112 million on lawsuits against the Sheriff’s Department, 49% of its $229 million legal bill and more than five times the next department. Six of the County’s eight costliest settlements were the Sheriff’s. Seven clinics closed on Feb. 27. About half their patients had no insurance. The County has not said where they went.https://surveillancetoday.news/#wherehttps://surveillancetoday.news/#whereSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3Public Health ended vaccinations, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis care at seven of its thirteen clinics, citing a shortfall of more than $50 million. Eight months later it has published no count of how many patients were referred elsewhere, how many arrive Los Angeles calls itself a sanctuary city. The Fusion Center that takes its reports houses the FBI and Customs and Border Protection, and the sanctuary law stops at their desks.https://surveillancetoday.news/#federalhttps://surveillancetoday.news/#federalSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3The City Council made Los Angeles a sanctuary city by unanimous vote in December 2024. The Sheriff’s Fusion Center in Norwalk, where reports from across the County go, houses federal agencies the state’s sanctuary law does not bind, runs on federal grants that now ask how many seats it holds for ICE Five questions no candidate has answeredhttps://surveillancetoday.news/#questionshttps://surveillancetoday.news/#questionsSun, 25 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 3For either candidate for sheriff, for the Board of Supervisors, and for anyone asking you to vote yes on Measure A. L.A. County’s Supervisors ordered a watch on its Fusion Center. The County funded the Center: it eliminated the watching.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#leadhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#leadSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2In April 2022, the Board of Supervisors said it was worried about privacy at the Sheriff’s Fusion Center, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, which sends reports on residents to federal agencies. It ordered its Inspector General, Max Huntsman, to monitor the Center and the Auditor-Controller to Take a picture. Wait for your mother. Buy a pallet of water.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#fourteen-storyhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#fourteen-storySun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2← Front page Front page · The fourteen · The Functional Standard Take a picture. Wait for your mother. Buy a pallet of water. Fourteen people in California did ordinary things, and police officers, sheriff’s deputies and private security guards wrote each one up as a suspicious activity report. The The Orange County Sheriff Says Its Cameras Are “Not Used to Track Protesters.” Its Logs Show Protest Searches, Searches During the No Kings Rally, and Searches Run for ICEhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#queries-storyhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#queries-storySun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2← Front page The queries, examined · Plate readers The queries, examined · promised in Issue No. 1 The Orange County Sheriff Says Its Cameras Are “Not Used to Track Protesters.” Its Logs Show Protest Searches, Searches During the No Kings Rally, and Searches Run for ICE The Orange County Sheriff’s D The Post-Huntsman Era: In Place of a Privacy Review, a Fake Privacy Chiefhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#jrichttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#jricSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2The Fusion Center has never had a privacy review. In its place is a privacy officer who is a General Dynamics IT manager. The position requires project-management experience. No familiarity or training in privacy law or the U.S. Constitution is mentioned in the contract. The Sheriff’s Joint Regional Sheriff Bans Inspector General from Fusion Center, Slashing Staff Amid Deputy Gang Investigationhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#oversighthttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#oversightSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2In April 2022, the Board of Supervisors sent its Inspector General, Max Huntsman, to monitor the Sheriff’s Fusion Center, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center. Then the office was taken apart. In October 2022, twelve days before the County’s audit of the Center came back, Sheriff Alex Villanueva b The $314,000 Ring of Surveillance: Rich Neighborhood Cheviot Hills and the City Partner to Track Every Entrance and Exithttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#cheviothttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#cheviotSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2Residents of Cheviot Hills, a West Los Angeles neighborhood, raised more than $200,000 for Flock Safety license plate cameras on its perimeter and gave them, through the private Los Angeles Police Foundation, to the LAPD on one condition: police could use them only inside the neighborhood. The Polic The New Rule, the Functional Standard, Replaced Due Process and the First Amendment with the Outsourced IT Technician’s Say-Sohttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#newrulehttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#newruleSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2No suspicion of a crime. No notice to the person named, no hearing, no way to correct the file. Nine of the sixteen behaviors it lists need no crime at all; photography is one. In Issue No. 1, the FBI searched Americans’ communications under Section 702 without a warrant, on a rule that reaches “for Every Report Goes Federal on Unchecked Discretion, and No Watchdog Has a Rule to Enforcehttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#howhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#howSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2An inspector general checks conduct against rules. Under the Functional Standard, the rule is a contract IT technician’s judgment, which is why the court held it needed no public process. So every check stopped. The Inspector General could review contracts and nothing more. The federal office that o Homeland Security designs the “See Something, Say Something” posters. Schools, cities and businesses put them up.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#whohttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-2/#whoSun, 18 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 2The poster is the Functional Standard printed for the public. DHS forbids any change to it. A phone number goes on a sign only if the call leads into the national suspicious activity database, and federal grants can pay for the printing. LAPD’s own inspector general said pause new plate readers. Ten weeks later, its commission approved more.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#leadhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#leadSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1The inspector general counted 161 alerts in two months for cars that were not stolen. The Police Commission switched off Flock in July. In September it approved Axon cameras that read plates, on patrol cars and on city streetlights. A federal judge, Congress and town councils are moving the other wa Before anything else in this paper: what the Fourth Amendment says, and why it was written.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#fourthhttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#fourthSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1Every story in this issue asks the same question. The answer was written down in 1791. No warrant, no judge, no notice: how Americans end up in the foreign-spy databasehttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#fisahttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#fisaSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1Section 702 was written to watch foreigners. The court's own declassified opinions show whose names the FBI actually ran: protesters, campaign donors, crime victims, a senator — and a judge who complained about the police. The law lapsed in June. The collection never stopped. The rooms built after September 11 were audited once. The Senate could not find the money.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#roomshttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#roomsSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1A 2012 bipartisan review counted 77 centers the federal government promoted, 68 it could confirm were working, and a price somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion. The people who run the tools keep saying the same thinghttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#admissionshttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#admissionsSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1Police chiefs, an inspector general, federal appeals courts and the Justice Department have each said, about their own piece of the apparatus, that it touches constitutional rights and needs limits. It is in use. ICE’s director certified spyware that enters a phone without a click, ten weeks after the contract closed.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#spywarehttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#spywareSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1Under the order he cited, “operational use” means remote entry into a device without the owner’s consent, to take its contents, record its calls or track its location. The maker, founded in Israel, is now American and preparing to trade on Nasdaq. ICE has not said what legal authority it uses, or ag American police have gone to Israel by the thousand. The records now show some of what they were taught.https://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#exchangeshttps://surveillancetoday.news/issue-1/#exchangesSun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:00 -0700Issue No. 1The trips are documented, and so is part of the curriculum: social-media monitoring, a session on the “Muslim mindset,” methods one police grant request called “battle proven.” Which American practices trace to which trip is what the records requests now ask.