Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushing Raven, their version of acoustic gunshot detection. These devices capture sounds in public places and use machine learning to try to identify gunshots and then alert police—but EFF has long warned that they are also high powered microphones parked above densely-populated city streets. Cities now have one more reason to follow the lead of many other municipalities and cancel their Flock contracts, before this new feature causes civil liberties harms to residents and headaches for cities. 

In marketing materials, Flock has been touting new features to their Raven product—including the ability of the device to alert police based on sounds, including “distress.” The online ad for the product, which allows cities to apply for early access to the technology, shows the image of police getting an alert for “screaming.” 

It’s unclear how this technology works. For acoustic gunshot detection, generally the microphones are looking for sounds that would signify gunshots (though in practice they often mistake car backfires or fireworks for gunshots). Flock needs to come forward now with an explanation of exactly how their new technology functions. It is unclear how these devices will interact with state “eavesdropping” laws that limit listening to or recording the private conversations that often take place in public. 

Flock is no stranger to causing legal challenges for the cities and states that adopt their products. In Illinois, Flock was accused of violating state law by allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency, access to license plate reader data taken within the state. That’s not all. In 2023, a North Carolina judge halted the installation of Flock cameras statewide for operating in the state without a license. When the city of Evanston, Illinois recently canceled its contract with Flock, it ordered the company to take down their license plate readers–only for Flock to mysteriously reinstall them a few days later. This city has now sent Flock a cease and desist order and in the meantime, has put black tape over the cameras. For some, the technology isn’t worth its mounting downsides. As one Illinois village trustee wrote while explaining his vote to cancel the city’s contract with Flock, “According to our own Civilian Police Oversight Commission, over 99% of Flock alerts do not result in any police action.”

Gunshot detection technology is dangerous enough as it is—police showing up to alerts they think are gunfire only to find children playing with fireworks is a recipe for innocent people to get hurt. This isn’t hypothetical: in Chicago a child really was shot at by police who thought they were responding to a shooting thanks to a ShotSpotter alert. Introducing a new feature that allows these pre-installed Raven microphones all over cities to begin listening for human voices in distress is likely to open up a whole new can of unforeseen legal, civil liberties, and even bodily safety consequences.

Originally published to EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Wednesday’s end of free Windows 10 support is an environmental disaster in the making, with as many as 400 million computers that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 set to be cut off from receiving free security updates. The move is an egregious example of planned obsolescence that will inevitably result in the early deaths of millions of computers that would have otherwise had years of life left, and it is set to affect as many as 42 percent of all Windows computers worldwide.

“There’s 400 million computers that are going to enter the waste stream. That’s a disaster, just in terms of the sheer volume,” Nathan Proctor, director of consumer rights group PIRG’s right to repair campaign, said on the 404 Media Podcast. “And then you have people who are going to ignore the warnings and use a computer that’s insecure, so there’s going to [eventually] be some widespread security problems with these older, unsupported, no longer getting security updates computers.” 

Microsoft has said it “will no longer provide free software updates from Windows Update, technical assistance, or security fixes for Windows 10. Your PC will still work, but we recommend moving to Windows 11.” The problem with this is that millions of computers don’t have the technical specs to move to Windows 11, and some large, unknown number of Windows 10 devices are owned and operated by businesses, governments, and large organizations like schools and nonprofits whose procurement rules do not allow them to operate devices that are no longer getting security updates. This means that these organizations will necessarily have to buy new devices, which has become a big topic of conversation on the r/sysadmin subreddit, a community of IT professionals who manage big fleets of computers.

This inevitably means that many of those devices are going to end up in landfills and e-waste facilities, and that people are going to have to buy new computers, one of the more egregious examples of planned obsolescence in recent memory. Experts have repeatedly made clear that extending the use of any given device, either through repair, software updates, or just keeping a device for longer, is extremely important, because it delays all the carbon emissions associated with mining the raw materials needed to produce a new device and the energy and emissions associated with manufacturing and shipping that new device. 

Notably, Microsoft is going to continue offering security updates to customers who pay for them, meaning that it would be trivial for the company to continue to offer critical security updates for free. This is notable because we have seen unpatched Windows computers and devices turned into ransomware and botnets, most notably the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack, in which repurposed, leaked NSA hacking tools attacked computers running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WannaCry was one of the most devastating widespread cyberattacks in history.

Microsoft’s decision to sunset Windows 10 support is particularly concerning considering that more than 42 percent of all Windows users are currently using Windows 10. When Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 8, just 3.7 percent of computers were using it, and just 2.2 percent of Windows users were using Windows 8.1 when Microsoft stopped supporting that operating system. 

“More than 40 percent of Windows users still use it,” Proctor said. “So to cut support for something that is legitimately a flagship product is bizarre. No one expects Microsoft to do software updates forever, but when 43 percent of your customers are using it, it’s not obsolete.”

Proctor and PIRG have launched a campaign pressuring Microsoft to extend support. Petitions and open letters of this sort aren’t known for being terribly effective, but when it comes to shaming companies into extending support for environmental and security reasons, there is one very big, very important precedent. In 2023, after widespread outrage from right to repair advocates, consumer rights groups, school districts, and enterprise buyers, Google agreed to extend automatic updates for Chromebooks to 10 years. The move saved millions of devices from going into landfills and ewaste facilities. 

“What happened with Google and Chromebooks is an example that gives me hope that we can win,” Proctor said. “During the pandemic, schools bought massive quantities of Chromebooks, then it turns out that Chromebooks have this thing called the AUE [automatic update] date, which is a preset end of support date, which in some cases was just a couple years after the computers were brought brand new. There were photos from the Oakland Unified School District in California of thousands of working Chromebooks that were headed to the recycler  because the AUE date had passed and they weren’t getting security updates, which meant they were ineligible to get some of the enterprise software they needed.”

“And so they were getting replaced by the thousands, and we organized a bunch of these school districts and institutional purchasers of Chromebooks,” he added. “Google initially resisted what we were doing, but then after a couple of months, they just flipped and said, ‘OK, we’re going to have 10 years minimum support timeline for all Chromebooks from here on out.’” 

You can listen to and watch 404 Media’s full interview with Nathan Proctor here.

On Wednesday, the largest US group of unions called on employers and policymakers to join in an effort it’s calling the “workers first initiative on AI.” Functionally, the effort by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) amounts to strengthened collective bargaining in the workplace and advocating for regulations to limit the negative effect of AI on workers, in addition to an education campaign. 

“We reject the false choice between American competitiveness on the world stage and respecting workers’ rights and dignity,” AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler says in the press release. The AFL-CIO’s membership includes 63 unions and nearly 15 million workers, ranging from pro hockey players to nurses to merchant mariners. 

The AFL-CIO released a list of top priorities for a “worker-centered technological future.” These priorities include, among others, stronger enforcement of labor rights against AI-powered workplace surveillance or layoffs; protections against copyright infringement; retraining programs for workers to enter the AI workforce; and transparency into AI systems purchased with taxpayer dollars.  

While the AFL-CIO’s priorities are clear, the group does not specify which “serious consequences” employers should face “for using technology to undermine democracy and civil rights.” However, the AFL-CIO’s interim director of its Technology Institute, Ed Wytkind, tells The Verge that possible remedies used for decades to protect workers included court cases, fines, or criminal charges. 

Wytkind calls collective bargaining “one of the best tools available to manage this transition” to a future with AI. He points to how the UAW worked with carmakers to automate the auto sector starting in the 1950s. “It’s why you have state-of-the-art equipment in some transportation sectors with workers working with that equipment quite well,” he says. 

The group also says it will use the power of collective bargaining to fight against AI-powered workplace surveillance. Wytkind says contract negotiations are a tried-and-true method of barring employers from hiding video cameras around the workplace or other surveillance issues that started in the 1980s. (Now, however, most office technologies can surveil workers, he says.)

The AFL-CIO also says that workers need to be involved in the AI development process. It is a big ask of tech companies, but the AFL-CIO points to the government-funded AI research as the place for workers and unions to have a say. “Incorporating worker voices and unions into these research initiatives should be a requirement and a national priority,” the AFL-CIO says. In practice, Wytkind says that workers can help companies save money by avoiding purchasing useless or unsafe technology.

In addition to labor efforts, the AFL-CIO is focused on state and national bills to regulate AI. “There are ways to put in the law and in the regulations, a requirement that you have workers involved in the future of new technologies,” Wytkind says. 

Regulating AI has been an uphill battle at both the state and federal level. When bipartisan efforts came together to cut the AI moratorium of state-level regulation from President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, an action which the AFL-CIO endorsed, Trump revived the idea in his AI action plan. In California, the legislature passed the AFL-CIO-backed Senate Bill 7, requiring humans to oversee AI-enabled firings and any workplace discipline. California Gov. Gavin Newsom then vetoed the “No Robo Bosses Act” on October 13th. 

Wytkind calls Newsom’s veto a disappointment but not a deterrent. The AFL-CIO will continue to bring “strong, commonsense guardrail policies to state legislatures — and, oh by the way, it is one of the issues that unifies Republicans and Democrats in ways that we don’t see almost in any other issue area,” Wytkind says. 

The AFL-CIO faces monied opponents. AI super PACs are in vogue this year. Meta created its own pro-AI California super PAC to funnel money into ads promoting the company’s own political agenda in August. The AFL-CIO’s California chapter spent over $2 million in political donations to California elected officials in 2024, according to the latest data available in the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. That is over 30 times the $70,000 that the group spent in 2023 in California.

The AFL-CIO has never passed a unified technology agenda like this before, Wytkind says. Prior tech agendas typically focused more on one sector or type of worker than others. Not with AI, Wytkind says. “You cannot point to a single sector of the economy or public services that will not be affected by AI, at least moderately, if not overwhelmingly.” 

Missouri officials falsely accused Denton Loudermill Jr. in a fatal 2024 shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl parade. Gossip haunted his last days. (Submitted)

There is a scene in the 2008 film “Doubt,” set in a 1964 Catholic grade school, where the priest told a story about a woman gossiping about a man she hardly knew — a situation Denton Loudermill Jr. understood when he was falsely accused in the 2024 shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs celebratory parade.

In the movie, the woman dreamed that night of a great hand appearing that pointed down at her. Seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt, she went to confession the next day with the parish priest, Father O’Rourke.

“Is gossiping a sin?” she asked. “Was that the hand of God almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution, Father? Tell me, have I done something wrong?”

“Yes,” the priest said. “You’ve borne false witness against your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.”

Gossip haunted Loudermill in his last days with technologically supercharged rumor traveling at light speed, leading to death threats and slander from which he, and his family, could not escape.

People may not remember his name, but his family will never forget how people falsely accused him in a shooting that claimed one life and injured 22, including children.

He’d stood dazed in the chaos.

People screamed. Fight or flight hormones activated. Panicked parents scooped up little ones as best they could and sought safety, not knowing if they were running at or away from danger.

Unlike those who ran, Loudermill froze, said LaRonna Lassiter Saunders, part of the legal team representing Loudermill’s family.

“He saw a woman shot and bleeding out,” she said. “The shooting began near him. He was in shock. Everyone started running, but he asked himself, ‘Where should I run?’ He was waiting for his ride to pick him up.”

Public torment for this intensely private man began here.

Police cuffed him and sat him on a curb where people began photographing him, perhaps assuming police had collared one of the shooters. Police stopped Loudermill, Lassiter Saunders said, because he moved slowly.

Hard to blame the police in this context. This doesn’t seem malicious. Still, Loudermill sat helpless as photos of him traversed the internet like a lit fuse about to detonate and destroy his carefully guarded world. It did.

Someone at an undisclosed website posted the picture and labeled him a “terrorist,” and as an illegal immigrant. Those images and that narrative spread like a virus. Two Missouri officials used the photo in posts urging the president to “close the border.”

U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Willie J. Epps Jr. on Oct. 7 allowed Loudermill’s defamation case against Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and state Sen. Rick Brattin to proceed.

Emails sent to the offices of Hoskins and Brattin were not answered.

Given the appetite in wide swaths of society to allow masked law enforcement to tackle and shackle foreign-looking people, imagine the impact on Loudermill and his family.

Death threats rose like a flood.

“I’m just a light-skinned Black dude,” Lassiter Saunders recalled Loudermill saying. “Why are they lying on me? I was born and raised in Olathe. I’ve been here all my life.”

This digital mob predictably but painfully took its toll.

His counselor diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder. In conversations with Lassiter Saunders, he wondered if he’d survive. His weight crashed, leaving him unrecognizable.

“This happened often, usually at the beginning of our conversations,” she said. “The first part of my representation, I was like a counselor.”

Loudermill, she said, would see references to the parade shooting on television. He rarely ventured into social media, but his children would see threats and accusations about him.

Once, at work, he told her he saw someone staring at him. He said they punched keys on their phone. It seemed as though they were pulling up his photo and when it appeared, it registered on their faces.

Once the digital mob poured the illegal alien and terrorist narrative into a mold, it quickly hardened into a truth-resistant bulwark of gossip and stupidity.

“This cost him his life,” Lassiter Saunders said. “The process has outlived him.”

His family found him dead on April 11.

There seems no remedy sufficient for what happened to him. To date, she said, the officials who wrongfully posted his photo have not apologized.

In “Doubt,” the gossiping woman did say she was sorry and asked for forgiveness.

“Not so fast,” Father O’Rourke said.

He ordered her to go home, take a pillow from her bed, climb to her roof, and cut it open.

The woman did as the priest asked and returned.

“What was the result?” he asked.

“Feathers,” she said. “Feathers everywhere, father.”

“Now, I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind,” he said.

“It can’t be done,” she said. “I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.”

“And that,” O’Rourke said sharply, “is gossip.”

And for many, the image of this innocent man as some immigrant terrorist still floats on the digital four winds, impervious to truth.

Politico reports the chairman and vice chairman of Kansas Young Republicans participated in racist, antisemitic encrypted chats with GOP political peers. (Illustration by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

TOPEKA — The chairman and vice chairman of the Kansas Young Republicans took part in encrypted chats with political peers laced with violent, racist and antisemitic rhetoric and blended with references to white supremacy and suppression of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

On Tuesday, the chairman of the Kansas Republican Party said the Politico article disclosing the commentary prompted immediate deactivation of the Kansas Young Republicans organization.

Politico, a digital news company specializing in coverage of U.S. politics, reported Kansas Young Republicans chair Alex Dwyer and vice chair William Hendrix took part in the Telegram group chat.

In 2,900 pages of chat text, Hendrix praised the Missouri Young Republicans because leaders in that state didn’t like LGBTQ+ people. He repeatedly used racial slurs to refer to Black people, including words such as “n–ga” and “n–guh.” In a July conversation in the thread about African-Americans, he said, “Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and Kool-Aid with that?”

He was fired from a communications job in the office of Attorney General Kris Kobach as Politico prepared its report on Hendrix’s role in the chat.

“The comments in the chat are inexcusable,” Kobach said. “As soon as the office learned of those messages, Will Hendrix’s employment was terminated.”

In the chat threads, Dwyer and others delved into discussions of how GOP operatives could tarnish a political candidate by linking the individual to white supremacists. The idea was dismissed, Politico said, because the plan could backfire in a place such as Kansas where “Young Republicans could end up becoming attracted to that opponent.” Subsequently, a person in the chat asked others to guess what room number they had a hotel.

Dwyer responded: “1488.” That figure is a form of shorthand among white supremacists when making reference to their beliefs. It refers to the 14 words of text in the slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” The “88” stands for “Heil Hitler,” with the H marking the eighth letter of the alphabet.

At another juncture, Dwyer touched on controversy involving release of government files on Epstein, the convicted sex offender. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have sought public release of files to either exonerate or incriminate President Donald Trump or other prominent individuals.

“Trumps too busy burning the Epstein files,” Dwyer wrote on Telegram.

Before Politico’s disclosure of the Young Republicans’ commentary, Dwyer and Hendrix were photographed at a campaign event with Senate President Ty Masterson, the Andover Republican who is a 2026 candidate for governor. A social media post of the picture, taken at Masterson’s campaign announcement event, shows both of them holding signs touting Masterson’s campaign for governor.

The Masterson campaign released a statement after the Senate president landed in Washington, D.C., for meetings Wednesday with White House officials. In that statement, Masterson blamed political opponents for “shopping around a photo, with deceitful intentions, in efforts to disparage” him.

“I categorically deny any association with William Hendrix or Alex Dwyer, as neither is current, nor has ever been, on staff or volunteered for my campaign for governor,” Masterson said. “Anyone suggesting otherwise is either lying or misinformed.”

In addition, Masterson said, he was guided by deep Christian faith and possessed a record of condemning hateful and violent rhetoric.

“I am personally disgusted by the comments attributed to individuals in the article, as such behavior is utterly counter to Christ’s message that life is valuable and we are all equal in God’s eyes, and my unwavering commitment to these values has not changed,” the statement said.

A collection of Kansas Republicans and a Democratic candidate for governor denounced contents of this trove of Telegram messages logged under “RESTOREYR WAR ROOM,” or Restore Young Republicans.

The communications chronicled by Politico covered a period between January and August, and involved state Republican leaders in Kansas, Vermont, Arizona and New York. Included in the thousands of comments was this insight: “If we ever had a leak on this chat, we will be cooked.”

“The viewpoints expressed in this chat are not representative of Kansans. Period,” said former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor. “Our state was founded on the belief that all of us are created equal under God — and anyone who mocks those principles dishonors the very spirit of Kansas.”

Vicki Schmidt, the state’s insurance commissioner and a Republican candidate for governor, said Dwyer and Hendrix should formally resign from their Young Republicans positions because “their actions are disgusting and disgraceful and they tarnish the reputation of Kansas nationally.”

Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Johnson County Democrat also running for governor, said she was disgusted by messages shared by Kansas GOP political operatives that promoted overt racism, extremism, antisemitism and sexual violence. She said the extremist language was encouraged from the top down by politicians who seek to divide voters rather than bring them together.

“Let’s be clear: These aren’t kids joking around,” Holscher said. “These are 20- and 30-something adults with leadership roles in the Republican Party. The chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, who participated in these messages, is nearly 30 years old. Unfortunately, this type of rhetoric is not isolated. For too long in Kansas, the Republican Party has been dominated by extremists who see no room for moderation or bipartisanship, let alone unity or mutual respect.”

Danedri Herbert, chair of the Kansas Republican Party, said the organization’s leadership was disgusted by comments by young Kansas Republicans contained in the Politico story. In March, Herbert was elected state party chair. She is Black.

“Their comments do not reflect the beliefs of Republicans and certainly not of Kansas Republicans at large,” she said. “Republicans believe that all people are created in the image of God.”

She said the state party platform stated: “We welcome Kansans of every ethnicity into our party as we work together to preserve our heritage of political equality, religious freedom and strong moral values. We strive to eliminate racism and we condemn all racist acts and groups.”

Michael Austin, chief executive of the Kansas Black Republican Council, said the organization unequivocally rebuked the behavior and language revealed in Politico’s report.

“Such conduct is not merely offensive. It is a betrayal of the very principles upon which our party was founded: the defense of liberty, the abolition of slavery and the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every human being,” Austin said. “Let there be no confusion. These few individuals do not represent Kansas, nor do they reflect the values of Kansas Republicans.”

He said all Republicans should in this moment “uphold the standard of integrity, moral courage and respect that has long defined our party’s proud history.”

After a brutal few months, Tesla sales are finally picking up thanks to expiring federal EV tax credits. But while customers are snatching up Model 3s and Ys, they are increasingly turning up their noses at the newest addition to Tesla’s lineup: the Cybertruck.

Tesla only sold 5,385 Cybertrucks in the third quarter, down 63 percent compared to the same period in 2024, when the automaker delivered over 14,000. The company has sold a little more than 16,000 Cybertrucks so far in 2025 — a far cry from the 250,000 that Elon Musk once predicted would be sold annually. Tesla is now expected to deliver around 20,000 Cybertrucks this year, a steep drop from the estimated 50,000 sold in 2024.

The new data was published by Kelley Blue Book, and reported by Business Insider. Tesla doesn’t break out Cybertruck numbers specifically, instead lumping them in with its two older vehicles, the Model S and Model X, as “other models.”

The third quarter was an otherwise banger for EV sales, with a total of 438,487 units sold. That’s up 40.7 percent from the previous quarter and higher by 29.6 percent year over year. Shoppers rushed to snatch up available EVs before the expiration of the $7,500 tax credit on September 30th. Sales are expected to drop dramatically in the fourth quarter — which could make the Cybertruck’s situation even worse.

Other electric trucks haven’t fared as poorly as the Cybertruck. The Rivian R1T is up 13 percent this quarter year over year, while the Ford F-150 Lightning is up 39.7 percent, and GMC’s Hummer EV has increased sales 21.9 percent and Sierra EV by over 771 percent.

And then there was the news that the families of two young people killed in a fiery Cybertruck crash are suing Tesla over faulty door handles they claim impeded their loved ones’ escape.

Things have gotten so dire for the Cybertruck that Elon Musk has resorted to selling them to himself. As Electrek reports, Tesla has been delivering unsold Cybertrucks to Musk’s private companies, SpaceX and xAI. The trucks that are going to SpaceX are intended to replace the company’s fleet of internal-combustion engine vehicles, according to the site.