The Trump administration sent hundreds of letters Tuesday terminating federal grants supporting mental health and drug addiction services. The cuts could total as much as $2 billion.

(Image credit: Erik McGregor)

The Federal Communications Commission is letting Verizon lock phones to its network for longer periods, eliminating a requirement to unlock handsets 60 days after they are activated on its network. From a report: The change will make it harder for people to switch from Verizon to other carriers. The FCC today granted Verizon's petition for a waiver of the 60-day unlocking requirement. While the waiver is in effect, Verizon only has to comply with the CTIA trade group's voluntary unlocking policy. The CTIA policy calls for unlocking prepaid mobile devices one year after activation, while devices on postpaid plans can be unlocked after a contract, device financing plan, or early termination fee is paid. Unlocking a phone allows it to be used on another carrier's network. While Verizon was previously required to unlock phones automatically after 60 days, the CTIA code says carriers only have to unlock phones "upon request" from consumers. The FCC said the Verizon waiver will remain in effect until the agency "decides on an appropriate industry-wide approach for the unlocking of handsets."

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A handful of police departments that use Flock have unwittingly leaked details of millions of surveillance targets and a large number of active police investigations around the country because they have failed to redact license plates information in public records releases. Flock responded to this revelation by threatening a site that exposed it and by limiting the information the public can get via public records requests. 

Completely unredacted Flock audit logs have been released to the public by numerous police departments and in some cases include details on millions Flock license plate searches made by thousands of police departments from around the country. The data has been turned into a searchable tool on a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com, which says it has data on more than 2.3 million license plates and tens of millions of Flock searches.  

The situation highlights one of the problems with taking a commercial surveillance product and turning it into a searchable, connected database of people’s movements and of the police activity of thousands of departments nationwide. It also highlights the risks associated with relying on each and every law enforcement customer to properly and fully redact identifiable information any time someone requests public records; in this case, single mistakes by individual police departments have exposed potentially sensitive information about surveillance targets and police investigations by other departments around the country.

Flock is aware of the exposure enabled by its own product design and has tried to do damage control with its law enforcement customers by blaming “increased public records act/FOIA activity seeking by the public,” according to an email Flock sent to police obtained via public record request. Flock has threatened Cris van Pelt, the creator of HaveIBeenFlocked, by going after his web hosts and claiming that he has violated their intellectual property rights and is posting information that “poses an immediate threat to public safety and exposes law enforcement officers to danger.” In recent weeks Flock severely limited the amount of information available on its audit logs, which are designed to be a transparency tool, raising questions about how much information journalists, regulators, and government agencies will be able to get about police use of Flock cameras in the future.

“I set up HaveIBeenFlocked to show how pervasive and prevalent this monitoring is, and to show just how many searches are getting done. That information, by itself, is shocking,” van Pelt told 404 Media. “To me, as a private citizen, that’s shocking, and I think that’s kind of what Flock is trying to hide or bury.” van Pelt added that he is committed to keeping the website online.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For decades, the Environmental Protection Agency has calculated the health benefits of reducing air pollution, using the cost estimates of avoided asthma attacks and premature deaths to justify clean-air rules. Not anymore. Under President Trump, the E.P.A. plans to stop tallying gains from the health benefits caused by curbing two of the most widespread deadly air pollutants, fine particulate matter and ozone, when regulating industry, according to internal agency emails and documents reviewed by The New York Times. It's a seismic shift that runs counter to the E.P.A.'s mission statement, which says the agency's core responsibility is to protect human health and the environment, environmental law experts said. The change could make it easier to repeal limits on these pollutants from coal-burning power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and other industrial facilities across the country, the emails and documents show. That would most likely lower costs for companies while resulting in dirtier air. "The idea that E.P.A. would not consider the public health benefits of its regulations is anathema to the very mission of E.P.A.," said Richard Revesz, the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. "If you're only considering the costs to industry and you're ignoring the benefits, then you can't justify any regulations that protect public health, which is the very reason that E.P.A. was set up."

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60 years ago today, ABC aired the first episode of its live-action Batman television series, introducing Adam West as the deadpan Caped Crusader in what became a pop culture phenomenon blending high-camp humor and cliffhanger thrills. The mid-season replacement ran for 120 episodes over three seasons before ending in March 1968.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is celebrating the resurgence of interest in physical media in the only way it knows how... by halting the Windows Media Player metadata service. Readers of a certain vintage will remember inserting a CD into their PC and watching Windows Media Player populate with track listings and album artwork. No more. Sometime before Christmas, the metadata servers stopped working and on Windows 10 or 11, the result is the same: album not found. We tried this out at Vulture Central on some sacrificial Windows devices that had media drives and can confirm that a variety of compact discs were met with stony indifference. Some 90s cheese that was successfully ripped (for personal use, of course) decades ago? No longer recognized. A reissue of something achingly hip? Also not recognized.

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