"The camera advances toward a finely dressed couple kissing in Central Park.... The man and woman start to look nervous...."

"The video was released Thursday. Within hours, internet sleuths figured out that the two are colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan. The man, Nathaniel D. Cullerton, is 45 and a partner. The woman, Kelsey Borenzweig, is 29, and an associate. Cullerton is married. Everyone from the Daily Mail to Above the Law covered the scandal, and the video has since amassed more than 5 million views. 'Cheating in public, wife is a lawyer, got caught on camera? Triple homicide 😭,' read one comment, which has 224,000 likes, on TikTok under a repost of the video. 'People are way too comfortable cheating, make cheating illegal,' read another that got 43,000 likes...."

I'm reading "Welcome to Secular Sharia/Drunks, cheaters, and Karens beware: TikTok is the new home for public floggings" (The Free Press).

That article is summarized in video, here:

"So, we were just talking about this wild crime spree that happened this weekend in Austin.... they stole cars and stole guns and switched cars and they shot at like 10 different locations...."

"They shot multiple people.... &ou were saying that the reason why they had a hard time catching them is because they had Flock cameras in Austin, but then they shut those cameras off for political reasons...."

Said Joe Rogan, inviting Mark Andreeson to talk about Flock, which applies AI to info from municipal cameras to find cars for the police. Andreeson is a big investor in Flock.

 

Andreeson: "It's used all over the country. It solves crimes every day. We get reports on carjackings with kids in the back seat and their lives get saved because they track them down. So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it. In cities like Austin with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns. And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off. And as a consequence, they were not able to find these guys for several days. And then what happened — the late breaking news today is these guys drove into some adjacent town up against Austin and Flock was live in that town. And so Flock tagged them the minute they drove into that town and then they caught the guys. Subsequent to that, the mayor and your chief of police gave a press conference and said, 'We really need to rethink this,' because it's crazy to have the ability to solve crimes and stop crimes and not be able to use it...."

"Our investigators lost critical hours tracking down today’s shooting suspects because Austin’s City Council chose politics over public safety...."

Our investigators lost critical hours tracking down today’s shooting suspects because Austin’s City Council chose politics over public safety and prevented APD from using license plate readers and other crime-fighting technology.

Those cameras could have helped identify suspect… https://t.co/yp4ZKdLc1a

— Michael Bullock (@MBullockATX) May 18, 2026

Here's an AP report from half an hour ago: "3 young people arrested in series of random shootings across Austin that left 4 injured." I wonder how do they know its random? They're calling it a "series." It might have been coordinated.

"This disaster was an ideological choice. If states are the laboratories of democracy, cities had become its meth labs."

"San Francisco spent the covid era limiting the tools and tactics available to law enforcement. In 2019, it became the first major U.S. city to ban police from using facial recognition technology. The 8-1 vote was a knee-jerk response to an innovation that has since become a ubiquitous feature on phones and in airports and office lobbies. Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill, said the city had an 'outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology' because San Francisco was viewed as the headquarters of U.S. innovation. The posturing led to an outsize increase in the crime rate and an outsize population exodus from the Bay Area."

I'm reading "Why is Trump backing off San Francisco? These results. Democrat Daniel Lurie is using technology to make the city safe again" (WaPo).

"Last summer, Tom Wong was working at the Chubby Crab... when a regular... ordered a combo.... and ate it at a table near the door, muttering to herself in between bites."

"Mr. Wong, 32, didn’t think anything of it. But a few days later, another customer came in and asked for a selfie. Then the asks kept coming. He had been recorded without his knowledge using a lentil-size camera embedded in a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The resulting video had been viewed more than two million times on TikTok, turning Mr. Wong and the restaurant into unwitting stars. 'At a certain point, I stopped working in the front of the restaurant,' he said. 'It was really uncomfortable.' To be in public is to risk being filmed. And these days, there’s a good chance it’s happening surreptitiously with smart glasses.... Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...."

From "Dinner Is Being Recorded, Whether You Know It or Not/As Meta smart glasses capture scenes in restaurants for social media, service workers and customers are becoming captive participants" (NYT).

"In an ad for Amazon’s Ring camera that ran during the Super Bowl, a new A.I.-powered feature called 'Search Party' helps reunite a tearful little girl with her missing dog..."

"... by activating all the cameras in the neighborhood to find him. The feature works by using A.I. to scan video captured by all the participating Ring cameras in a neighborhood, pinging the device’s user should the reported dog pass in view. The device’s user can then notify the pet’s owner (they can also decline). Scores of posters online have decried Ring’s new feature as dystopian and terrifying. In a rare unifying moment, members of the political right and left expressed their discontent. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on X: 'This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.' And the conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, 'The Ring cam lost dog ad is just propaganda for mass surveillance.'"

From "What Homeowners Need to Know About Smart Home Cameras/A new Super Bowl ad is raising questions about the power of doorbell cameras" (NYT).

Here's that ad:

The Harry Nilsson tag is not a mistake. His recording of "Without You" is the background music.

In the ad, "can't live/if living is without you" is used to express a little girl's feelings about her dog. Such dark thoughts to impose on a child. I mean, it can happen — see "12-Year-Old Girl, Unable To Cope With Loss Of Her Pup, Dies By Suicide" — but let's try harder to keep darkness off of children. The theme of inability to live without a particular loved one is an adult theme.

"The Pima County sheriff said last week that investigators were unable to retrieve any footage from Guthrie’s surveillance cameras..."

"... because she did not pay for a subscription that would have stored the video. But the sheriff’s department and F.B.I. said that investigators recovered the video today by accessing 'residual data.'"

I'm reading "New Video Shows a Masked Figure at Nancy Guthrie’s Door" (NYT).

My 3 questions: 1. You can't maintain your privacy by declining to pay for the subscriptions? 2. Why pay for the subscription now? and 3. Did Google withhold this video because it didn't want customers to realize they didn't need to pay for the subscription?

Meanwhile, in case you think the video of the masked man led to his speedy arrest: "Man Detained for Questioning in Nancy Guthrie Case Is Released/The development came after investigators released chilling video showing a masked figure on Ms. Guthrie’s front porch the morning of her disappearance" (NYT).

So the ski-mask method, now even more widely known, seems to still look effective. 

Ankle monitors in the news.

1. "How a Sabotaged Ankle Monitor Ended Bolsonaro’s House Arrest/Shortly before he was expected to start serving a 27-year sentence, Brazil’s former president took a soldering iron to his tracking device" (NYT): "Mr. Bolsonaro, 70, wasn’t trying to flee, his sons, allies and lawyers said. Rather, he felt unwell because of his medications." This happened "days before he was expected to begin a 27-year prison sentence for trying to stage a coup." "A day before the ankle monitor episode, his lawyers had asked the court to let Mr. Bolsonaro serve his sentence at home because of health problems, which he attributes to complications from a stabbing attack in 2018. His poor health, which includes frequent attacks of hiccups and vomiting, 'makes his safe stay in a prison environment impossible,' his defense said on social media.... At a hearing on Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro told the court he had burned the ankle monitor because his medications had caused 'hallucinations' and 'paranoia' that the device might be used to eavesdrop."

2. "'Slender Man' attacker Morgan Geyser found a day after cutting off monitoring bracelet" (CNN): "A woman who stabbed her sixth-grade classmate to win favor with a fictional internet character named 'Slender Man' more than a decade ago has been taken into custody, a day after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and leaving a group home where she’d been living, police said.... At age 15, Geyser pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors to be placed in a mental institution instead of serving jail time.... In January, a judge ordered she could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years.... Geyser is currently living at a group home in Madison, [Wisconsin] on the same street where she was last seen...."

3. "Innocent woman, 26, set alight on Chicago subway 'by serial criminal, 50' freed on ankle monitor by soft touch judge in horrific echo of Iryna Zarutska murder" (Daily Mail): "Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez (pictured) allowed Lawrence Reed, 50, to be released on an ankle monitor after he assaulted a social worker in August.... Reed is accused of setting fire to [Bethany MaGee, 26] around 9.24pm on Monday, which is outside of the hours he was allowed out of the house while on the ankle monitor."

4. "Charge against Melodee Buzzard’s mom dismissed, ankle monitor removed as FBI hunts for missing 9-year-old/Ashlee Buzzard no longer faces false imprisonment charge as FBI searches for 9-year-old Melodee" (Fox News): "... Brewer said Buzzard locked multiple deadbolts after he entered and appeared 'agitated and tense.' He testified that she sat across from him with a box cutter visible on a nearby tray. When he said he was uncomfortable and wanted to leave, he claimed she blocked the doorway and locked the front door.... The court... dismissed the felony charge for insufficient evidence and ended Buzzard’s pretrial supervision.... She is also no longer required to wear an ankle monitor."

"Some travelers will read this account and swear never to use Airbnb again, but my guess is many of those pledges will be short-lived."

"Short-term rentals are an irresistible part of the travel landscape these days, and it’s not like Airbnb’s competitors (or hotels, for that matter) are flawless, either.

From "Help! We Found a Hidden Camera in the Bathroom of Our Airbnb. When a couple alerted Airbnb to a spy cam in an outlet extender, they thought the listing would be yanked and they’d get a full refund. Wrong on both counts" (NYT).

What's to prevent anyone who wants a refund from bringing their own spy cam, plugging it into an outlet extender, then photographing it and complaining to the host?

"I was there to see it all. Total Scum!!! President DJT."

Wrote Trump, on Truth Social, just now.

That intense outburst is presented as a reaction to the NY Post article: "FBI surveilled Rep. Scott Perry before seizing his cell phone as part of ‘Arctic Frost’ probe into 2020 election."

"People in Mississippi can no longer use the social media platform Bluesky."

"The company announced Friday that it will be blocking all IP addresses within Mississippi for the foreseeable future in response to a recent US Supreme Court decision that allows the state to enforce strict age verification for social media platforms.... The company says that compliance with Mississippi’s law—which would require identifying and tracking all users under 18, in addition to asking every user for sensitive personal information to verify their age—is not possible with the team’s current resources and infrastructure...."

From "Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi Over Age Verification Law/Bluesky has chosen to block access in the state rather than risk potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation" (Wired).

"Once people realized my glasses were full of tech, conversations often took a turn for the awkward — and they mostly unfolded the same way:"

"'Are you recording me?' (No, I’m not.) 'Where are the cameras?' (There aren’t any!) 'You’re really not recording me?' (No!)... Most of the time, people chose to take me at my word and the conversation continued (if a little icily.) Even in tech-heavy San Francisco, casual chats with people I have known for years sometimes turned tense after the glasses’ true nature were revealed. When asked, the most common reason people gave for why interactions took a turn for the awkward was a lingering concern that the glasses were listening anyway — even though they weren’t. The other big reason some people didn’t seem thrilled was a surprise: They thought I was ignoring them.... My wife still sometimes thinks I’m reading news headlines through the glasses even when I’m looking right at her.... [It's hard] to stay fully present with someone when a neon-green notification slides down in front of your eyes.... Some of these social issues may iron themselves out over time.... Until that happens, though, wearing smart glasses can make moving through the world feel a little socially graceless."

Writes Chris Velazco "I spent months living with smart glasses. People talk to me differently now. Eyeglasses are being augmented with screens, artificial intelligence and the power to unnerve people. We tested a pair to see how" (WaPo).

There's also this video. The most interesting part of that is Velazco's admission that his favorite use of the technology is to view inspirational messages that he has chosen for himself, such as: "You can do anything. You have what it takes. Just BELIEVE."

Imagine someone talking to you in person, looking in the direction of your eyes, but actually reading bullshit they've loaded into their glasses. May I suggest the inspirational message: Stay in the moment. Be spontaneous. The person in front of you might be a fully engaged HUMAN BEING!

"Kids: They’re pint-size spies. They’re little data processors, soaking things up and spitting them back, until one day they’ve grokked enough to knock you into the gutter."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "The Future Looks Dark, but Familiar, in Gary Shteyngart’s New Book/'Vera, or Faith' follows a 10-year-old girl navigating family drama and a dystopian America" (NYT).

1. Garner, the name, is not a "garner (the word!)" spotting, within the logic of the Althouse blog.

2. "One day they’ve grokked enough" might be one of the last appearances of "grok," the verb, in this Musk-permeated word.

3. I just finished reading "Vera, or Faith" last night. That's why I'm reading a review of it this morning. The quote I pulled from the review was chosen because of that "grokked."

4. About that dystopia — to quote the book — "[T]he states are having their constitutional conventions. And these conventions will decide whether to give an 'enhanced vote'... counting for five-thirds of a regular vote to so-called 'exceptional Americans,' those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains."

5. Lots of novels use that child as pint-size spy idea, don't they? I think of "What Maisie Knew" and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." You can think of more. Or ask Grok. But whether the character is a child or not, many novels make their plot out a character gradually putting clues together and figuring something out. The thing to be figured out may not be an interesting story at all — who killed X, who is X's father/mother, why did X leave town all these many years ago. The story is the unlocking of the mystery. But to make the central character a child is to blend this mystery-solving with the mystery-solving that is every child's life: What do words mean? What are adults doing? Where do I fit into all this?

6. "Vera, or Faith" (commission earned).

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

We'll all be on our best behavior, because — with cameras everywhere, monitored by AI — we'll all be supervised.

Says Oracle's Larry Ellison:

Oracle's Larry Ellison says a surveillance system of police body cams, cameras on cars and autonomous drones, all monitored by AI, will constantly record and report on police and citizens, leading everyone to be on their best behavior pic.twitter.com/RAq5XGaNmZ

— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) September 15, 2024

Watch the whole Q&A session here.

"Maybe not since Prohibition has there been a possible national ban involving a product used by so many Americans."

So begins "Americans deserve a better message than ‘Trust us, TikTok is bad.’ “If you’re going to take something from the American public, we need to tell them why,” a former White House official said," a WaPo column by Shira Ovide.

[The former White House adviser on technology and competition, Tim] Wu told me that it isn’t easy for the U.S. government to move beyond the vague message of trust us, TikTok is bad. Members of Congress, White House officials and other people in Washington have classified information on the threat of Chinese technology that they can’t talk about, Wu said. They can’t even discuss the existence of this kind of classified information. 

“The case is being made in a little bit of a bubble,” Wu said. 

But American officials know how to talk to Americans about sensitive, classified information and help us distinguish legitimate risks from hyperbole....

Really? How to talk... truthfully? 

"The Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean... was part of a fleet of surveillance balloons directed by the Chinese military that had flown over more than 40 countries..."

"... across five continents, the State Department said Thursday. The United States used high resolution imagery from U-2 flybys to determine the balloon’s capabilities, the department said in a written announcement, adding that the balloon’s equipment 'was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons.' The agency said the balloon had multiple antennas in an array that was 'likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.' Solar panels on the machine were large enough to produce power to operate '“multiple active intelligence collection sensors,' the department said. The agency also said the U.S. government was 'confident' that the company that made the balloon had direct commercial ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, citing an official procurement portal for the army. The department did not name the company...."

From "Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Communications Signals, U.S. Says/China’s surveillance balloons have flown over more than 40 countries and are directed by the Chinese military, the State Department said" (NYT).

"I can't believe I'm Joe's Osama," says the shot-down Chinese balloon.

"How would you like it if someone measured your width in buses?"

"The US military has shot down the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, a US official said Saturday."

CNN reports.

"Top military officials had advised against shooting down the balloon while over the continental US because of the risk the debris could pose to civilians and property on the ground...."

ADDED: "Spy balloons have been around since the late 1700s, but why are militaries around the world still flying them in 2023?" (Politico).

From Wikipedia:

"By 1960, the United States had been flying U-2 spy planes into Soviet airspace since the mid-1950s."

"Both sides knew it was happening, but as the CIA’s Richard Bissell said, the plane was so light there was only 'one chance in a million' that it would survive a hit. So when Air Force Capt. Francis Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, everyone assumed that the plane was gone and the pilot dead. NASA put out a statement saying it was a weather plane that had gone off course. Only when the Soviets triumphantly paraded Powers and bits of the wreckage in Moscow did Washington realize the game was up...."

From "What a Cold War spy-plane crisis teaches us about China’s balloon antics" by Richard Aldous, "Macmillan, Eisenhower and the Cold War."