Flock cameras boost crime clearance rates for vehicle theft, hit and run, and aggravated assault, according to company data comparing cities with and without ALPR technology.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Look Up Mashable Selects Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Creator Playbook In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus All Series Car thefts and break-ins are down in SF, and some city leaders -- and Silicon Valley -- believe Flock is partly responsible. Neal joined Mashable's Social Good team in 2024, editing and writing stories about digital culture and its effects on the environment and marginalized communities. He is the former editorial director of The Advocate and Out magazines, has contributed to the Los Angeles Times, Curbed, and Los Angeles magazine, and is a recipient of the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for LGBTQ Journalist of the Year Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association (NLGJA). He lives in Los Angeles with his family. Citing privacy and accuracy concerns, cities like Lynchburg, Virginia, and states like Florida have turned against Flock, the nation's main purveyor of automated license plate readers (ALPRs); conservative GOP politicians like Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have too.

For many Okinawa locals, the arrest of a US soldier accused of robbing and killing a woman in a hotel room has reignited decades of frustration over crimes involving US military personnel there. Honestly my first reaction was, 'Not again,' 52-year-old longtime Okinawa resident Ai Sato told the BBC. Nothing has changed since I was a child. How many times are we going to repeat the same thing, create more victims, cause their families to suffer, and ultimately, cause the people of Okinawa to grieve? I know we shouldn't get used to terrible things like this, but because they keep happening, I've stopped being surprised, she told the BBC.

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Kosovo's former president sentenced to 25 years for war crimes The former president of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of war crimes. A hearing at The Hague on Wednesday sentenced the 58-year-old for crimes during Kosovo's independence war against Serbia in the 1990s, in which more than 10,000 people died. He was convicted after a three-year trial of crimes including murder, illegal arrests, torture and cruel treatment. A number of other allegations against him were not proven. Thaci was a co-founder and commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a group that fought for independence.

A shop owner has described how she locks her door during opening hours and customers have to ring the bell to get in after her store was targeted by thieves last year. Paige Mengers, who runs a designer boutique in Surrey, has been speaking about the impact of shoplifting, with recorded offences remaining above pre-pandemic levels. Home Office figures show there were 42,674 shoplifting offences across Kent, Surrey and Sussex in 2025/26 compared with 28,048 cases in 2019/20. The government said overall offences in England and Wales fell 4% last year, with more suspects being charged. Mengers, who has stores in Cobham and south-west London, said she boosted security after a raid in January 2025 involving men with wire cutters.

Flock has long pretended to be a simple automated license plate reader (ALPR) company, despite overwhelming evidence that its cameras can track a lot more than that. Now there's a report that it has been developing new AI tools that can potentially locate people by how they drive, according to Wired. The software was reportedly called Nightshift and is now going by the name OS Investigate. It draws from a network of cameras in 6,000 communities and logs the movements of drivers in those communities, Wired reports. This could be used, for instance, to find a witness to a crime by analyzing vehicle movements near where a crime occurred.

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. Flock's surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology "cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals." It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned. Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver's "associates" from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives.

'The Worst I've Ever Seen': Cargo Thefts Have Turned Violent in Pursuit of AI Hardware Experts allege that two recent incidents in California show the extreme lengths that criminal organizations are willing to go to to steal servers and other gear meant for data centers. During the 25 years Gerardo Pachuca has spent investigating thieves who steal cargo from semitrucks, he says he's never seen behavior this brazen. The consultant and former Los Angeles sheriff's detective claims that two times in recent months, robbers stole pricey hardware destined for AI data centers using a confrontational new tactic. It's left the freight industry on edge. The incidents involved two different shipments of high-value technology traveling from Silicon Valley to Southern California, according to Pachuca, who says he learned about the thefts from law enforcement authorities.

Look Up Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable Back to School Furtastic All Series A city lost its entire Flock camera network as communities nationwide grapple with the controversial license plate readers. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.