[guest post by Dana]
Let’s go!
First news item
A good read:
I serve as a print reporter with the White House travel pool, which means that my office is on Air Force One.
Last Tuesday, while I was in that office, I stayed for four hours acting as a body double for a Boeing 747 and wrote a 600-word account of the event, dating it ‘aboard Air Force One’, the most desirable byline in American journalism, and on that particular journey, the piece was entirely fictional.
After the NATO summit we boarded in Ankara, as is usual. There is a clear hierarchy when it comes to the seats. The AP is given the better one, the wires receive the ones after that, and I ended up with the seat next to the galley, something which I minded for the first 40 minutes of my life as a decoy, until I realised that the galley was empty and that its emptiness was going to become the one most interesting fact of my career.
About the danger:
Earlier that day, American officials had come to the president with alarming information. The Iranians knew which luxury chain hotel he’d been staying at in Ankara. They were aware of how his motorcade was moving around the Turkish capital. And they remained intent on killing him — potentially by using a shoulder-mounted missile to take down Air Force One, US officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
The level of detail Iran had been able to ascertain about Trump’s arrangements in the Turkish capital alarmed his team, even though some American officials thought it implausible an Iranian plot to kill him could be successful at the highly fortified NATO summit.
Asking the question: What if the remaining passengers had perished on the plane?:
We’re left with this question: What if they had died? What if the plane had been shot down, killing everyone aboard, and Trump had been forced to explain why he didn’t warn them before they took off?
Why did Trump’s closest cronies, like Dan Scavino and Natalie “The Human Printer” Harp, get to abscond with him in the catering truck and secretly board Hegseth’s plane while others weren’t so lucky?
Harp was Trump’s “first pick” to join him in his aerial lifeboat, a source told the Daily Mail. Why not Miller, a father of four children whose latest is 2 months old?
My guess is that the president would have glibly answered the criticism with something along the lines of what he told reporters on the flight home from Britain: Perhaps they all should have changed professions.
Second news item
Pete Hegseth disagrees with reports about the conditions and mental status of those on the USS Lincoln:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday claimed that conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier have been “completely misrepresented” following reports that sailors, struggling with low morale during a grueling deployment, have attempted to jump overboard.
Speaking with Newsmax, Hegseth did not directly address reports of supply shortages, water contamination and deteriorating mental health on the Abraham Lincoln, nor did he say when the vessel would return stateside after leaving San Diego in November.
Then why is a Navy aircraft carrier now on its way to replace the Lincoln?
Third news item
Still in captivity:
The United Nations estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during its war in Ukraine are still being “deprived of their liberty,” many held incommunicado and on grounds that don’t comply with international law.
“Widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of both Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war by Russia are continuing, including sexual violence, said Claudia Fuentes Julio, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights.
This is aside from the tens of thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children still missing.
Fourth news item
Public unhappy with Flock cameras. The company responds:
Flock — a tech surveillance firm that makes AI-enabled cameras that scans and collects license plate information — announced new guardrails Thursday after multiple reports of abuse by law enforcement and amid growing public backlash over mass urveillance technology.
The new safeguards include requiring law enforcement to label every search with a with a criminal case number, and instituting an automatic review for abnormal search activities, which will trigger proactive lockouts for those users.
The company also said it will introduce a seven-day data retention default instead of the past default of 30 days.
A huge problem has been the abuse of the system:
Companies like Flock Safety have now blanketed thousands of communities with ALPRs, quietly assembling powerful mass surveillance systems that can reconstruct where people have been, when, and how often, all without a warrant.
This dragnet surveillance threatens the freedoms the Fourth Amendment was adopted to protect. These concerns aren’t just abstractions: every day, innocent people are harmed by officials’ abuse and misuse of these ALPRs. Here are just a few examples:
In Florida, a woman was stalked and pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy who saw her at a TV shoot.
In Texas, a sheriff’s deputy used 83,000 Flock ALPRs to find a woman who had allegedly had a medication abortion, at the behest of her abusive partner.
In Georgia, a police chief tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times.
All told, the Institute for Justice (IJ) has identified well over 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.
Then there is this:
A Haines City, Florida, police officer has been charged with official misconduct after allegedly misusing Flock Safety surveillance cameras 717 times to track his estranged wife’s vehicle.
And this:
A North Carolina police officer has been arrested for allegedly using Flock license plate readers to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife, according to police, as use of the Flock camera system across the U.S. has come under fire.
The Mooresville Police Department was conducting an audit of its Flock license plate reader system when it discovered officer Elizabeth Snowman allegedly accessed the system 31 times for personal use, Mooresville Police Chief Ron Campurciani said.
And this:
For the third time in the past week, a Valley police department says data from its automated license plate readers may have been compromised.
Goodyear police say the department caught suspicious activity during a routine audit of its Flock camera system last month.
. . .
“On July 22, investigators identified activity involving an officer that raised concerns about a potential violation of department policy,” police said.
The officer in question was placed on administrative leave, and the officer’s access to department computer systems has been restricted.
And so it goes.
Fifth news item
Oh come on:
The latest report follows another 404 Media investigation published on July 17 that examined Thomson Reuters’ expanding role in providing personal data to the U.S. government.
According to that report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to pay Thomson Reuters $125 million to provide access to its databases as part of investigations into alleged voter fraud and immigration fraud. The agreement is worth $25 million annually over five years.
Sixth news item
So not going after the “worst of the worst”:
An Associated Press investigation found that the Trump administration has detained more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty U.S. service members since the president returned to office as part of its immigration crackdown. At least six have been deported, one has self-deported and eight immediate relatives of service members remain in federal immigration custody.
. . .
Parents and spouses of people in the military have generally been shielded from deportation under bipartisan consensus for decades. But the AP found they’re now routinely being detained for months as they try to adjust their legal status through the policies available to service members’ close relatives and even as the military continues to recruit by advertising immigration benefits for enlistees’ families. Experts warn that the reversal could undermine military preparedness even as the U.S. is at war in Iran. It’s left military members without emotional support and caretakers for their children, delayed deployments and forced some to take leave.
Reactions to the report were swift in the condemnation of the findings:
“So they’re actually deporting men and women in uniform who are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect and defend the United States of America. . .Is that really how shortsighted and stupid they are, that they are deporting people that want to serve in uniform and risk their lives for America?”
“Is there any starker example, any starker illustration, of how much this administration has lied to America about going after ‘the worst of the worst’ – only the worst of the worst?. . .They’re going after veterans, they’re going after active duty servicemen, servicewomen, they’re going after the mothers of sergeants! The worst of the worst?”
Have a great weekend.
—Dana