Suddenly making itself the most essential app of the post-Jeremy Renner Official era, Dropout has announced it has licensed some of the most influential animated works of the century: the complete works of Don Hertzfeldt. Dropout CEO Sam Reich announced today that, after writing a letter to Hertzfeldt, the animator agreed to license all of his work to the platform. It’s the first time the entire Hertzfeldt collection has been available on a single platform.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
On Wednesday morning, Ted Cruz’s Senate Commerce Committee will convene on five bills aimed at age verification and “child safety.” The bills each have their own issues when it comes to privacy, data collection, parental rights, and free speech. But one bill, the partisan Republican SCREEN Act, is a Christian nationalist nightmare.
Utah Senator Mike Lee introduced the Shielding Children's Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act in February 2025, alongside exclusively Republican cosponsors and supporters Senators John Curtis, Jim Banks, and Representative Mary Miller.
The SCREEN Act would require every website that includes even one piece of what the legislation describes as “harmful to minors” to verify visitors’ ages. It defines “harmful to minors” as content that “depicts, describes, or represents, in a patently offensive way with respect to what is suitable for minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual acts, or lewd exhibition of the genitals;” is “obscene” or “child pornography;” or “appeals to the prurient interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.”
Unlike the many laws now in place around the U.S. that apply to sites made up of at least one third adult content, like porn sites and some social media platforms, SCREEN would place the burden and risk of verifying users’ ages to every website on the internet that falls under the law, which would be most sites with user-generated content and also mainstream entertainment platforms like Netflix. It also attacks virtual private networks (VPNs) by requiring sites to verify based on IP addresses; many people in states that have age verification laws in place use VPNs to get around submitting sensitive personal data like ID and biometrics to a smattering of third-party websites in use today. Critics say the SCREEN Act would be a privacy and free speech disaster.
And the agenda of its sponsors is clear: “Internet pornography has infected our culture and corroded the vulnerable minds of America’s kids, with the average age of initial exposure being 12 years old. That’s appalling,” Banks said in Lee’s press release.
A number of religious, conservative, Christian nationalist, and anti-pornography groups are in support of the bill, according to the press release from Lee’s office. They include the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (which recently represented a Kansas mother who sued multiple porn sites because her son found her old laptop and used it to watch Chaturbate), the National Decency Coalition, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (which is “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics,” according to its website), the Family Policy Alliance (whose stated mission is to “advance biblical values through civic engagement”), the Family Research Council (whose “mission is to serve in the kingdom of God by championing faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview”), and many more.
Heritage Action, a conservative lobbying group and one of the organizations Lee lists in support of the SCREEN Act, is a sister organization to the Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025. Heritage Action “works with lawmakers to implement Heritage Foundation solutions,” according to the Heritage Foundation website. This is important because of how Project 2025, the playbook for right-wing and extremist conservative leadership, has influenced policies and lawmaking in America in the last few years of the Trump Administration. That stretches from attacks on programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, to attacks on trans and queer people, to turning the FBI into a political entity.
One of Project 2025’s stated goals is to redefine and eradicate pornography: “Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection,” the playbook says, calling for imprisonment of pornographers but also educators and librarians. “And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
The Senate Commerce Committee will also debate and mark up the text of the Youth AI Privacy Act which would require chatbots to disclose they’re not human among other features like limiting data retention; the CHATBOT Act which would require AI companies to build “family account” systems where parents can monitor kids’ activity; the Children’s Artificial Intelligence Toy Safety Act which would create a federal study into toys that include AI components; and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
KOSA would impose a legal “duty of care” on social media platforms to prevent and mitigate promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and advertisements for products like tobacco. KOSA has been introduced, and failed, multiple times since its first introduction in 2022; it has bipartisan lawmaker support but is extremely unpopular across all sides of the political spectrum among groups that care about freedom of speech because of its potential to increase censorship.
“Whatever disclaimers and exceptions the bill includes, the practical effect is unchanged,” the Electronic Freedom Foundation recently wrote about KOSA. “When platforms face liability for content that someone later claims contributed to harms like anxiety, eating disorders, or substance use, the safest response is to remove lawful speech or shut down forums discussing those topics altogether.”
Unlike KOSA and many of the other age verification laws that have spread across the country, the SCREEN Act does not have bipartisan support. It’s the latest in Lee’s repeated attempts to criminalize content he and his co-sponsors personally consider immoral. Last year, Lee introduced the now-stalled Interstate Obscenity Definition Act (IODA) for the third time. IODA would change the 1973 “Miller Test” for determining what qualifies as obscene, and seeks to make all pornography illegal at the federal level. “Obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment, but hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children,” Lee said in a press release. “Our bill updates the legal definition of obscenity for the internet age so this content can be taken down and its peddlers prosecuted.”
When cops use Flock to arrest someone in Wapello County, Iowa, they don’t want them to know. A usage policy for the automated license plate reader cameras in the county tells police, in no uncertain terms, to keep them a secret: “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE TO THE OCCUPANTS OF THE VEHICLE,” the policy document reads. “DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.”
The police guidance document is unusual in how clearly it tells police not to mention their Flock use, but it also highlights several important things in the Flock debate. While Flock likes to say that it is a transparent surveillance company and that it cares about “accountability” and “governance,” some of its customers believe its use should be kept secret. Flock is now operating in thousands of cities and towns, and when, how, and why police use the system is wildly inconsistent. Even though Flock does have various auditing and transparency tools, police have their own opinions about what Flock can and should be used for and what the policies for it should be.
It is not just local police in small communities who are creating policies designed to obfuscate Flock usage. Earlier this year, we reported that police in multiple states were being told to be “as vague as permissible” about why they were using Flock because their searches could be obtained using public records requests, and that warning was being shared by the FBI and Department of Justice. Residents of many towns using Flock also say that their cities entered into contracts with Flock with little public oversight, essentially quietly opting them into a nationwide surveillance network without robust public debate.
Wapello County’s “standard operating procedures” document for Flock cameras was created in November of 2025 and was obtained by a 404 Media reader using a public records request and was shared with us. Coincidentally, Wapello County’s largest city is Ottumwa, Iowa, where 404 Media ran a Super Bowl commercial earlier this year. The county has four Flock cameras via a contract it signed with the company in late 2024. The policy further instructs police to be vague in any arrest report, suggesting that they simply call the Flock system “county resources.”
“DO NOT MENTION ALPR USAGE IN YOUR REPORT OR COMPLAINT UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. If asked a direct question about ALPR usage by someone such as an attorney, tell the truth,” it says. “If it is necessary to explain in a report, it is advised to use language such as ‘Using county resources, I discovered the suspect vehicle was bearing an Iowa plate.’ Treat the ALPR information like you would intelligence. It is simply a lead that you verified and acted on.”
The guidance to keep Flock use secret is reminiscent—but less extreme—than guidance on some other secretive police technologies. For years, police tried to hide the existence of cell site simulators (popularly known as Stingrays), going as far as to drop criminal cases where it was likely that a judge would expose information about them. Stingrays are essentially fake cell phone towers that can be used to identify the phones of people in a specific area.
In the public records request, Sheriff Don Phillips said “there is no need” to tell people about the use of Flock.
“Our policy requires deputies to check the license plate to make sure the correct plate is accurate and the information as to an arrest warrant, stolen vehicle, stolen plate or missing person is correct,” he said. “There is no need to tell them about our investigative methods or sources, such as the camera system, because the information is verified by the deputy running the license plate. It is common practice for law enforcement to refrain from disclosing investigative methods and sources to prevent criminals from learning how to circumvent them.”
Phillips did not respond to a request for comment.
404 Media has obtained a coaching guide that Flock surveillance gives to police about “how to speak to city councils about public safety technology.” The handbook highlights how Flock and police team up to convince cities to buy and keep its automated license plate reader technology, even when there is widespread public opposition to it, and encourages police to “own the narrative before someone else does” by championing the technology before citizens can oppose it during public comment periods.
The PDF guide notes that the general public and cities now “increasingly expect transparency, oversight, and accountability alongside public safety outcomes,” and tells police to not argue with people who believe that Flock’s license plate readers are “mass surveillance.”
“One of the most common questions agencies hear today is whether license plate recognition (LPR) technology constitutes mass surveillance. Many leaders instinctively respond by attempting to refute the claim. Flock's Jamie Hudson recommends a different approach,” the guide reads.
“Don’t avoid the concept of mass surveillance because you’re not going to convince opponents that it’s not,” the company recommends. Flock tells law enforcement agencies they need to try to convince city council and city managers that the technology is worthwhile before meetings with the public occur; that they need to have a “carefully scripted presentation” ready to go; and that police need to say they want Flock because they want to keep the community safe: “You care about your community. That’s why you’re bringing this in.”
Flock began offering this guide as part of a broader attempt to coach police on how to push back against criticism of its policies and security practices, many of which 404 Media has investigated and shed light on. These include the fact that Flock data was regularly making its way to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), often in violation of sanctuary city and state laws; that Flock was used to search 83,000 cameras nationwide for a woman who had an abortion in Texas; and that Flock has been used by police to stalk people and surveil protesters. These investigations and broader concern over the surveillance state have led many cities to hold city council meetings to reconsider their Flock contracts, and this Flock-produced guide is an attempt to help police shape the narrative in a way that will either convince cities to buy Flock or to keep their contracts.
The guide is associated with a Flock webinar for police called “How to Speak to City Councils: Meeting the Moment with Confidence,” which included modules on “how to address misinformation with clarity.” After public opposition late last year, the company began to offer Q&A sessions with its CEO, Garrett Langley, for city council members, police, and mayors to address what Flock described as an “era of unprecedented misinformation.”
“The recent headlines about our company are largely a result of this environment,” the company told cities.
“Opponents have a very carefully scripted narrative. They come prepared. You should also have a carefully scripted presentation that addresses those concerns ahead of time,” the guide says. “The agencies that navigate these conversations successfully rarely wait until a council meeting to educate stakeholders. They brief city managers early. They meet with council members before votes occur. They share policies proactively and answer questions before public comment periods become the first introduction to the program.”
The guide also tells police that they can convince city councils that Flock is worth the monetary cost by conveniently not focusing on how much the cameras cost, but by “reframing the financial discussion itself” to focus on “the cost of unresolved crime.” Flock also writes that much of the opposition to its technology is happening because people “do not understand how it works or how it is governed.” This idea is one that has been regularly repeated by Langley over the last several months.
Surveillance companies regularly try to get police to act as quasi salespeople and spokespeople for their companies, pitting a private company and taxpayer-funded law enforcement on one side and citizens on the other. “For years, surveillance vendors like Flock Safety have shaped policy debates cities are supposed to run independently — staging council ‘prep calls’ and exploiting a basic asymmetry: the vendor controls the facts, and city staff are rarely positioned to challenge them,” Sarah T. Hamid, director of strategic campaigns at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told 404 Media after reviewing the guide. “The financial interest is obvious. Flock isn’t just selling surveillance, it’s scripting the public case for buying it. Because Flock treats public trust as a messaging problem rather than a governance outcome, that script keeps officials focused on ‘accountability’ in the abstract instead of the concrete harms and documented abuses its network has already enabled.”
404 Media has watched numerous city council meetings around the country where police talk about how Flock is a critical law enforcement system for them; in many cases, a police chief will speak about Flock and then introduce a Flock employee to give a presentation about the surveillance system. On Monday, 404 Media published an interview with a former Flock government affairs manager who regularly pitched the technology to cities at public meetings. An activist who has been pushing back against Flock in their community and who shared the guide document with 404 Media said that they have regularly seen the strategies suggested by Flock deployed in city council meetings they have attended and watched. 404 Media agreed to keep the activist anonymous to protect them from retaliation.
“I think this document shows a coordinated effort from Flock Safety to compel law enforcement agencies to convince our elected leaders to represent their interests as a company rather than the interests of concerned citizens,” they said. “I have watched many meetings locally in my city and my state and across the country, and you can see the techniques used in this ebook in the presentations given by law enforcement. Pivoting conversations away from concerns about mass surveillance and directing them towards procedure and governance is a vehicle that's used to downplay the concerns of privacy-minded citizens. We have every right to expect our elected leaders to listen to us, and it's very common to see city councils vote with a supermajority in favor of approving Flock contracts despite standing-room only attendance at city council meetings with little to no public support for this product.”
The guide specifically highlights several supposed success stories in which communities had very real concerns about Flock but ultimately decided not to get rid of the technology. For example, it highlights how Flock was able to get a vote in favor of its technology in Oakland, California, despite it being “one of the most scrutinized public safety technology debates in the state,” with “more than 140 public comments” and opposition from the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission: “The conversation shifted when officials stopped asking the public to trust the technology and started showing how the technology could be audited, reviewed, and held accountable.”
It also tells the story of Richmond, California, which allowed its Flock contract to temporarily lapse after the city’s cameras were included in the company’s national lookup tool. City officials there worried that their cameras’ data would be accessed by ICE, in violation of California and local law. “After concerns emerged around data sharing and sanctuary city policies, the city's program was paused and subjected to intense public scrutiny,” the Flock guide says. “Rather than relying on generalized claims about effectiveness, department leadership presented two and a half years of local results, including 274 arrests and 259 vehicle recoveries connected to the program. The council ultimately voted 4-3 to reinstate the system.”
Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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