What we found
Ring Video Doorbell: FGave footage to police without warrants. Employees caught watching customers' live feeds.
Amazon admitted to Congress (Sen. Ed Markey inquiry, 2022) that it shared Ring footage with police without owner consent at least 11 times in 2022 using an 'emergency request' process that bypasses the stated warrant/subpoena requirement. Ring maintains an emergency request form that law enforcement can use to obtain footage without any court order or user consent.
Palantir: FPalantir's Code of Conduct says its technology should "protect the vulnerable." Its ELITE system uses Medicaid records -- healthcare data that poor people su...
Palantir's ELITE system (Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Enforcement) ingests Medicaid records from HHS -- healthcare data submitted by poor people to access medical treatment -- and combines it with passport records, Social Security files, IRS tax data, and license-plate reader data to generate AI-powered arrest dossiers for ICE. Medicaid data exists because the government promised to provide healthcare to low-income people. Palantir's system repurposes that data as a targeting tool to identify and deport them. ImmigrationOS, a $30 million contract awarded April 17, 2025, was designated as sole-source -- Palantir was the "only source" capable of delivering. The DHS awarded a 5-year, $1 billion contract for an AI platform covering both CBP and ICE. In December 2025, Palantir also received a USCIS contract -- meaning the company now has contracts with both the enforcement and benefits sides of the immigration system. Total federal contracts since Trump took office: over $900 million.
T7/T10 Tasers & Body-Worn Cameras: FAxon sells police a "Stealth Mode" for body cameras.
Axon itself concedes that Stealth Mode does NOT disable the emission of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi radio signals. Officers in undercover and tactical operations remain fully detectable and trackable via fixed MAC addresses. The feature name is functionally misleading.
Clearview AI: FClearview AI scraped 50 billion photos from the internet.
Clearview AI scraped 50 billion photos from the internet -- Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, news sites, personal blogs -- without the knowledge or consent of any person photographed. The company announced it was on track for 100 billion faceprints, enough for 14 photos of every person on Earth. The NYT investigation that exposed Clearview in January 2020 revealed the company had been operating in near-total secrecy, publishing fake information about its location and erasing founders' social media profiles. Co-founder Charles C. Johnson is a far-right blogger who was permanently banned from Twitter in 2015 for soliciting funds to "take out" a civil rights activist. CEO Hoan Ton-That resigned in December 2024 and was replaced on February 19, 2025 by Hal Lambert, a Trump campaign fundraiser. The world's largest facial recognition database was built by scraping billions of photos without consent, founded partly by a far-right figure, and is now led by a political fundraiser.
Aqara Video Doorbell G4: FChinese facial recognition doorbell that builds a mugshot database of everyone who visits your home.
Face database (30 faces) tagged/named through Aqara Home app requiring Lumi United cloud account on Chinese servers. "Local" processing real, but metadata about whose face is whose flows through app to Lumi's cloud.
Ring: FRing told customers they were "in control" of their footage.
In July 2022, Amazon confirmed to Senator Ed Markey that Ring had provided police with doorbell camera footage without a warrant or owner consent in at least 11 cases that year alone, citing "emergency" exceptions. Over 2,000 law enforcement agencies had formal partnerships with Ring through the Neighbors app, allowing police to request footage from any Ring camera within a geographic area without a warrant. Senator Markey called Ring "a surveillance network that threatens civil liberties." Amazon initially denied warrantless sharing, then admitted to it under congressional questioning. Ring eventually ended police ability to request footage through the Neighbors app in 2023 -- but only after years of operating as a de facto police surveillance network. Ring still complies with legal demands and emergency requests without requiring warrants.
Wyze Cam (Platform): DIn 2019, security researchers told Wyze that anyone on the internet could access all video stored on a Wyze Cam's memory card — remotely, without a password.
Bitdefender discovered a critical vulnerability in Wyze Cam v1 in March 2019 that allowed remote access to the camera's SD card contents (including saved video). Bitdefender reported it to Wyze in 2019, but Wyze did not patch it or disclose it to users for nearly three years, until Bitdefender went public in March 2022. The Wyze Cam v1 was never patched — Wyze simply discontinued it.
BlackVue DR900X-2CH: DBlackVue sells dash cams to employers who can watch live video from any work vehicle, track where every driver goes, and monitor how they drive.
Fleet management features create a workplace surveillance infrastructure: employers can watch live video from any vehicle, track driver locations in real time, monitor driving speed and behaviour, and access all recorded footage. Pittasoft's privacy policy focuses on individual consumer consent but does not address the power asymmetry in employer-deployed systems. Employees in fleet vehicles may have no meaningful ability to consent to continuous video and GPS surveillance as a condition of employment.