2020 to today

1. 2022January 27, 2022Surveillance & Privacy

   Intelligence community's own review: purchased data covers nearly everyone

   Declassified June 2023.

   Source: Report to the Director of National Intelligence on Commercially Available Information (declassified)Read the full story →
2. February 10, 2022Surveillance & Privacy

   Senators disclose the CIA's own bulk collection program

   Outside the statutory framework; searches of Americans with no written reason.

   Source: Wyden and Heinrich: Newly Declassified Documents Reveal Previously Secret CIA Bulk Collection, Problems With CIA Handling of Americans' InformationRead the full story →
3. 2023May 19, 2023Surveillance & Privacy

   Secret court opinion released: 278,000 improper FBI searches of Section 702 data

   Protesters, donors, and January 6 suspects among them.

   Source: Newly Public FISC Opinion is The Best Evidence For Why Congress Must End Section 702Read the full story →
4. September 28, 2023Surveillance & Privacy

   Homeland Security inspector general: 71,000 location queries without privacy review

   Three agencies; recommendation to stop left open.

   Source: CBP, ICE, and Secret Service Did Not Adhere to Privacy Policies or Develop Sufficient Policies Before Procuring and Using Commercial Telemetry Data (OIG-23-61)Read the full story →
5. November 20, 2023Surveillance & Privacy

   Wyden: Hemisphere still running, funded again in 2022

   Trillions of records; the documents marked Law Enforcement Sensitive.

   Source: Letter from Senator Ron Wyden to Attorney General Merrick Garland on the Hemisphere surveillance programRead the full story →
6. 2024March 6, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

   House committee publishes the banks' January 6 search terms

   MAGA, Trump, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shop, religious texts.

   Source: New Report Exposes Massive Government Surveillance of Americans' Financial DataRead the full story →
7. April 17, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

   House passes the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, 219 to 199

   The Senate never votes.

   Source: After House Passes Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, ACLU Urges Senate to Follow SuitRead the full story →
8. September 30, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

   Federal funding for Hemisphere ends

   Seventeen years after it began.

   Source: Congressman Biggs and Senator Wyden Praise DOJ OIG's Release of Data on HemisphereRead the full story →
9. November 13, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

   FBI confirms Salt Typhoon: call records, private communications, and the wiretap system

   At least eight carriers, then nine.

   Source: Joint Statement from FBI and CISA on the People's Republic of China Targeting of Commercial Telecommunications InfrastructureRead the full story →
10. December 3, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

    FTC: a broker gathered 17 billion location signals a day from a billion phones

    Sold to agencies and others; barred from selling sensitive locations in January 2025.

    Source: FTC targets companies that collected and sold sensitive location dataRead the full story →
11. December 4, 2024Surveillance & Privacy

    Government advice after the hack: encryption is your friend

    The hackers still inside the networks.

    Source: CISA, FBI urge Americans to use encrypted messaging apps to combat Chinese hackersRead the full story →
12. 2025January 15, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    FCC rules the 1994 law requires carriers to secure their networks

    Rescinded November 20, 2025.

    Source: Protecting the Nation's Communications Systems from Cybersecurity ThreatsRead the full story →
13. March 20, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Executive Order 14243: end the walls between agency records

    Unfettered access to every state program's data.

    Source: Executive Order 14243, Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information SilosRead the full story →
14. May 15, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Coinbase: support agents bribed, government ID images taken

    A $20 million demand refused; the IDs were already gone.

    Source: Protecting Our Customers: Standing Up to ExtortionistsRead the full story →
15. June 27, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Supreme Court upholds ID checks to read

    Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 6 to 3.

    Source: Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. ___ (2025)Read the full story →
16. August 6, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    ICE asks the IRS for 1.3 million addresses; gets 47,000

    Found contrary to law on November 21.

    Source: Federal judge blocks ICE from using IRS taxpayer data in enforcementRead the full story →
17. August 7, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Order on debanking names the January 6 search terms

    The reporting system itself left untouched.

    Source: Executive Order 14331, Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All AmericansRead the full story →
18. August 26, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Whistleblower: Social Security file on 300 million people copied to an outside cloud

    The agency's security staff had called unauthorized access catastrophic.

    Source: Whistleblower says Trump officials copied millions of Social Security numbers to a vulnerable cloudRead the full story →
19. October 3, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Discord: 70,000 government ID photographs taken from a support contractor

    Sent in to prove age; kept by the contractor.

    Source: Update on a Security Incident Involving Third-Party Customer ServiceRead the full story →
20. November 20, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    FCC rescinds the network security ruling, 2 to 1

    Gomez: less protected than the day the breach was discovered.

    Source: FCC Corrects Course, Outlines Improved Cybersecurity MeasuresRead the full story →
21. December 23, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Judge blocks Texas app store age law; appeals court revives it in June

    Every user's age, every minor's download.

    Source: App store age verification law back on in Texas, but more challenges comingRead the full story →
22. December 30, 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Judge allows Medicaid to share basic data on some enrollees with ICE

    The agency then sent millions more, including citizens, and the sharing was paused.

    Source: Judge rules basic Medicaid data can be shared with ICERead the full story →
23. 2025Surveillance & Privacy

    Secret court: 287 applications, 4 denied in full

    FBI searches on Americans up 34 percent.

    Source: Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on Activities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts for 2025Read the full story →
24. 2026April 29, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    House passes 18 month Section 702 extension without a warrant vote, 235 to 191

    The Senate does not act.

    Source: Himes Statement on House Passage of FISA 702 ReauthorizationRead the full story →
25. May 6, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Utah's app store age verification takes effect

    Every account, four age categories, a parent's consent for every download.

    Source: S.B. 142, App Store Accountability Act (enrolled)Read the full story →
26. May 28, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Google Play begins grading the age of every new Texas account for app developers

    Top grade: government ID and a selfie, or a digital ID.

    Source: Play Age Signals API: understand age signals responsesRead the full story →
27. June 12, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Section 702 expires; the collection continues to March 2027

    First lapse since 2008.

    Source: FISA Section 702 Almost Certain to Expire After House Votes Against ExtensionRead the full story →
28. June 29, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Chatrie: a geofence request to Google is a search

    Five justices, a sixth concurring; nothing said about purchase.

    Source: Chatrie v. United States, 609 U.S. ___ (2026)Read the full story →
29. July 13, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Ninth Circuit: the $200 border reporting order likely unlawful

    A shopkeeper who lost half her customers.

    Source: Ninth Circuit Affirms Injunction Against FinCEN Border GTO, Holding It Is Likely A Rule Requiring Notice-And-Comment RulemakingRead the full story →
30. July 17, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    ICE gave Medicaid data a court had withheld to Palantir

    Deleted when found, the agency says.

    Source: ICE shared Medicaid data it wasn't supposed to have with PalantirRead the full story →
31. August 26, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Governor DeSantis calls the license plate camera network out of control

    He said he does not want Florida to become a surveillance state and that the legislature has to act. The same day a Kentucky officer was charged with using the system to track his ex-girlfriend 2,048 times.

    Source: Florida Gov. DeSantis on license plate readers: 'It's out of control'Read the full story →
32. August 31, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    Florida orders Flock cameras off state roads within 30 days

    The transportation department's memorandum applies to state highway rights of way. It does not reach the cameras on county and city roads, where most of them are.

    Source: Flock cameras must be pulled from Florida state roads within 30 days, DeSantis ordersRead the full story →
33. September 1, 2026Surveillance & Privacy

    153 million driver's license scans for sale on a Russian forum

    Taken over a year from a company that checks IDs 21 million times a month.

    Source: FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers LicensesRead the full story →

Stories (8)

• 1970 to 2026The Bank Secrecy Act: 26 Million Yearly Bank Reports and Warrantless Treasury SearchesIn fiscal 2025 American banks filed 4.8 million suspicious activity reports and 21.5 million currency transaction reports with the Treasury, and 464 federal, state, and local agencies ran 63.9 million searches of the result. After January 6, 2021 the Treasury's financial crimes office gave banks search terms including MAGA and Trump and the names of sporting goods stores and asked for the matching customers, without a warrant. In 2025 the president ordered regulators to stop banks from closing accounts over politics, and the Treasury ordered money transfer shops on the border to report every cash transaction over $200; an appeals court found that order likely unlawful in July 2026.Surveillance & Privacy
• 2018 to 2026How Intelligence Agencies and Police Buy Phone Location Data to Bypass the Fourth AmendmentIn 2018 the Supreme Court held that the government needs a warrant to get a person's phone location history from the phone company. The agencies then bought the same information from data brokers instead. The intelligence community's own 2022 review said the data covers nearly everyone, could identify every person who attended a protest, and could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming. Homeland Security's inspector general found three of its agencies ran at least 71,000 location queries without the privacy reviews their own rules required. A bill to close the loophole passed the House in 2024 and died in the Senate. In June 2026 the court held that a geofence request to Google is a search.Surveillance & Privacy
• 1994 to 2025Salt Typhoon: How Chinese Hackers Used Congressionally Mandated Wiretap Backdoors Inside US Phone CarriersIn 1994 Congress required the phone companies to build interception into their networks so the government could listen with a court order. On November 13, 2024 the FBI confirmed that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government had been inside American carriers, had taken customer call records, had read and listened to the communications of people in government and politics, and had copied information from the systems that handle the government's own wiretap orders. By December a ninth carrier had been named. The government's advice to the public was to use encryption, which the FBI had spent a decade telling Congress was a danger. In January 2025 the FCC ruled that the 1994 law obliged carriers to secure their networks. In November 2025 it rescinded the ruling, 2 to 1.Surveillance & Privacy
• March 2025 to July 2026The 2025 Executive Order Merging IRS, Medicaid, and Social Security Records into One Federal SystemOn March 20, 2025 the president ordered every agency to give federal officials full and prompt access to all unclassified records and to secure unfettered access to the data of every state program that takes federal money. Within a year the IRS had handed immigration agents the addresses of about 47,000 taxpayers under an agreement a judge found contrary to law, Medicaid had sent the records of enrollees in every state to the same agents, a copy of the Social Security file on more than 300 million people had been placed in a cloud outside the agency's controls, and the agents' contractor had been given data a court had ordered withheld.Surveillance & Privacy
• 2023 to 2026Mandatory Government ID and Age Verification Laws for Websites and App StoresOn June 27, 2025 the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that requires adults to prove their age with a government ID or other records before viewing websites the state classifies as harmful to minors, and noted that at least 21 other states had passed the same requirement. Texas then required every app store to verify the age of every user and get a parent's permission for every download by a minor. A district judge blocked that law as a rule that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door; an appeals court let it take effect in June 2026. The identity check is becoming the price of reading.Surveillance & Privacy
• 2008 to 2026FISA Section 702: 278,000 Improper FBI Searches of Americans and Warrantless SurveillanceSection 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets the NSA collect the communications of foreigners abroad from American companies without a warrant, and lets the FBI search what it collects for Americans' names. In 2022 a secret court found the FBI had run more than 278,000 improper searches in a little over a year. In 2025 the agencies targeted 349,823 people and the FBI searched for 7,413 Americans. The statute expired at midnight on June 12, 2026 for the first time since 2008 after the House refused a third short extension. The collection continues under court certifications that run to March 2027.Surveillance & Privacy
• August 2026Flock License Plate Camera Networks and Police Warrantless TrackingOn August 26, 2026, Ron DeSantis said the Flock camera network that local police in Florida use to track vehicles is out of control and that he does not want the state to become a surveillance state. Five days later the state transportation department ordered the cameras off state roads within 30 days. The same week a Kentucky officer was charged with using the system to track his ex-girlfriend 2,048 times.Surveillance & Privacy
• 2025 to 2026153 Million Driver's License Scans Leaked for Sale After Mandatory ID Checks at Retailers and WebsitesOn September 1, 2026 a service opened on a Russian criminal forum selling scans of more than 153 million American and Canadian driver's licenses, 10 million identification cards, 3 million passports and other travel documents, and 579,000 medical cards, each record with front and back photographs of the card and the date it was scanned. The data appears to come from IDScan.net, a New Orleans company that checks IDs for Hertz, Target, FedEx, and casinos, more than 21 million times a month at more than 20,000 locations. The sellers said they had been taking it for over a year. Every law that requires an ID to be shown to a company builds a database like this one. The laws now require it to buy a phone application, to open a website, to board a plane, and, on the Justice Department's own site, to read the Epstein files.Surveillance & Privacy