Xfinity warns that WiFi Motion can report activity from neighboring units or shared walls.
Wi-Fi signal disruption → motion event → neighboring-unit activity can cross the sensing boundary → cloud history
SURVEILLANCE · EVIDENCE LIBRARY
Show me where this actually happened.
A navigable library of documented surveillance cases, consequences, audits, court records, regulator actions, and reported incidents. Illinois cases link back to the place where they occurred.
Illinois is the subject; the rest of the country can be evidence. Out-of-state cases are included when they document the operation, capabilities, limitations, failures, or consequences of technology relevant to Illinois. Geography is identified explicitly.
BROWSE BY RELATIONSHIP
Who is doing the watching?
GovernmentWhat happens when public systems generate a lead or profile?29 recordsWorkplaceWhat happens when measurement becomes management?5 recordsConsumerWhat happens after you buy the product?12 recordsPrivate / ResidentialWhat if you never bought the surveillance system?7 recordsStudents / SchoolsWhat happens when surveillance becomes part of the learning environment?8 recordsHealth / ReproductiveWhat happens when ordinary digital data becomes health information?7 recordsBiometricsWhat happens when the identifier is part of your body?6 recordsAerial / DronesWhat changes when observation can be rewound?4 recordsData Brokers / InfrastructureHow does information move between systems?4 records
ALL EVIDENCE
82 documented records and case studies.
A sheriff's investigator was accused of running roughly 3,000 Flock searches on his ex-girlfriend's vehicle.
Authorized law-enforcement account → thousands of alleged personal searches → criminal investigation and arrest
Chicago-area departments investigated officers for allegedly using Flock searches for personal purposes.
Police ALPR access → alleged searches involving former partners / employer → internal investigations
The FTC alleged a Ring employee viewed thousands of customers' intimate camera recordings.
Broad employee access → thousands of customer videos viewed → coworker discovers conduct → FTC enforcement
The FTC said hackers exploited Ring account-security weaknesses to access cameras and harass customers.
Compromised credentials + weak protections → camera access → viewing / two-way audio abuse
The OPM breach exposed fingerprint records for about 5.6 million people.
Federal background-investigation records compromised → fingerprint records exposed → permanent biometric identifiers outside custodian control
A health-data breach exposed genetic and wellness information, including raw genotype data.
Consumer genetic/health service → unauthorized access → raw genotype and health information exposed
Baltimore police tested a city-scale aerial surveillance system for months before the public—and even key city officials—were told.
Privately funded pilot → 32-square-mile imagery → months of use → disclosure only after investigative reporting
The surveillance plane created evidence defendants could not request because they did not know it existed—and the imagery was retained longer than the public-facing policy suggested.
Citywide imagery archive → undisclosed evidence source → public defenders raise exculpatory-access concerns
A federal appeals court held Baltimore's renewed persistent aerial surveillance program unconstitutional.
Citywide daytime movement record → six-month pilot → en banc Fourth Circuit blocks access to collected data
One month of police-drone operations produced 537 videos—and a major privacy problem over what the cameras captured on the way to calls.
Drone response flights → 91+ hours of video in one month → incidental private-space footage → years of public-records litigation
The FBI called a fingerprint match '100%'—and arrested the wrong man.
AFIS candidate → examiner confirmation → investigation and detention → Spanish police identify the true source
A mistaken fingerprint identification helped send Stephan Cowans to prison for nearly six years.
Latent print testimony + eyewitness identification → conviction → DNA exclusion → fingerprint error exposed
Fingerprint experts said a crime-scene print belonged to police officer Shirley McKie. Independent review found it did not.
Fingerprint identification → officer disputes match → perjury charge → acquittal → independent experts reject identification
A 14-year-old was fingerprinted at Six Flags; his mother said she learned about it only after the school trip.
Season-pass enrollment → thumb scan and storage → no alleged written consent → landmark Illinois Supreme Court ruling
White Castle employees repeatedly scanned fingerprints to access computers and pay records.
Fingerprint authentication → repeated scans and third-party verification → Illinois Supreme Court says each unlawful scan/transmission can accrue separately
Flo promised privacy, then the FTC alleged it shared sensitive fertility and pregnancy data with analytics companies.
Period / fertility data → marketing and analytics providers → FTC privacy enforcement
The FTC charged that Premom shared fertility, health, location and device data with third parties without adequate disclosure.
Fertility tracking + location/device identifiers → analytics / marketing firms → federal enforcement
The FTC alleged GoodRx shared prescription and health-condition information with advertising companies despite privacy promises.
Prescription searches and purchases → Facebook / Google / ad-tech → targeted health advertising
BetterHelp promised privacy while the FTC alleged it disclosed sensitive mental-health information for advertising.
Counseling intake data → Facebook / Snapchat / ad-tech → targeted advertising → $7.8 million settlement
The FTC alleged that a mental-health telehealth company disclosed sensitive health data to third parties for advertising.
Telehealth relationship → sensitive data → advertising disclosure allegations → federal settlement
Private Facebook messages became evidence in a Nebraska abortion-related prosecution after police obtained them with a search warrant.
Private messages → warrant → platform disclosure → abortion-related criminal charges and prosecution
A bag of Doritos was flagged as a possible gun; Taki Allen ended up handcuffed at gunpoint.
AI weapon flag → alert reviewed and canceled → communication failure → armed police response
A middle school locked down after a student holding a clarinet was escalated as a suspected rifle.
AI detection + human review → suspected rifle alert → police response and Code Red lockdown
A student described changing what she searched because she knew the school device was being monitored.
School-device monitoring → self-censorship → reduced willingness to ask private questions
A public-records response exposed nearly 3,500 unredacted student documents containing sensitive material.
Monitoring creates sensitive records → records request mishandled → student material exposed
A school district used license-plate data and private investigation in a residency dispute; children were disenrolled.
Vehicle-location evidence + private surveillance → residency inference → children removed from school
Chicago Public Schools quietly monitored public student social media for signs of gang involvement and violence.
25,000 students across 24 schools → 700+ interventions → police involved in some cases
Lockport activated facial recognition in schools; organizing and litigation were followed by a statewide biometric-surveillance moratorium.
Facial recognition deployed → parent/student opposition and litigation → statewide moratorium halted use
A district installed AI-capable cameras but said facial recognition remained disabled after community backlash.
Facial-recognition capability present → district says feature off → board approval and family opt-in required before activation
Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez: an unverified gang designation reached immigration enforcement.
Designation challenged → CPD said it could not verify it
50,176 dispatched alerts; documented gun-crime evidence appeared in a small minority of responses.
9.1% of dispositions documented gun-related criminal evidence
The Strategic Subject List assigned people risk scores for becoming a victim or offender in a shooting.
OIG: unreliable scores and tiers among major concerns
Robert Williams: a false facial-recognition lead became a wrongful arrest.
Wrongfully arrested → case settled → Detroit policy changed
Porcha Woodruff: Detroit faced another wrongful-arrest allegation after a facial-recognition match.
Eight months pregnant when arrested · civil litigation followed
A plate-reader misread reportedly put an innocent couple at gunpoint with their infant in the vehicle.
Wrong plate read → high-risk stop → error discovered
Michael Williams spent 11 months in jail while ShotSpotter evidence helped support a murder case that prosecutors ultimately dropped.
11 months jailed → case dismissed for insufficient evidence
Chicago's gang data included contradictory, incomplete and implausible records—with no ordinary way for a person to know or challenge a designation.
Bad data + broad access + weak correction process
Michael Oliver became another early Detroit wrongful-arrest case after a false facial-recognition match.
False match → wrongful arrest
Nijeer Parks spent ten days in jail while physical evidence that could have excluded him remained available to investigators.
False face match → 10 days jailed → civil challenge
By 2026, the known wrongful-arrest problem had grown beyond a handful of Detroit cases.
14 known wrongful arrests catalogued by ACLU in May 2026
Wrong reads, wrong hotlist entries and stale records have repeatedly sent police toward innocent motorists.
Different failure source → same roadside consequence
The FTC found that location, browser history, shopping behavior and even mouse movements can feed systems used to tailor prices and promotions.
Observe → profile → change the offer
Illinois restricted how ALPR data could be used. A state audit later found that CBP had nevertheless gained access to Illinois Flock data.
State restriction → prohibited access found → access ordered terminated
Illinois ALPR access became entangled with out-of-state abortion and immigration investigations.
Interstate network access → Illinois legal safeguards tested
Oak Park's own published oversight data exposed erroneous Flock-prompted stops.
Local oversight made the error rate visible
A character-recognition error reportedly turned a family trip into a guns-out police stop.
O / 0 confusion → wrong vehicle alert → high-risk stop
A reported 7-versus-2 plate error escalated beyond a routine traffic stop.
Wrong character → detention at gunpoint → police dog deployed
An ALPR investigation reportedly contributed to an innocent driver spending 13 days in jail.
Vehicle association → arrest → 13 days jailed → error discovered
Denise Green shows that the high-risk false-hit problem predates Flock.
False stolen-car alert → guns drawn → handcuffed and detained
An officer used law-enforcement plate-reader access to track his estranged wife.
Authorized access → personal surveillance → criminal consequences
Illinois required warrants. CPD's Stingray unit nevertheless kept no deployment log—and a city-retained attorney advised against creating one.
Legal safeguard → no usable audit trail → compliance difficult to verify
Police used a cell-site simulator to find Kerron Andrews inside a home. His defense initially wasn't told how police had located him.
Secret location technique → discovery fight → evidence suppressed
Tallahassee police used Stingrays roughly 200 times before 2010 without disclosing Stingray use to a judge to obtain a warrant.
~200 deployments → warrantless / undisclosed technique → secrecy challenged
Sarasota acknowledged Stingray records existed. Before they could be inspected, the U.S. Marshals Service took possession of them.
Records requested → inspection arranged → federal agents take records → litigation follows
Records later identified 1,835 Florida state cell-site-simulator uses and hundreds of Tallahassee investigations.
Secretive technology ≠ rare technology
CPD bought tools for large-scale social-media monitoring and used social media to monitor political protests and gatherings.
Public posts → automated monitoring → political activity enters police intelligence workflow
After 2020 protests, Chicago created a 20-person unit for round-the-clock social-media monitoring—and disclosure of how it worked required another lawsuit.
Program publicly announced → records withheld → litigation and contempt order → policy disclosed
Investigators demonstrated a government-purchased tool tracing a phone from a home, to a church, across state lines and into an abortion clinic.
App-derived location data → commercial broker → government-accessible movement history
The Secret Service relied on claims that consumers consented to location-data collection. Asked what it did to verify that consent, the agency answered: none.
“Consumer consent” justification → verification requested → no independent verification
The system matched a Black woman to an image employees described as “a white lady with blonde hair.” Employees called police anyway.
False biometric match → police called → customer expelled before error recognized
An 11-year-old girl was stopped and searched after a false facial-recognition match.
False alert → child searched → documented emotional harm
One enrolled person generated more than 900 alerts at more than 130 stores in five days.
Physically implausible pattern → automated alerts continued
Amazon fired Rahim Caldwell after its timekeeping software incorrectly classified paid time off as unexcused breaks. Amazon later discovered the error and reinstated him.
Software classification error → termination → error discovered → reinstatement and back pay
A four-year delivery driver received an automated termination after Amazon's performance systems decided his work no longer met expectations.
App-generated performance record → automated management → termination email
Drivers reported being flagged for “distracted driving” while checking mirrors and for traffic violations they said never occurred.
Camera observation → automated interpretation → safety event attached to worker
A system recorded 205 minutes of Time Off Task. The worker later testified that an abnormal pod workflow explained much of the scanner inactivity.
Scanner inactivity → productivity inference → worker explanation existed outside the metric
Harri's own Jersey Mike's materials describe employees clocking in and out by facial recognition to prevent “buddy punching” and time theft.
Employee face → biometric identity check → attendance record → payroll/compliance workflow
Tenants fought a proposal to make facial recognition part of access to their own apartment complex.
Home access → biometric identification → tenant challenge → proposal abandoned
Ring disclosed customer video to law enforcement without the device owner's consent in 11 emergency requests during the first half of 2022.
Private camera → vendor custody → emergency request → disclosure without owner consent
Private neighborhood associations can purchase license-plate readers that record residents, visitors and workers who never bought the system.
HOA purchases camera → every passing vehicle becomes potential subject
A city approved roadside HOA plate readers after officials mistakenly believed they were part of the police department's ALPR system.
Private infrastructure → governmental appearance → mistaken permitting → removal ordered
Driving telemetry left the vehicle ecosystem and reached consumer-reporting companies used by insurers.
Vehicle telemetry → data broker / consumer report → insurer → price or coverage consequence
Kenn Dahl requested his LexisNexis file after an insurance increase. The report was 258 pages and documented hundreds of trips.
Connected-car behavior → 640-trip record → insurer queries → reported 21% premium increase
The FTC said 11 million Vizio televisions collected second-by-second viewing information, including content from external devices.
Screen content → viewing history → IP address / aggregation → advertising and cross-device targeting
The FTC alleged a commercial location-data ecosystem could expose visits to sensitive places and characteristics.
Mobile location signal → supplier / broker → audience or movement intelligence → downstream customer
Precise location collection can begin inside someone else's app.
Third-party app → embedded SDK → precise location → commercial profile
Target's predictive marketing work became famous for inferring pregnancy from combinations of ordinary purchases.
Purchase history → statistical inference → sensitive marketing category
There is a consumer-reporting ecosystem for retail returns.
Return behavior → consumer report / fraud-abuse analysis → merchant decision
Attackers obtained a copy of Caesars' loyalty-program database containing government-identification information for a significant number of members.
Customer identification retained → centralized database → attacker obtains copy
MGM disclosed stolen customer identity information including driver's-license numbers and, for some customers, Social Security and passport numbers.
Customer records → breach → identity information outside custodian's control
Ford has patented systems for detecting drowsiness and monitoring driver behavior. A patent is not proof that a system was deployed.
RESEARCH / PATENT — CAPABILITY DOCUMENTATION, NOT DEPLOYMENT EVIDENCE