The use of automatic license plate readers has exploded across the country in recent years. The cameras on roads and freeways that take images of the back of passing cars are popular with police for solving crimes.

But as President Trump's immigration enforcement crackdown has escalated in recent months, residents of various American cities are urging local leaders to stop using these cameras, citing fears of mass surveillance and concerns that local data could be aiding a federal deportation dragnet.

Many of the grassroots campaigns have targeted cameras made by Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that has contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. Some cities have grappled with the issue and decided to keep their cameras due to public safety, but in a number of places, the pressure has worked.

The liberal college towns of Flagstaff, Ariz., Cambridge, Mass., Eugene, Ore. and Santa Cruz, Calif., are among a list of at least 30 localities that have either deactivated their Flock cameras or canceled their contracts since the beginning of 2025 – with much of the activity happening in just the last three months.

"We are seeing a lot more momentum," said Will Freeman, a Colorado-based activist who opposes the cameras and runs the DeFlock.me website, which through crowdsourcing has mapped the locations of more than 76,000 license plate readers across the country. "I expect there to be more cities dropping Flock."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43460008

Abdellatif Hafraoui sits at a small dining table in the Bayonne apartment he shares with his wife, Sandra, sipping his morning coffee — a ritual unchanged over their 15 years of marriage.

Since August, however, that routine has been shadowed by months in ICE detention and the black ankle monitor now strapped around his leg.

...

The arrest forced Sandra to reconsider assumptions she had long held about immigration enforcement. “To think we were MAGA!,” Sandra proclaimed. The couple even attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas in 2020.

Sandra voted for Trump three times, believing enforcement would focus on people with criminal records — not individuals like her husband.

Asked what she would say to him now, she paused. “You said you were going after the worst of the worst, but instead you ruined our life,” she said.

saw this somewhere else too. ddos stuff. this one blames ru for archive.today mess. sounds about right.

The Mexican army killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho, ” on Sunday, decapitating what had become Mexico’s most powerful cartel and giving the government its biggest prize yet to show the Trump administration its efforts.

Oseguera Cervantes was wounded in an operation to capture him Sunday in Tapalpa, Jalisco about a two-hour drive southwest of Guadalajara and he died while being flown to Mexico City, the Defense Department said in a statement. The state is the base of the cartel known for trafficking huge quantities of fentanyl and other drugs to the United States.

"Mayor Prevost, what is your plan for attracting real estate development and lowering rates of crime in Vatican City?"

Since September, the Trump administration has conducted an undeclared war in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing scores of civilians. The Intercept is chronicling all publicly declared U.S. attacks and providing a tracker with information on each strike.

The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U.S. is engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations,” or DTOs. President Donald Trump has justified the attacks, in a War Powers report to Congress, under his Article II constitutional authority as commander in chief of the U.S. military and claimed to be acting pursuant to the United States’ inherent right of self-defense as a matter of international law. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has also produced a classified opinion that provides legal cover for the lethal strikes.

Archive link https://archive.is/7TfMT

Denmark’s defense minister said Greenland did not need health care assistance, a day after President Trump said he planned to send a “great hospital boat” to the island.

It should also be noted that the US isn't capable of sending hospital ships right now; it has two, but they're both undergoing maintenance and not in any way ready to head to Greenland.

PodOsef is an MP3-first podcast publishing system: drop MP3s into a folder, it generates HTML + RSS. No DB, the MP3 metadata is the source of truth. Also supports an archive mode that watches a main feed and mirrors episodes. Repo + write-up:

https://meirz.net/2026/02/22/podosef-mp3-first-lightweight-simple-podcast-publishing-system/

"The war cannot have stopped when I am still unable to even see the rubble of my home."

Nice try loser, you know, you're a real scumbag, trying to kill me, wow, who hates me? Nobody does outside the democrats, but folks, I've had many attempts on my life, many, like no one has ever seen, outside of maybe, well, maybe 50 Cent, we love him, he's a real man's man, but anyway, they keep sending people to kill me, AOC and wacky Bernie, they try, oh how they try, and then they fail, bye-bye! No one will miss those lunatics, mark my words

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43455384

Paywall? https://removepaywalls.com/4/https://www.reuters.com/business/eu-says-it-will-accept-no-increase-us-tariffs-after-supreme-court-ruling-a-deal-2026-02-22/