Reversing course, Flock Safety—the surveillance technology vendor most known for its extensive network of automated license plate readers—has announced that it will end a pilot for its acoustic gunshot detection devices to identify signs of “human distress.”

In October 2025, EFF warned the public that Flock was rolling out a new feature called “Distress Detection” that would be deployed through their acoustic gunshot detection devices (formerly known as Flock Raven, now called Audio Detection). This feature purported to use high-powered microphones scattered throughout a city to search for sounds of human distress, with original advertisements from the product indicating it would search for “screaming.” (Since the publication of our original blog post, Flock quietly amended the ad on this webpage to say “distress” instead of “screaming.”)

Now, Flock has published a blog post stating that “[a]fter careful consideration and community consultation, we decided to remove the feature.” Good riddance. 

We said it when the product was announced and we’ll say it again: this was a misguided and dangerous feature because of the civil liberties concerns it poses, the possibility it could summon armed police to every loud interaction happening on the street, and because in several places this type of spying would be illegal under state eavesdropping laws. 

We were not quiet about this potential new feature. Flock even mentioned our concern about Distress Detection in an attempt to rebut our opposition to the mass surveillance their products enable.

The suspension of Distress Detection, however, does not mean that these high-powered microphones are now magically safe or beyond our concern. Acoustic gunshot detection is still a dangerous and often highly inaccurate technology that has resulted in real world harm, as in Chicago where it resulted in police shooting at children lighting fireworks. As Flock itself states, “No acoustic system is perfect, and we don't claim otherwise.” But police response to a situation where they believe guns are actively in use seems like a pretty high-stakes situation to be making, selling, and deploying technology known to be imperfect. Flock’s devices also listen for more than just gunshots. Their marketing materials admit to be listening for “community disruption,” which includes “non-violent” threats like car sideshows and fireworks. 

Flock’s failed attempt to roll out Distress Detection teaches us a few important lessons about the current state of police surveillance. First, we should not assume that just because these companies are large and well-funded, that does not ensure that they are complying with local privacy laws before floating new products to customers. Second, companies roll out and police adopt invasive technology under the justification that it will be used to address our society’s very worst crimes. However, both the companies and police will leverage deployed surveillance infrastructure to introduce new uses without necessarily seeking the consent or approval of the public. Gunshot detecting microphones eventually being used to listen for screaming is exactly the type of mission creep that we’ve seen happen with other pieces of surveillance technology, including Flock’s license plate readers. Finally, gun violence is too serious and complex of an issue to purport to solve with one flawed piece of technology. It has become too easy for police and cities to listen to the fancy marketing pitches of tech companies claiming they’re going to solve all crime instead of doing the hard work of addressing the root causes of societal issues. And, in the meantime, that technology creates more problems and hazards for the communities they blanket in police surveillance. 

As we’ve also seen with people across the country pushing back on Flock license plate reader contracts in their communities, public pressure can sometimes work to influence both companies and lawmakers that control a city’s purse strings to discontinue or divest from harmful products. Flock’s decision to end “Distress Detection” for human voices is a win.  

This month, we celebrate 36 years of EFF and a mission that is bigger than any one of us. Thanks to EFF, communities around the world are demanding that technology protects their freedom, advances justice, and opens doors to opportunity. That's not a small thing—it's a life's work worth continuing.

If you are committed to staying on the cutting edge of digital rights issues, I'd like to invite you to consider taking that commitment one step further by joining EFF’s Lighthouse Society, our way to acknowledge and thank the community of supporters who are including EFF in their legacy plans.

Learn About the Lighthouse Society

By including EFF in your will or estate plans, you can ensure that EFF’s work and values don't just live beyond you; they thrive because of you. A legacy gift is one of the most powerful ways to say: This matters, and I want it to matter long after I'm gone.

Your gift will fuel our mission for generations by protecting freedom, advancing justice, and driving innovation for communities who need it most. There is still so much more to do, so much more to fight for. With your foresight, it can go so much further.

Planned giving is also more flexible than you might realize. A bequest in your will, a simple beneficiary designation, or another estate planning option can all make a profound difference, often without affecting your finances today.

Get in touch and learn more about what's possible with the Lighthouse Society. Reach out to Jocelyn Wicker at majorgifts@eff.org or fill out our online form to share your intention to give. Thank you for considering a legacy that will carry this work forward for years to come.

When Ubisoft's Watch Dogs 2 was released in 2016, it was a headtrip for those of us working on digital-rights issues in the Bay Area. During the day, I'd fight tech-authoritarianism from EFF's San Francisco offices and then, at night, I'd fight tech-authoritarianism in an uncanny simulation of San Francisco from my home gaming console.  

Watch Dogs 2 is an open-world video game that follows a hacktivist collective called Dedsec as they take on surveillance tech and discriminatory AI systems that are being controlled by tech bros, government contractors, and corrupt cops. The game's missions often felt like they were ripped from the pages of EFF's Deeplinks blog.  

EFF’s mission is defending civil liberties in the digital world, and we do that with activists, technologists, and lawyers. If you've ever dreamt of joining Dedsec, you should definitely join us as a member.  

 Join the movement to Take Back CTRL.  

In fact, we've even got the same merch aesthetic. I cosplayed as the lead character, Marcus, at Dragon Con, and no one even knew I was in costume. 

Dave (left) as Marcus takes a selfie with a Wrench cosplayer at Dragon Con 2018.

To commemorate Watch Dog 2's 10th anniversary, I'll be speaking on a panel at San Diego Comic-Con reflecting on how the game predicted tech issues we're facing today. Organized by Mia Ginae of The Mighty Hostess and Black in Gaming, we've got voice actors Ruffin Prentiss lll and Shawn Baichoo, cinematic producer Timmy Fisher, and music producer Hudson Mohawke, who did the soundtrack, with Mia Ginae moderating. That's at 3:15 PM on Friday, July 24 in room 6BCF. 

But not everyone can get to Comic-Con and I certainly have more to say that can fit in. So here are a few ways where Watch Dogs 2 mirrored our work back then and foresaw what we're facing today.

Check out our full San Diego Comic Schedule, including panels and a meet-up. 

Insecure Surveillance Cameras 

One of the signature gameplay elements of the Watch Dogs series is the ability for your character to hack into nearby security cameras from your phone and use that to gain a strategic advantage over hostile adversaries. 

About a year before, that's exactly the issue that we were working on. EFF Technologist Cooper Quintin and I used the service Shodan to identify a slew of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that Louisiana police had left unprotected on the internet. We found that the controls were open to anyone to manipulate and, just like in the game, you could watch the live video feeds.

We didn't use the data to acquire a skill point or collectible outfit. Instead, we forced police agencies to lock down their equipment and then used what we learned to persuade then Gov. Bobby Jindal to veto a bill that would have created a new statewide surveillance dragnet.  

This issue still persists today. Most recently, security researchers Benn Jordan and Jon “GainSec” Gaines, and the award-winning journalists at 404 Media, uncovered how at least 60 pan-tilt-zoom cameras from the vendor Flock Safety were left exposed online.

Cell-Site Simulators 

In Watch Dogs 2 there's a mission called "Stolen Signals," in which Marcus and his best friend Wrench are trying to locate "stingrays," police devices that gather nearby cell-phone data by masquerading as legit cellular towers. We call these "cell-site simulators" (CSSs) and they're are an extremely alarming mass surveillance technology that allows police to track individual users through their phone identifiers. We've long advocated that this should require a search warrant.   

Like Dedsec, we also had initiated a project to do the exact same thing. And in true Dedsec fashion, we also gave it a pop-culture name: Crocodile Hunter, an homage to wildlife expert Steve Irwin, who had famously died after a stingray attack.  

But while Marcus was running around Telegraph Hill, staff technologist Cooper Quintin and I were running around downtown San Francisco, testing out our own device for detecting suspicious cell phone towers during Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference. And while we didn't find a CSS that day, we did find a mobile surveillance tower that a start-up had set up for the event.

Cooper Quintin, EFF's own 'Wrench,' testing out Crocodile Hunter at Dreamforce

Today, that project has evolved into Rayhunter, which allows anyone to use a cheap mobile hotspot to detect the type of cellular anomalies associated with CSSs. We're proud to say that now there's a whole international Dedsec-style network of researchers using this technology to look for surveillance at protests, at the border, and in metropolitan areas.  

Security Robots 

Throughout the game, Marcus encounters a number of autonomous pickle-shaped security robots wandering the city. At one point, Wrench reprograms one to become "Wrench Jr," a bona fide member of the Dedsec team.  

In real life, these robots are made by a company called Knightscope, and EFF started shining light on them in 2020-2021, when they were first being deployed by companies and government agencies.

A Knightscope robot patrols a casino parking lot in Reno, Nevada.

Today, law enforcement is pursuing weaponized robots and drones, and EFF is at the forefront to stop this dystopian reality. In fact, in December 2022, we successfully fought for San Francisco to ban the police department from weaponizing drones. In 2024, New York Police Department also retired its subway robot.

A Citywide Surveillance "Operating System" 

In the Watch Dog series, one of the ominous developments is CTOS 2.0 (Central Operating System 2.0). Through this system, Blume, a government contractor, tries to collect a massive amount of data through citywide sensors and infrastructure, and to combine all that data into one unified—and totally insecure—analytics system.  

At the time we'd only just begun to see this idea floated, with a limited number of cities trying tools like Palantir's Gotham to manage data.  

Today, it is a frighteningly competitive market, particularly when it comes to law enforcement surveillance. For example, both Axon and Flock Safety are trying to offer products that integrate with every function of policing that sound like CTOs. In fact, Flock Safety product is literally titled, "Flock OS."

Fusus demonstrated at a police chief's conference.

Meanwhile, Axon's camera networking product, "Fusus," sounds like it came straight from the Watch Dogs' writers room. Fusus allows for central live-streaming of all types of surveillance cameras in a city, including body-worn cameras, which was another prediction from the Watch Dog series that came true.  

EFF has been part of many local battles to reject Flock and Axon surveillance systems, and we've also advocated against recent efforts at the federal level to consolidate government data.  

Join the Fight Against Authoritarian Tech 

Watch Dogs 2's protagonists aren't just the merry band of core hackers: It's a distributed movement spread across the region and social media. The sequel, Watch Dogs Legion, is even designed so that every single person in the city of London is a potential playable Dedsec member, ready to take on tech tyranny with whatever skills they have.  

That's also our philosophy: If you use tech, if you're affected by tech, this is your fight. And it's time to take back control. 

There are a lot of ways to do this. You can become a member by donating. You can contact public officials through our Action Center. You can join the thousands of volunteers who are helping gather data on surveillance through our Atlas of Surveillance project. You can also hunt cell-site simulators with us—and help improve our code—through the Rayhunter project.  

And just like Watch Dogs 2, this is a game we can win if we work together.

Really interesting piece of cryptographic history:

In November 2023, a large cache of his wartime papers—nicknamed the “Bayley papers”—was auctioned in London for almost half a million U.S. dollars. The previously unknown cache contains many sheets in Turing’s own handwriting, telling of his top-secret “Delilah” engineering project from 1943 to 1945. Delilah was Turing’s portable voice-encryption system, named after the biblical deceiver of men. There is also material written by Bayley, often in the form of notes he took while Turing was speaking. It is thanks to Bayley that the papers survived: He kept them until he died in 2020, 66 years after Turing passed away...

Groups on both sides of the political spectrum are using a National Academies review of attribution science to score points ahead of a landmark Supreme Court case on climate liability.

A new POLITICO Poll found that Americans’ attitudes toward data centers have grown increasingly sour and politically polarized in the past six months.

The administration's deals are a major blow for states that were counting on that power to keep pace with growing energy demand and decarbonize their grids.

The new Public Policy Institute of California survey comes amid questions about electric vehicle affordability in the absence of federal rebates.

Brussels is worried that the U.S. and China might retaliate over extending the EU’s Emissions Trading System to long-haul flights.

Oil and gas firms say EU methane rules will force them to stop exporting to Europe. The European Commission thinks they’re bluffing.

Two policy announcements on Friday will show whether the commission can keep its emissions-cutting promises.

Experts say that the dramatic falls in reported methane emissions are the result of a small but fundamental change in the methodology for measuring them.

An official blamed a lack of rain, although severe water shortages began affecting some of the island’s most populated areas months before the drought began.

As sea levels rise due to climate change, encroaching sea water will likely make freshwater environments saltier. In a new study, MIT researchers have shown how that increase in salinity might affect microbial ecosystems found in environments such as rivers and estuaries.

These microbial communities play important roles in the carbon cycle, and they also help to decompose organic matter such as algae. The MIT team found that when salt levels rise, these populations lose diversity as faster-growing strains tend to take over the community, but they maintain their overall growth rate.

“At higher salinity, you lose diversity, which is ultimately not good for an ecosystem. But what we were surprised at is that in the meantime, even though diversity decreases, the growth of the community and the production of biomass is not impacted that much,” says Jana Huisman, an MIT postdoc and the lead author of the new study.

Jeff Gore, an MIT professor of physics, is the senior author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Microbiology. Martina Dal Bello, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, is also an author of the study.

Rising salt levels

Microbes that live in aquatic environments are typically adapted to thrive in fresh or salt water, or somewhere in between. Microbes that live in higher salt environments have cell walls that are optimized to resist osmotic pressure, and membrane transporters that can pump sodium ions out of the cell.

Freshwater lakes and rivers have salt concentrations around 1 gram of salt per liter of water (g/L), while oceans can reach 35 g/L. As the climate warms and sea levels rise, those oceanic waters may seep into estuaries and other inland bodies of water, increasing their salinity.

“When you think about climate change, you can think about rising temperatures, which is very common, but also a lot of other environmental stresses are going to increase,” Huisman says.

Huisman is from the Netherlands, a country with an extensive coastal delta, and she was interested in exploring how changes in salinity might affect microbial ecosystems in those aquatic habitats. The new study builds on previous work from Gore’s lab showing that higher seawater temperatures tend to favor slower-growing bacteria. 

For the new study, the researchers took samples from three aquatic environments with varying salinity: the Charles River near the MIT Sailing Pavilion (4 g/L), Boston Harbor (30 g/L), and a beach in Nahant, Massachusetts (35 g/L). Each community contained hundreds of species of microbes. The researchers then grew each population in three environments of varying salinity — 16, 31, or 46 g/L.

Over two weeks, the researchers measured the communities’ growth rates and found that overall, each community maintained the same growth rate at each of the three concentrations. However, in the communities exposed to higher salt environments, the overall composition became less diverse. Further studies showed that these communities tended to be dominated by faster-growing species. 

“We saw that those communities that had been propagated at higher salinity had reached a markedly different composition than the ones that lower salinity,” Huisman says.

Natural ecosystems

To explore whether their lab results might correspond to what happens in natural ecosystems, the researchers analyzed publicly available genomic data from microbes found in different aquatic ecosystems, including the Chesapeake Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Baltic Sea.

For this portion of the study, the researchers focused on a genetic marker called the 16S rRNA gene copy number, which can be used as a proxy for the maximum growth rate that a species can attain. The more copies of this gene that a species has, the faster its intrinsic growth rate.

The researchers found that in these natural communities, environments with higher salinity also tended to be dominated by faster-growing species.

“When we first saw that, it was very exciting — that, indeed, what we found in the lab seems to also be represented in data from natural communities, sampled across a range of different environments,” Huisman says. “You see the same signatures in such data, and that’s highly suggestive that what we found in the lab might also be true in natural environments.”

One potential drawback to this loss of diversity is a reduction in microbial populations’ ability to withstand other types of environmental stress, the researchers say.

In this study, the researchers did not investigate the functions of the individual bacterial strains that ended up becoming more prevalent. Some of them may play beneficial roles, but it’s also possible that some of them might be pathogenic strains.

“Whether you want faster-growing species to take over or not might also be related to what the identity of those species is. That is something that I’m interested in looking at in the future,” Huisman says. 

The research was funded by a Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship and a Schmidt Science Polymath Award.

Growing up in Colombia, Diana Grass had a simple response whenever someone told her something was impossible.

“I’ll figure it out.”

It’s a phrase that she still lives by today as PhD candidate in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology (HST), as she develops soft bioelectronic devices to study the physiological signals through which the brain and body communicate. 

“I’ve always been fascinated by one question: How do complex systems work?” Grass says.

An instinct to get to the bottom of things has guided Grass’ unconventional academic journey across continents and disciplines. Before becoming a neuroscientist and engineer, Grass studied philology and education to understand how language evolves, preserves knowledge, and shapes human communication. Looking back, she sees a common thread. “I wasn’t just studying language,” she says. “I was learning how complex systems communicate.”

But it wasn’t until she moved to the United States and began working as a medical interpreter that her scientific interests took a new direction.

“Every day, I translated conversations between physicians and patients with neurological disorders,” she says. “Watching those interactions sparked a fascination with the brain. I was intrigued by how a single organ could shape how we communicate, and ultimately who we are.”

Working alongside clinicians, Grass watched them rely on laboratory tests, medical imaging, and vital signs to understand what was happening inside the body. Despite remarkable advances in medical imaging and diagnostics, clinicians still rely largely on isolated snapshots of biological processes that are continuously changing inside the body.

“The body is communicating all the time,” she says. “We still lack the tools to understand its language.”

Determined to better understand the brain, Grass returned to school to study neuroscience with a minor in pre-medicine. She joined an immunology laboratory at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where she investigated neuroimmune communication and gained a new appreciation for the body’s interconnected physiology.

“Until then, I had been fascinated by the brain,” she says. “My work in immunology made me realize that the nervous system doesn’t function in isolation,” she says. “It continuously communicates with the immune system and peripheral organs to coordinate physiology and maintain homeostasis. To understand health and disease, we have to understand how those interactions preserve or disrupt that balance.” 

That realization transformed her scientific focus from understanding the brain to understanding how the nervous system coordinates physiology through continuous communication with the rest of the body, beginning with the immune system.

The complexity of that question ultimately brought Grass to pursue a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics with the HST program. She works in the Bioelectronics Group, led by Polina Anikeeva, the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor and head of MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Grass also uses facilities in the T.J. Rodgers Laboratory and MIT.nano, and is part of the K. Lisa Yang Brain Body Center. 

Today, Grass develops soft bioelectronic devices that integrate seamlessly with soft peripheral tissues without damaging them, to continuously monitor multiple physiological signals while enabling electrical recording and stimulation of neural circuits. These technologies provide a new way to investigate how neural communication coordinates physiology across the entire body. This knowledge could enable earlier diagnosis, more precise therapies, and a new generation of bioelectronic medicine.

For Grass, the work has taken on an even deeper significance since becoming a mother. Grass has two school-age children and for her, the possibility of developing technologies that help detect disease earlier and personalize treatments isn’t just a scientific goal; it’s one she hopes will shape the future of medicine for the next generation. 

“I want to contribute to a future where medicine understands the body physiology well enough to predict disease instead of simply reacting to it, personalize therapies with greater precision, and ultimately give families more healthy years together,” she says. “Because once you become a parent, every scientific question becomes deeply human.”

The complexity of Grass’ research has required her to step well beyond her original training. After studying neuroscience and immunology, she immersed herself in materials science, systems physiology, device fabrication, bioelectronics, and surgery to develop the tools needed to answer fundamental biological questions.

“The scientific question was bigger than any one discipline,” she says. “HST taught me to begin with biology, not disciplines. Once you understand the biological principles, medicine, engineering, and science stop being separate fields. They become complementary ways of answering the same question.”

The constant need to learn a new discipline has been both the most rewarding and challenging part of Grass’ research so far. 

“Every time I crossed into a new discipline, I felt like an immigrant again,” she says. “I had to learn a new language, understand a new culture, and earn the trust of people who had spent their careers there.”

Grass’ passion for understanding cultures extends well beyond the lab. Soon after arriving at MIT, she co-founded the Graduate First-Generation Low-Income Student Group to create a supportive space for students and connect them with the resources they need to thrive. What began as a small initiative has grown into a community of more than 300 graduate students representing over 60 countries, connecting students with faculty, alumni, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders.

“It has been really rewarding to see new GFLI leaders emerge and continue this legacy,” Grass says.

As an avid traveler, Grass’ favorite pastime is exploring new cultures, whether that be through learning a new traditional recipe or a new language. She speaks four languages fluently and can say “thank you” in roughly 50 more.

Whether she’s cooking Thai food with her children or introducing friends to recipes from around the world, she sees food as another language capable of connecting people across cultures. That same philosophy shapes how she thinks about science.

“I’ve realized that every culture has its own language and every scientific discipline its own way of understanding the world,” she says. “Looking back, every stage of my life has been about understanding how complex systems communicate. Today, my goal is to help medicine understand the principles that govern communication across the human body in health and disease.”

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02705-x

Offshore wind development presents huge potential for climate change mitigation, but loud underwater noises produced during construction can negatively impact marine species. Recent research shows that careful planning and noise-reduction technologies can effectively reduce impacts on critically endangered North Atlantic right whales at relatively minor additional cost.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02710-0

Tropical forest restoration is widely promoted as a nature-based climate solution, but its potential to restore hydrological functions impaired by deforestation remains unclear. Now, satellite observations show that forest gain can increase evapotranspiration and precipitation more than forest loss reduces them, with prominent asymmetry in South America and Africa.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02696-9

The authors consider the potential conflict between renewable energy development (offshore wind) and wildlife (North Atlantic right whales, Eubalaena glacialis). They demonstrate a framework to identify trade-offs under different scenarios, maximizing conservation with minimal financial burden.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02713-x

Growing extreme weather poses escalating threats to urban functionality. This study shows that higher network centrality and stronger ties to wealthier cities enhance intracity mobility resilience during extreme rainfall, with larger benefits for smaller and poorer cities from targeted investment.

Daniel Solove argues in the Wall Street Journal (alternate link) that giving people control of their personal data is not an effective way to regulate privacy in this era. Instead, we need to hold companies accountable for their actions, similar to what we do with food and drug companies. Measures such as rigorous data minimization, fiduciary duties, liability for negligent or reckless technological design, liability for algorithms that cause harm, and multi-stakeholder review of technologies will be far more effective.

Paper.