PANOPTICON INDEX
U.S. Surveillance Index
The map · every case we can source

Where the watchers got caught.

Every pin is a documented case — an officer who stalked an ex through a license-plate network, a database misused, a face wrongly matched.

Hover a state — preview its recordClick a state — lock it open to scrollClick a pin — open its source

Plate-reader misuseDatabase & DMV stalkingFacial rec / false arrestFederal & intelligenceCorporate insiderCamera hack / breach
The receipts · updated as stories break

Surveillance abuses in the news.

This isn't hypothetical. Wrongful arrests, officers stalking people through police databases, hackers hijacking cameras, and warrantless tracking — a running record of what happens when this technology meets the real world.

30 stories
  1. ◍ Arizona

    Arizona's attorney general opens a review of Flock plate readers

    Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a statewide review of how police use Flock Safety cameras and other automated license-plate readers, saying their use has to be balanced against the Constitution and Arizonans' privacy. The move follows a wave of cities pulling out — Tempe shut down all 33 of its cameras, and Cave Creek, Surprise, and Chandler suspended or ended contracts — while Apache Junction kept its system despite an officer who used it to track his wife.

    Warrantless trackingAbuse of access·KOLD News ↗

  2. Flock adds audit locks and cuts data retention after abuse backlash

    Facing mounting misuse cases and cities cutting ties, Flock Safety said it will require police to tie every plate search to a case number, shorten its default data-retention window from about 30 days to seven, and roll out an 'Audit Assistance' tool that locks out users whose search patterns look abnormal — all by January 1. The ACLU called the changes inadequate, arguing they leave too much surveillance power in police hands.

    Abuse of accessWarrantless tracking·NBC News ↗
  3. ◍ New York, NY

    NYPD used facial recognition and 21 cameras to hunt a protester

    NYPD documents show police tracked a red-paint protester across Columbia University using 21 camera angles, then ran a maskless street image through facial recognition to identify him. Jakhi Isaiah McCray was charged in July 2025 over the September 2024 paint-splattering of the campus's Alma Mater statue.

    Protest surveillanceBias / discrimination·The Intercept ↗
  4. ◍ United States

    Rogue officers turned Flock's camera network into a stalking tool

    A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 US police officers accused of abusing automated license-plate-reader networks — most of them Flock — to track women, exes, and romantic interests. One Georgia police chief ran roughly 600 searches on an ex-girlfriend and her daughter's plates over about a year.

    Abuse of access·The Washington Post ↗
  5. ◍ Washington, DC

    Judge forces disclosure of Clearview AI's role in a DC arrest

    A D.C. Superior Court judge ordered prosecutors to reveal how Clearview AI's facial recognition identified Marquis Foster, arrested over a shooting near Howard University from surveillance footage run against its 70-billion-image database. The ruling came amid at least eight documented wrongful facial-recognition arrests in 2026.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·Biometric Update ↗
  6. ◍ Brussels, Belgium

    Pegasus spyware hacked the EU lawmaker investigating spyware

    Citizen Lab confirmed that Stelios Kouloglou, a European Parliament member serving on the committee investigating spyware abuse, was himself infected with NSO Group's Pegasus in 2022 and 2023. The targeting struck directly at the body probing surveillance abuses.

    Hacked / misusedWarrantless tracking·Citizen Lab ↗
  7. ◍ Jacksonville Beach, FL

    Florida crabber wrongly arrested on a faulty facial-recognition match

    Robert Dillon, a 52-year-old Fort Myers crabber, sued after Jacksonville Beach police arrested him for trying to lure a child 300 miles from his home, based on a grainy facial-recognition match and a single witness. Exculpatory evidence was withheld from the court before the charges were dropped.

    Wrongful arrest·ACLU ↗
  8. ◍ United States

    ICE reactivates a Paragon spyware contract for domestic surveillance

    ICE confirmed it purchased Paragon's Graphite mercenary spyware — which silently breaks into phones and reads encrypted messages — reactivating a contract the previous administration had suspended over human-rights concerns. Lawmakers warned the tool could be turned on immigrants, journalists, and activists inside the US.

    Warrantless tracking·TechCrunch ↗
  9. ◍ Fargo, ND

    Grandmother jailed nearly six months over a facial-recognition error

    Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother, was arrested by U.S. Marshals and held nearly six months after Fargo police used facial recognition to misidentify her as a bank-fraud suspect in a state she had never visited. Bank records later proved her innocence, but she had already lost her home, car, and dog.

    Wrongful arrest·InForum ↗
  10. ◍ Nairobi, Kenya

    Kenyan police used Cellebrite on a jailed opposition activist's phone

    Citizen Lab's forensic analysis found traces of Cellebrite's extraction tool on the seized phone of Kenyan activist and presidential contender Boniface Mwangi, cracked while he was in police custody after a 2025 arrest. The intrusion could have exposed all of his messages, files, and passwords.

    Hacked / misusedWarrantless tracking·Citizen Lab ↗
  11. ◍ United States

    ICE uses a Palantir tool fed by Medicaid data to target immigrants

    A report revealed ICE is using a Palantir-built tool called ELITE that maps deportation targets, builds dossiers, and assigns a 'confidence score' to each person's home address. The system pulls addresses from Health and Human Services databases, including Medicaid, to locate people for arrest.

    Warrantless tracking·EFF ↗
  12. ◍ United States

    Flock cameras streamed live police feeds to the open internet

    Security researchers found at least 67 of Flock Safety's Condor cameras livestreaming unencrypted to the public internet, letting anyone watch live police feeds, view a month of archived footage, and even delete video. Flock blamed a testing process, but researchers said the cameras stayed accessible days after the company claimed a fix.

    Data breachHacked / misused·Gray Media / AP ↗
  13. ◍ United States

    ICE buys a tool that tracks hundreds of millions of phones daily

    404 Media reported ICE selected a surveillance platform, tied to contractor PenLink, that is updated daily with billions of location points harvested from hundreds of millions of smartphones via the ad-tech ecosystem. The tool lets agents track phones and follow people's movements without a warrant.

    Warrantless tracking·404 Media ↗
  14. ◍ New York, NY

    NYPD facial recognition jailed the wrong man for a flashing case

    The NYPD arrested Trevis Williams for indecent exposure after a facial-recognition match — despite Williams being eight inches taller and 70 pounds heavier than the suspect, with phone data placing him 12 miles away. He spent more than two days in jail before prosecutors dropped the case.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·The New York Times ↗
  15. ◍ United States

    ICE's face-scanning app checks anyone against 200 million images

    404 Media revealed ICE agents use an app called Mobile Fortify to point a phone camera at anyone and match their face against a bank of 200 million images, surfacing names, nationality, and deportation status in the field. Internal documents state ICE does not let people decline, and the tool can scan US citizens.

    Warrantless trackingBias / discrimination·404 Media ↗
  16. ◍ United States

    Police ran a national camera network for ICE — and to find a woman who had an abortion

    Reporting found local officers using Flock's license-plate network on behalf of ICE and in a search tied to a woman who self-managed an abortion, using cameras funded by unrelated towns.

    Warrantless trackingAbuse of access·404 Media ↗
  17. ◍ Serbia

    Serbian police used Cellebrite to unlock a phone, then planted spyware

    Amnesty International forensically documented that Serbian police used a Cellebrite tool to secretly unlock journalist Slaviša Milanov's phone during a traffic stop, then installed Android spyware called NoviSpy to keep surveilling him. It was the first forensically confirmed case of a Cellebrite unlock enabling a covert spyware infection.

    Hacked / misusedAbuse of access·TechCrunch ↗
  18. ◍ Houston, TX

    Man wrongfully jailed and assaulted after a store's facial recognition misidentified him

    Harvey Murphy was arrested for a Sunglass Hut robbery he didn't commit after facial-recognition software flagged him; he says he was assaulted in jail before being cleared.

    Wrongful arrest·The Guardian ↗
  19. ◍ Detroit, MI

    Eight months pregnant, she was wrongfully arrested over a facial-recognition match

    Porcha Woodruff was arrested for carjacking after Detroit police matched her face to old footage — the sixth known wrongful arrest from the technology, all of Black people.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·The New York Times ↗
  20. ◍ Georgia / Louisiana

    Jailed for a crime in a state he'd never visited

    Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail after facial recognition misidentified him for thefts in Louisiana — a state he had never set foot in.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·The New York Times ↗
  21. ◍ United States

    Local police secretly bought a tool to track phones without warrants

    Documents revealed dozens of agencies used Fog Reveal to search billions of smartphone location signals — bought from ordinary apps — with little oversight or public knowledge.

    Warrantless tracking·Associated Press / EFF ↗
  22. ◍ Chicago, IL

    He spent 11 months in jail on gunshot-detection evidence — then it was thrown out

    Michael Williams was jailed for a murder he says he didn't commit, largely on a ShotSpotter alert, before prosecutors dropped the case for lack of evidence.

    Wrongful arrest·Associated Press ↗
  23. ◍ United States

    Hackers watched live feeds from 150,000 cameras — in hospitals, jails, and schools

    A breach of Verkada exposed live footage from inside hospitals, police stations, jails, schools, and Tesla, showing how centralized modern surveillance had become.

    Hacked / misusedData breach·Bloomberg ↗
  24. ◍ New Jersey

    Jailed 10 days over a face match — for a crime 30 miles away

    Nijeer Parks was jailed and charged after facial recognition misidentified him; he nearly took a plea deal before the case collapsed.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·The New York Times ↗
  25. ◍ New York, NY

    NYPD used facial recognition to hunt a Black Lives Matter activist

    Police used facial recognition to identify protester Derrick Ingram, then massed outside his apartment — an example of the tech turned on lawful dissent.

    Protest surveillance·Gothamist / The Verge ↗
  26. ◍ Detroit, MI

    Wrongfully accused by an algorithm

    Robert Williams was arrested in front of his family after Detroit police relied on a bad facial-recognition match — the first documented wrongful arrest of its kind in the U.S.

    Wrongful arrestBias / discrimination·The New York Times ↗
  27. ◍ New York, NY

    A billionaire used a face-search app to ID his daughter's date at dinner

    Reporting showed private individuals with Clearview access using it to identify strangers in real life — a preview of a world where anonymity in public disappears.

    Abuse of access·The New York Times ↗
  28. ◍ United States

    Federal agencies bought Americans' phone-location data to skip warrants

    Federal immigration authorities — DHS, ICE, and CBP — purchased commercial location data harvested from ordinary apps to track people without court oversight, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

    Warrantless tracking·The Wall Street Journal ↗
  29. ◍ Mississippi

    A hacker hijacked a family's camera to taunt their 8-year-old daughter

    Days after a Ring camera was installed in a girl's bedroom, a hacker used it to speak to and torment her — one of many hijackings that led to lawsuits against Amazon.

    Hacked / misusedData breach·The Washington Post ↗
  30. ◍ United States

    Officers across the U.S. abused police databases to stalk exes and others

    An investigation found hundreds of officers misused confidential law-enforcement databases to look up romantic partners, neighbors, journalists, and other targets.

    Abuse of access·Associated Press ↗