https://washingtonsun.com/technology Technology en-US Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:30:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/technology/sam-altman-privately-rejected-open-ai-government-equity Jeff Stein The remarks follow months of reports connecting Altman to the idea of giving the government equity in his company. Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:30:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/technology/sam-altman-privately-rejected-open-ai-government-equity OpenAI CEO Sam Altman privately told a group of conservatives this summer that he did not support having the government take shares in the company, distancing himself from a proposal that he and his firm were widely understood to have supported.

For months, OpenAI has been connected to the idea that it is interested in voluntarily ceding shares to the government. Altman has spoken to senior Trump administration officials about the idea, as The Washington Sun first reported in June. The Financial Times reported that OpenAI had proposed giving the government a 5 percent stake in the company, citing Altman’s private comments. The New York Times wrote that Altman had directly pitched President Donald Trump on creating a “government investment fund” seeded with shares in OpenAI. And The Associated Press reported that Altman told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) that he wants the public to have equity in artificial intelligence companies.

At the off-record meeting with conservative economists on July 29, Altman said that he supports some version of redistributing company shares to the American public, according to three people present and notes taken by one participant reviewed by The Washington Sun. But he also was adamant that he would oppose the government taking equity in his firm and would resist any efforts for federal control over the company, those in the room said.

Altman’s comments, previously unreported, provide new insight about the intentions of the leader of one of the most powerful technology companies in the world, as companies like his own and Anthropic navigate public backlash against the rise of AI.

To those present, Altman appeared confused why anyone could think he wanted the government to take shares in the company.

"To most people in Washington, 'public shares in OpenAI' obviously means government control," said one of the economists who attended the meeting. “But he did not seem to understand that and seemed confused that anyone would think that’s what it meant. He said, 'That's not what we're talking about.' … I had the sense that he did not see as big of a difference between individual Americans owning shares and the government owning shares as there is in reality.”

The economists spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the off-record discussion.

In a statement to The Sun, the company said it supported creating a “government-administered public wealth fund,” which it distinguished from one in which the government took a “controlling or ownership stake in AI companies, which we would not support.”

"We think AI should create economic opportunity for everyone,” the statement said. “In April, we published an industrial policy blueprint with several ideas, including a public wealth fund that would let people share directly in the economic gains from AI. We’ve also talked with policymakers in both parties about related ideas, including whether AI companies could contribute equity to help seed a fund, but we are not close to anything specific.”

Several experts expressed confusion about Altman’s position. Theoretically, it would be possible for OpenAI to at some point donate “nonvoting” shares to a private entity overseen in part by government officials, which would limit federal control over the firm. But this would still amount to ceding stakes to the government.

"Everything we've seen from Sam Altman and OpenAI over the years implied a pretty conventional government ownership stake in the companies, including voting rights, dividend rights, other kinds of shareholder rights," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-leaning think tank. "The distinction they are drawing is hard to understand: How does a government-administered public wealth fund that owns equity not have an ownership stake in companies? These sentences are contradictory."

The position also diverges from that understood by others in Washington who have met with Altman. In a meeting in Sanders’ office in late June, Altman said he had seen the senator’s bill requiring AI giants to turn over 50 percent of their shares to the government and agreed that the government should have some stake in the AI companies, though not 50 percent, according to another person familiar with the matter, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to recount that private discussion.

By contrast, the economists who attended the July 29 meeting came away from the discussion with Altman believing that OpenAI agreed with their fierce opposition to expanding the government’s control over the private sector.

Some experts have long been skeptical that OpenAI really would be voluntarily willing to turn over what would amount to billions of dollars to the government. Jeremy Bearer-Friend, an AI expert and law professor at George Washington University who helped design the Sanders plan, said there is nothing in corporate law currently stopping Altman from ceding shares to the government.

Shareholders could sue the company if it made that decision, but it would have the freedom to try.

“They already could have done it,” Bearer-Friend said.

The same day Altman met with conservative economic policy experts, the OpenAI executive also briefed a group of economists influential with Democratic policymakers. Several attendees of that second meeting did not recall the equity stakes question being discussed.

Both meetings started with presentations from Altman about the mathematical breakthroughs made by the OpenAI models. To the conservative economists, Altman stressed that OpenAI had the least politically biased model of any of the major AI companies, two of the people at that meeting said. The liberal economists did not remember Altman discussing the political orientation of the OpenAI model.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/technology/democrats-government-efficiency-post-doge Natalie Alms Rising stars in the Democratic Party are promoting their tech modernization teams in a post-DOGE political landscape. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 09:15:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/technology/democrats-government-efficiency-post-doge New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a big show of bringing his “pothole politics” online: He donned his sunglasses, lowered himself into a go-kart and took a lap around a track in Coney Island to sell his new Public Interest Technology Crew, or PIT Crew. (Get it?)

The team’s mission is to make the city’s clunky online systems easier to use and to help enact his agenda. It’s an initiative Democrats are adopting across the country. In Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger, too, is setting up a crew of tech whizzes to bring government services into the 21st century.

Many of the people running those teams are alumni of the U.S. Digital Service, the relatively unknown Obama-era tech squad that President Donald Trump transformed into DOGE on Day 1 of his second administration.

Now, they’re out of Washington and working for some of the rising stars of the Democratic Party who want to use technology to enact the liberal agenda and show voters that they can get things done.

“What I heard along the campaign trail, and certainly now that I’ve been governor, is people have this sense that things don’t work,” Spanberger told NOTUS in an interview.

The Trump team and DOGE were “correct in identifying that people want things to work better,” she said. “Rather cynically, they used that sentiment to their electoral advantage, and then used it as a mandate to break things further.”

More than 10 blue states have digital services teams — many of them with former U.S. Digital Service staffers and several of them established before the second Trump administration. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro set up a digital team in 2023. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, in 2024. By comparison, only two red states have similar units.

The teams are an answer to what Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, calls a progressive “neuroses” that wants to prove liberals can govern effectively, part of a movement calling for “abundance” — more development, more ambitious policies, faster.

That, and the national focus on DOGE, have brought what was once a relatively behind-the-scenes administrative effort, like building a website, into the foreground.

“Doing the good work is the core of what we need to do every day,” said Luke Farrell, a deputy commissioner and senior adviser for New York City's chief technology officer. “But also, we then need to show people the work, and we need to get it into people’s hands.”

Mamdani’s PIT Crew has been tasked with making his administration’s “click-to-cancel” rule into a reality with an online portal for New Yorkers to file complaints. The consumer protection rule, which requires businesses to provide simple subscription cancellation, is projected to save New Yorkers millions of dollars once it goes into effect next month.

In Virginia, the digital team is being told to address the inefficiencies that disrupt the daily lives of residents; Virginians still have to write checks to the state because they can’t pay for some state services online, Spanberger said. Other parts of the state government still require traditional signatures.

“One of the ways that you can best ensure that you're correctly utilizing state taxpayer dollars is to make things actually work,” Spanberger said. “The state digital service is meant to be a part of that.”
Abigail Spanberger AP-23311573084272 (4411x2941, AR: 1.50)President Barack Obama set up the U.S. Digital Service in 2014 to fix HealthCare.gov after a botched rollout threatened to tank Obamacare, one of the Obama administration’s signature policies. The unit became a core part of a network of tech do-gooders in the federal government.

After the HealthCare.gov rescue, the team largely operated in the background of government. During the first Trump administration, the leadership of the U.S. Digital Service fashioned the team as a nonpartisan unit. In a shift, the Biden administration installed political leadership and tasked it with working on priorities like building a government program to file federal taxes for free.

Still, when Trump returned to office, few Americans were familiar with the tech team that the president and Elon Musk transformed into DOGE.

In the early months of the second Trump administration, many of the existing U.S. Digital Service staffers were laid off. Others resigned publicly, saying that DOGE’s work was antithetical to the mission of the original team. 18F, another Obama-era government tech team, was shuttered in March 2025, weeks after Musk tweeted that it had been “deleted.”

DOGE quickly departed from its nominal tech focus to overhaul of the federal workforce and slash government spending — moves that inspired nationwide protests and lawsuits. The backlash has given Democrats nationally an opportunity to reclaim the government efficiency mantle.

That conversation has already begun in Washington. Liberal think tanks and former federal officials are drafting plans for how future administrations could improve the government, as NOTUS has previously reported. The work could have an impact beyond political resonance: In New York, Virginia and the capital alike, these efforts to improve technology and government could help politicians actually implement their agendas.

“A policy without a way to enforce it isn’t really a policy at all,” Erie Meyer, who was previously the chief technologist at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told NOTUS of the importance of the PIT Crew’s work implementing Mamdani’s click-to-cancel rule.

Mamdani’s team is still deciding on what other projects they’ll focus on, but the work will be “core to the Mamdani administration's agenda around affordability, housing, consumer and worker protection and more,” said Maya Israni, senior adviser to the city’s chief technology officer.

More than 4,000 people have submitted applications to join the New York City PIT crews, which will consist of five teams focusing on building services in-house instead of using contractors.

“We really want to have a direct impact on someone’s day-to-day life as a New Yorker and make their life on a day-to-day basis better and more affordable,” Israni said. “We’re here to deliver on core Mamdani administration priorities.”

At the state level, Democrats are also using the teams to respond to Trump’s agenda. Spanberger said Virginia’s tech push is especially relevant in light of the Republican budget law passed last year, which slashed federal funding in food assistance programs and Medicaid.

As the state implements Medicaid work requirements from that law, how well various state systems interface to validate eligibility becomes really important, said Spanberger, noting that “any of those gaps means loss of coverage or means loss of social safety net programs for people in a way that can really be harmful.”

The tension: Sometimes the work to enable policies isn’t flashy.

The goal of the new tech unit in Virginia is to “improve the services that the government provides for every Virginian,” Andrea Fletcher — who also previously worked in the U.S. Digital Service and just recently started as the new director of the Virginia Digital Service — told NOTUS.

To do that, the Virginia team will also be looking to tackle the “boring stuff” that often makes the government headache-inducing in the first place, like procurement and hiring, she said.

During DOGE’s heyday in Washington, some who had previously been on civic tech teams in Washington expressed envy at the political aircover Elon Musk’s team had to get things done.

The teams in New York and Virginia have that top-down investment, said Lynn Overmann, who worked as a senior adviser for the Biden administration as part of the U.S. Digital Service.

The real test, she said: “Can they actually get it done?”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/money/kalshi-prediction-market-congress-legislation Mark Alfred Even guardrails supported by prediction market platforms are stuck in limbo. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:03:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/money/kalshi-prediction-market-congress-legislation Kalshi's profit margins depend on keeping Washington on its good side. It's spending big in D.C. to make that happen as the prediction market company manages regulatory threats, potential legislative action and public relations challenges.

Kalshi now has over two-dozen federal lobbyists working on its behalf. Almost all of them have congressional bona fides, including a pair of one-time legislative directors under Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of former chiefs of staff and senior counsels to other lawmakers.

Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln herself is on Kalshi’s influence team. And the company recently brought on Tony Hanagan, a well-liked and well-connected longtime Republican cloakroom staffer, as its head of congressional affairs.

Kalshi, which currently lets prognosticators in every state put money on the odds of the outcomes of all sorts of future events, including politics, even hired a former communications director for Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) — an arch-critic of prediction markets — to lobby government officials.

“Kalshi is leading the push for bipartisan legislation that protects consumers, keeps minors off our platform, and makes insider trading bans standard across the industry,” John Bivona, Kalshi’s head of federal government relations, told NOTUS in a statement. “We’ve worked with dozens of lawmakers from both parties on these priorities, and we welcome partnering with anyone serious about responsible regulation.”

It's message the company has worked to spread across D.C., often by plastering it across the district’s buildings and Metro stops.
Kalshi.bans (8153x5435, AR: 1.50)Kalshi.regulated (4959x3306, AR: 1.50)Lawmakers of both parties and chambers have together introduced more than two-dozen bills this year alone that aim to put guardrails on prediction markets.

But while senators have barred themselves from prediction market trading, and the House has banned trades over congressional Wi-Fi, neither chamber has passed any meaningful legislation curtailing what kind of bets prediction markets may offer or who can use the markets.

“The challenge going forward is … organizations like this make massive amounts of money,” Merkley told NOTUS. “Billions of dollars have flowed through this expansive casino. They’re going to spend massive sums on lobbyists and media campaigns and so forth to try to make sure it doesn't get shut down. And they have the support of the president.”

Kalshi has expressed support for one congressional bill — the Prediction Market Act of 2026 — that would bar the president and members of Congress from placing trades. It’s also blessed Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s bill to keep children off prediction market platforms.

“I give Kalshi credit for supporting the legislation instead of ducking the issue,” Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement.

But even these bills supported by Kalshi remain in limbo with fewer than four months remaining in the current Congress.

Event contracts — a bet on the real-world outcome of an upcoming occurrence — have long had real-world uses, such as when farmers use them as a hedge to minimize potential losses.

But in just a few short years, prediction market sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket, a rival platform that largely operates overseas, have made betting a frictionless experience for any American with an internet connection. Some lawmakers of both parties view this as a loophole to allow for national online gambling.

“That’s all it is,” said Rep. Blake Moore, a Republican from Utah, a state whose constitution outlaws gambling and whose governor is fighting to bar companies like Kalshi from operating within its borders. “They have manipulated the concept of what a prediction market was, what it was intended for as a financial tool for centuries, and they have made this into very quick, simple, easy online gambling, mostly sports online gambling.”

Kalshi has long maintained the swaps it offers are legally distinct from gambling.

“It’s flat-out wrong to say that Kalshi is ‘indistinguishable from traditional sports betting,’” the company has said. “It’s unprecedented and overly aggressive for states to try to shut down a federally licensed exchange. It’s like if North Carolina wanted to shut down the stock market.”

Many in Congress aren’t buying it.

“They’re creating opportunities for people to bet on an event that people don't know the outcome to,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said. “That's gambling, isn't it?”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco took that same view last week when it ruled that the states can regulate prediction market platforms as a form of gambling. The ruling contradicted the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals’ prior finding in favor of Kalshi’s view.

“Fortunately, they are losing in their lawsuits to stop states from reining them in or shutting them down,” said Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal. His state, Connecticut, is one of 20 that have sued to regulate prediction markets. The Supreme Court is likely to decide their ultimate success or failure.

Blumenthal and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) introduced a bill to bar social media sites from advertising prediction markets to minors, one of several bills in the space that have garnered some support across party lines.

“Regardless of how you feel about prediction markets, it's clear that underage use of these prediction markets can pose the same risk as underage gambling,” Britt said. “It's now time for us to tell the social media companies and to tell bad actors in the gaming space and those that are intentionally targeting underage individuals that they're off limits.”
Katie Britt AP-23066750084653 (7844x5229, AR: 1.50)Kalshi’s slogan is “Trade on anything,” whether that be the winner of this season of “America’s Got Talent” or the timing of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Wagering on anything has proven to be lucrative. Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in a March fundraising round and has partnered with major sports teams and media companies.

A bill introduced in the House by Moore would disallow platforms from offering “event contracts based on those really troublesome areas, from terrorism to assassinations, war, gaming, illegal activity.”

“Betting on who wins the opening coin toss of a football game is one thing, and it's stupid,” Moore said. “But when we're betting on these types of things, about the scope of a wildfire, we should pause as a society.”

Kalshi was not one of the multiple platforms that offered bets related to the Palisades fires in 2025. (The platform does host a subpage where users can place bets on the timing and intensity of various natural disasters.)

For some lawmakers, the fires marked their first experience with prediction markets — one that angered them. Further reports of political candidates' insider trading have only deepened their animosity toward the platforms.

Other lawmakers have taken a different tack, seeking to limit who can participate in prediction markets.

Democratic Reps. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois and Eugene Vindman of Virginia separately introduced bills to keep certain federal officials, such as lawmakers and members of the military, from making trades.
Eugene Vindman AP-24073728671216 (7757x5172, AR: 1.50)“It’s very narrowly focused,” Budzinski said in an interview. “It is the only bipartisan House bill that’s out there right now that would basically say that if you're in public service, someone like myself that has, because of the nature of my position, information that is sensitive government information, that I shouldn't be monetizing that through the prediction market space.”

Others are gunning for the industry’s throat, casting prediction markets’ very existence as an existential threat to Democracy.

“When the American people go to vote, we all are in effect inhabiting a public office,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said. “So we don't want people betting on elections and then selling their votes or renting their votes for the purposes of winning their bet.”

Raskin’s bill would prevent trading on elections, “government actions,” pending court decisions and sports — effectively eliminating the vast majority of markets offered by Kalshi and no doubt cratering its multibillion-dollar valuation. Merkley introduced the bill’s Senate counterpart.

“Betting on public elections, betting on the outcome of legislation and betting on the outcome of judicial decisions would all fundamentally undermine and ultimately destroy the integrity of constitutional government,” Raskin continued.

Kalshi is quick to remind that it’s regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which, under President Donald Trump, bills itself as the sole entity with authority over prediction markets. It’s gone so far as to sue some of the states that have tried to impose their own regulations.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has worked as a paid adviser to Kalshi and is an investor in Polymarket, which received prime placement on the railing of the UFC ring constructed on the White House lawn — even as the White House has taken steps to prohibit trades on internal White House networks.
Polymarket.WhiteHouse (8640x5760, AR: 1.50)Polymarket employs three lobbyists, per the company’s most recent federal disclosures. They include David Urban, who advised all three of Trump’s presidential campaigns, and Keaghan Ames, a former senior policy adviser to a CFTC commissioner.

The Coalition for Prediction Markets, a trade group launched by Kalshi, brought on former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney as president and chief executive in January. Former Rep. Patrick McHenry, who acted as speaker pro tempore of the House after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster in 2023, is a senior adviser.

Democrats, who hope to win control of both the House and Senate after November’s midterm elections, have made an anti-corruption agenda a key plank of their post-midterm plans, with particular focus on placing new restrictions on the executive branch.

Landsman’s Drain the Swamp Act folds Budzinski’s PREDICT Act into a raft of “anti-corruption” bills he hopes will be taken up should Democrats win back one or more chambers.

“I don't have a strong opinion about whether or not it's good or bad,” the congressman said of the platforms. “My big issue is the possibility of folks with insider information betting on political events, and it should be banned.”

Landsman attributed a dearth of prediction market-related legislative action to congressional Republicans’ lack of appetite for reigning in the Trump administration.

Blumenthal, however, argues: “What's holding up its passage is opposition from the prediction market company.”

“They are throwing their weight around in D.C., and they relish that prediction markets have become a haven for insider trading, market manipulation and underage gambling,” he said. “I've seen it, heard directly in their contacts with colleagues, public statements, distorting the legislation.”

Other lawmakers said they haven’t felt any such influence by Kalshi.

“I personally can't say that I felt any of that influence,” Vindman said. “I don't know, you know, like crypto, like AI, like these prediction markets; money has been flooding into politics. It's actually a real problem, and I think all of these sort of tech industries have recognized that there’s a way to influence through money, and it’s a real problem we got to deal with.”

In June, Kalshi co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara made maxed-out donations to Vindman’s primary campaign as he ran unopposed.

“I have talked to the founders, yep,” Vindman said.

NOTUS asked what was discussed and whether the conversation influenced his thinking.

“Well, look, there are a couple of different prediction markets, and there's one that is completely offshore; there's like a subsidiary where I've seen particular [abuses] is in that market, Polymarket,” Vindman said, citing the U.S.’s indictment of a soldier alleged to have wagered on the operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

“We need to, obviously, meet with these industries to understand how they operate,” he added. “Prediction markets are new, and so, like, there are plenty of folks that are just not aware of the size and scope of prediction markets amongst my colleagues.”

Consider that just three years ago, Kalshi was still seeking legal clearance to operate nationwide.

Merkley was among those warning that if the CFTC blessed a “large-scale, for-profit political event betting market in the United States,” it “would profoundly undermine the sanctity and democratic value of elections.”

Ultimately, Kalshi prevailed in court. It’s since grown into a multibillion-dollar enterprise.

“Once they won that court case, they’ve been full throttle ahead,” Merkley said.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/courts/trump-administration-justice-department-openai-path Ben T.N. Mause The administration's support for OpenAI in its legal fight against The New York Times departed from historic norms and could save AI companies billions of dollars. Thu, 03 Sep 2026 01:55:44 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/courts/trump-administration-justice-department-openai-path The Department of Justice spent years favoring copyright owners. That changed Wednesday.

With the Trump administration filing in support of OpenAI amid its legal fight with The New York Times, the administration departed from the status quo position of Washington politicians — one that had long cast its lot closer to the entertainment industry in matters of copyright legalities — to bolster its interests in the development of artificial intelligence.

“They’re not just saying, ‘Well, in our opinion, this would be the right legal outcome,’” Brandon Butler, executive director of the Re:Create coalition, an advocacy group of libraries and public interest organizations, told NOTUS. “They’re saying, ‘We have a stake in this case.’”

The administration argued its updated position in a statement of interest that stunned industry stakeholders, pivoting against guidance from the United States Copyright Office with references to Google, China and Ernest Hemingway.

“I can’t remember any other example where the government, in a clear-eyed, full-throated way, made it clear to a court, on purpose, that this is how they felt about fair use,” said Adam Eisgrau, senior director of AI, creativity and copyright policy at Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech industry association. “If it’s not unprecedented, it’s darn unusual.”

And it could prove difficult for courts to ignore, with experts predicting similar filings from the government in relevant cases. It would lend the government’s weight to arguments of national security and fair-use doctrine, boosting AI companies as they endeavor to avoid paying billions of dollars for copyright infringement.

Previous administrations’ Justice Departments have had attorneys more aligned with the entertainment industry, according to multiple copyright lawyers. They specifically pointed to Donald Verrilli Jr., who served as solicitor general from 2011 to 2016 under President Barack Obama.

Before practicing for the government, Verrilli represented MGM Studios in the Grokster case over peer-to-peer distributors and copyright law. The Supreme Court unanimously sided with MGM in a case that strengthened protections for copyright owners.

In previous cases, the United States Copyright Office tended to favor copyright holders. But on Wednesday, the DOJ outright disagreed with the office and dismissed its analysis in a recent case as inadequate.

“That’s a big change from previous administrations,” Butler said.

The New York Times legal battle with OpenAI focuses on preventing AI models from collecting the publication’s work for training and use without a licensing fee.

In its filing, the Trump administration argued in favor of fair use, a narrower understanding of copyright protections that would allow large language AI models to be trained without paying fees to the Times and other news outlets. The administration argued that a broad fair-use doctrine was essential to staying ahead in the AI arms race.

“Rules of law that make it significantly more difficult to develop a robust AI industry in the United States therefore threaten national security and give a competitive advantage to foreign adversaries who are not so encumbered,” the filing says.

Graham James, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement to NOTUS that the administration sided with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies over countless American creators “whose work they stole.”

“Both AI and creators can thrive — AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires,” James said. “The administration’s proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function.”

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr., who submitted the filing, called it a “historic” statement of interest.

“POTUS has made clear that AI dominance is critical to promote national security, prosperity, and economic mobility for all Americans,” Woodward posted on X, referencing the president of the United States. “This administration will never let our nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law.”

The Trump administration has moved toward alignment with existing precedent.

“The basic positions that the DOJ took here are very mainstream positions,” Jonathan Band, a prominent copyright attorney and scholar, said, adding that they were similar to how legal scholars have been viewing the issues “for decades.”

Band noted that the administration also indicated its shift during another case that involved copyright infringement that appeared before the Supreme Court last year. It had also indicated its position in a number of statements and executive orders. But fair-use advocates were waiting for something with solidity. They found it in the brief.

“This is a very serious, thought-through position,” Band said, rather than “political lip service.”

But, for some, the optics of the dynamic hint at future headaches.

In July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raised the possibility of the federal government acquiring a 5% stake in the company. Should a deal ever be consummated, the administration would’ve thumbed the scale in favor of a company it has a financial incentive to see succeed.

The possibility creates tension behind the administration’s motivation for stepping in.

“You have this kind of alignment of interests between the company you’ve invested in and the investor itself,” Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, told NOTUS. “And that may be one reason that a company is keen to have government investment, on the theory that the government is more likely to favor that company in the future.”

If a deal ever happens, with OpenAI or another company, it will cause questions whenever the government puts its thumb on the scale.

“Because anytime there’s AI rulemaking, there will be a suggestion that the rule is too favorable to an AI company, because that ultimately favors the federal government’s investment,” Chander said.

Others said that the filing shouldn’t be considered a conflict of interest, even if the government did own a piece of OpenAI, since the administration’s argument would increase competition from smaller AI companies.

“If the United States government wanted to do something great for OpenAI and make them kind of the permanent winner of the AI wars, you’d think they might not step in in favor of fair use here,” Butler said.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/apple-maps-lake-america-ontario-trump-reached-out-ceo-john-ternus Angie Orellana Hernandez The change happened the same day that Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, began his tenure. Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:38:02 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/trump-white-house/apple-maps-lake-america-ontario-trump-reached-out-ceo-john-ternus Apple Maps renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” this week, just days after President Donald Trump reportedly contacted the technology company to urge the change.

Apple confirmed to Reuters that the name was changed on Tuesday following an update to the Geographic Names Information System, the federal database for nomenclature.

Trump signed an executive order Aug. 27 directing Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to rename Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes, amid an escalating trade war with Canada. At the time Trump insisted he was sending “no message” to the northern neighbor with the order despite suggesting earlier that it was connected to failed negotiations on a trade deal.

The executive order says that because more of the lake’s volume lies within territory claimed by the U.S., Trump has the right to unilaterally change its name.

Name-change requests traditionally take months or even years to accomplish, though such conventions were upended after Trump’s second inauguration when he unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” The rollout was chaotic as the White House pressured news media and the mapping divisions of Apple and Google to reflect the change.

The “Lake America” change appeared to have been smoother, even as some Republican leaders in the Midwest and Northeast pushed back against the order and Democrats vowed to not comply.

Burgum told Fox’s “Mornings with Maria” that Trump “reached out to Apple directly” about the name change, which happened the same day that Apple’s new CEO, John Ternus, began his tenure.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google said in a statement Sunday that it formally changed the name to “Lake America” as part of its policy to mirror official government sources. U.S-based users will see “Lake America,” Canada-based users will see Lake Ontario and users elsewhere in the world will see both names, the company added.

Apple is poised to follow a similar structure, according to Reuters.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/florida/flock-camera-removal Torrie Herrington Florida’s decision came days after Gov. Ron DeSantis raised concerns about the technology. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 23:23:18 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/florida/flock-camera-removal Florida is ordering law-enforcement agencies to remove automated license-plate readers from state roads, becoming the first in the country to remove existing Flock cameras from state-controlled highways.

On Monday, the Florida Department of Transportation revoked permits for automated license-plate readers on state roads, giving agencies 30 days to remove them before the state takes them down. The department also said it will no longer approve permits for new readers.

The move reflects a growing public backlash against the technology company Flock Safety, whose cameras are used by law enforcement nationwide to track vehicles and aid investigations.

The Florida Department of Transportation cited the rapid growth of the technology and concerns about its use.

“While Florida law limits the issuance of permits for LPR systems to law enforcement agencies, the recent exponential increase in deployments along our roadways, coupled with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes merit immediate action to preserve Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life,” The department’s chief operating officer, Will Watts, wrote in a memo.

The directive applies to cameras installed within the rights-of-way of the state highway system. It does not prohibit cameras installed on private property, including commercial developments, and does not automatically eliminate cameras on roads controlled by cities and counties.

While Florida is the first state to revoke camera permits and remove existing readers from state roads, other states and local governments began restricting the technology in a bipartisan wave this year. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered all state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras, while Washington state implemented tighter regulations on data sharing and handling. A number of candidates in local and national races from both parties have also criticized the devices or called for their elimination.

Florida’s decision came days after Gov. Ron DeSantis raised concerns about the technology, even as he defended its usefulness to law enforcement.

“I’m all about having law enforcement have tools to be able to hold criminals accountable,” the Republican governor said at Florida International University last week. “But I don’t want to have this become a surveillance state.”

DeSantis has also pointed to recent examples of alleged misuse of the technology by law-enforcement officers. In one Florida case, an officer was accused of using license-plate-reader data to track an ex-girlfriend.

Some Florida law-enforcement agencies say they are now working to remove the cameras. The Putnam County sheriff's office said it would discontinue its Flock program, while other agencies affirmed they would comply with the state's 30-day deadline.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/energy/data-center-deals-cash-donations Mara Hoplamazian How data center developers are spending their way into communities. Tue, 01 Sep 2026 09:47:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/energy/data-center-deals-cash-donations In a few years, the city of Saline, Michigan, will have renovated its recreation center’s locker rooms, tiled the pool deck, expanded the children's play area, installed a waterfall and constructed a lazy river. Down the road, part of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, a 2.2 million-square-foot, $43 billion data center, will hum away, churning out the next generation of artificial intelligence.

As public sentiment on data centers has soured, AI companies are leveling up their efforts to sweeten the deal for communities that host them. In Saline, that included a $10 million donation from OpenAI, Oracle and other companies for a new and improved recreation center.

In Richland Parish, Louisiana, teachers got $50,000 bonuses from Meta. Compass Datacenters forked over $15 million for a new animal shelter in Ellis County, Texas. In Florida, developers for the failed Project Tango offered to hide their building from view with a small forest of pines, palms and native shrubs. NorthPoint Development has proposed giving $10,000 to every household in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, if it’s allowed to build a massive data center for Amazon — a dangling carrot some residents have characterized as a bribe.

Politicians from both parties are pushing the deal sweeteners too. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s energy office told counties to make “wish lists” for data center developers, and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is pitching free electricity for towns willing to play host.

This summer’s data center backlash has underlined a glaring lack of guidance from federal and state leaders on what tech companies owe the communities they’re building in; in Washington, a growing slate of proposals range from requiring developers to procure and pay for their own power, and taxing data centers to prepare for potential AI-related job losses.

In the absence of comprehensive federal regulation, local officials are largely left to negotiate agreements with data center developers themselves. For many of the towns being targeted by developers, the scale of wealth AI companies can bring to the table could be transformative. The benefits they promise, though, rely on the success of a nascent industry that’s been met with fear and doubt. And as developers try to fight widespread distrust and opposition, even multimillion-dollar donations don’t seem to be moving public opinion.

In Michigan, Saline Township’s leadership had voted last year to block the data center development. The developer sued over the zoning decision soon after. The township settled, with officials negotiating several community benefits: a few million dollars for emergency services, farmland preservation and other community investments.

The recreation center revamp came up more casually, said Saline Mayor Brian Marl.

Once it was clear the data center would be built, Marl organized a lunch with Oracle and the other developers. He gave them a tour of the recreation center, and told them about all the work the city hoped to do on the building. Then, the Friday before the groundbreaking, he got a call at 8 p.m. — the companies wanted to give the city $10 million dollars to help with that project.

Marl says the move was an obvious attempt by the companies to ingratiate themselves in the Saline community. But it’s not clear that $10 million went very far toward that goal. Marl is still fielding calls and taking meetings with residents who are fervently trying to stop the project, even as construction moves forward.

“I don’t think it’s game-changing locally, in terms of people’s feelings toward this specific data center, or data center developments more broadly,” he said.

Some offers from developers have backfired.

In Osage County, Oklahoma, Google’s efforts to win support for a data center were thwarted when a local volunteer fire department rejected a $250,000 donation — a sum larger than the department’s annual budget — because of the community’s concerns. That project is the subject of three separate lawsuits, one involving attacks over a lack of government transparency.

City officials in Sand Springs, which annexed the land that would be used for the data center, have negotiated tax agreements and other contributions from Google for community projects. But Osage County Commissioner Steve Talburt hasn’t been impressed.

He’s refused to sign nondisclosure agreements related to the project, despite pressure from Google. The company offered the county a few hundred thousand dollars per year as a payment in lieu of taxes, Talburt said. When he and the other commissioners pushed back, the company cut the county out of the tax agreement completely.

A few weeks ago, a contractor for Google came to visit him, asking what the company could do to smooth things over. The contractor offered to put up extra money for county schools or infrastructure, Talburt said. He declined.

“Google’s just trying to throw money around to get everybody on board, and that’s not good enough,” he said. “It’s not going to make it right. And Osage County is not going to sell out.”

Many negotiations have revolved around similar informal donations or contributions from data center developers. Those aren’t always legally enforceable, said Daniel Metzger, a legal expert with Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

Anti-bribery laws make it difficult for local governments to accept benefits explicitly in exchange for approving projects. Local officials can create binding agreements for benefits that are connected to the potential harms a project may cause, regulating water and electricity use, or forcing companies to pay to improve the emergency services they may rely on.

In one of the first formal benefit agreements for a data center in the U.S., the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, cut a deal with developers that requires them to use only clean energy, hire locally, make yearly reports and pay $20 million dollars into community development funds.

Agreements like those are filling a gap where coordinated federal or state legislation is absent, Metzger said, especially agreements that include transparency requirements around water and energy use.

The benefit agreements can be so lucrative that some state and local officials are banking on AI companies to fund their most pie-in-the-sky ambitions. St. Louis officials got a developer to pay roughly $15 million toward public Wi-Fi across the city, among other projects. In West Virginia, where Nvidia and Microsoft are building what could be the largest data center on earth, the state’s 20-year plan published last month aims to eliminate state income tax and boost funding for local schools by attracting massive hyperscale projects.

Still, evidence that community benefit agreements lead to better situations — especially in smaller towns — is mixed, said Devashree Saha, director of the U.S. Clean Energy Economy Program at the World Resources Institute.

“Typically it’s not an even playing field between communities and developers,” she said. “It becomes difficult for community coalitions to hold the developer accountable.”

If a company goes bankrupt or sells a development to another entity and those benefits dry up, it can leave a community that was banking on financial support scrambling, Saha said.

Even without formal agreements or massive donations, a new data center can fundamentally change a place.

In Ellendale, North Dakota, a data center development has more than tripled the town’s tax base. Mayor Don Flaherty says in the next three years, it’s projected to grow from $3.5 million to $37 million.

The data center has touched seemingly every part of life in Ellendale — for better and for worse, Flaherty says. Heavy trucks have torn up the roads. This summer, about 2,600 workers are in town to construct the buildings — more than doubling the town’s population of 1,100. Flaherty says it’s been fun to meet new people, though concerns about crime and traffic have increased.

Hundreds of jobs for locals in Ellendale are on the horizon. The full-time population could grow by up to 600. With all the new tax revenue, the town is planning to upgrade the senior center and ambulance hall, refresh the downtown and work on a walking trail. Down the road, Flaherty is eyeing a new fire department building and a law enforcement center.

Meanwhile, residents are saving money on energy bills as their utility company sells more power to the data center and its profits increase, South Dakota Searchlight reported. Applied Digital, the company behind the development, is helping to finance new housing.

But rent has in some cases doubled, pushing families out of town. And there’s a constant hum at the edge of town.

Flaherty didn’t do any formal negotiation with Applied Digital — which he acknowledges could have been naive. He says he has some concern about a data center bubble bursting, leaving Ellendale behind. Mostly, though, he’s seeing the benefits.

“This is what I believe is the answer for rural America, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be data centers, but some type of project of this nature that can stimulate your economy,” he said. “I guess those are the things that outweigh the worries.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/defense/pentagon-broadens-ai-tools-chatgpt-grok Hamed Ahmadi The move gives 3 million military and civilian personnel new options to use for unclassified work. Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:50:14 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/defense/pentagon-broadens-ai-tools-chatgpt-grok The Pentagon rolled out OpenAI’s ChatGPT Mil and Starshield AI’s Grok for Government from SpaceX across the military Monday, giving personnel two new commercial AI tools for sensitive, unclassified work.

ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government are each built for “secure, consistent enterprise use” across a department of more than 3 million military and civilian personnel, the Defense Department said. The tools are available through GenAI.mil, the Pentagon’s internal generative AI platform, which launched in December with Google’s Gemini. More than 1.7 million personnel have used the platform since then,according to the department.

The Pentagon says ChatGPT Mil is designed for “document-heavy unclassified work,” including planning, policy, logistics and administration.

Grok for Government includes multiple reasoning modes, customizable workspaces and reusable “playbooks.” The Pentagon said it can be used across “numerous operational contexts,” including acquisition research and supply-chain management.

The expansion also comes as the Pentagon faces security concerns over how its workforce uses commercial AI. In June, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency warned that unauthorized “shadow AI” tools could create data leaks and other security risks. Congress has separately ordered the Pentagon to assess cybersecurity risks from authorized and unauthorized AI software.

The rollout deepens the Pentagon’s ties with OpenAI and xAI as the department expands its use of commercial AI and wrestles with how much control companies can keep over military uses of their technology.

That fight came to a head with Anthropic, which resisted Pentagon demands that its Claude models be available for all lawful military uses. Anthropic sought safeguards against mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

The Pentagon designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk. A federal judge struck down that designation last week, ruling that the government had unlawfully retaliated against the company.

OpenAI took a different path. The company reached a separate agreement with the Pentagon that allows its models to be used for lawful purposes while maintaining limits on domestic surveillance, autonomous weapons and some high-stakes decisions without human involvement.

OpenAI says it can enforce those limits through contractual and technical safeguards, including keeping control of its safety systems and providing its models through the cloud rather than directly on weapons or other devices.

Monday’s announcement does not say whether those same restrictions apply to ChatGPT Mil. It says the tool can be used for planning but does not specify whether that includes operational or military planning or whether it can be used for intelligence analysis, targeting, weapons-related work or decisions involving the use of force.

Asked about those uses, a Pentagon official said tools on GenAI.mil are certified to handle controlled unclassified information at Impact Level 5 but did not address the specific activities.

In May, the Pentagon announced a separate effort to deploy advanced commercial AI models on classified Impact Level 6 and 7 networks. The department said those systems would support operational uses including data synthesis, situational awareness and warfighter decision-making.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/courts/judge-says-pentagon-illegally-blacklisted-anthropic Hamed Ahmadi “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin wrote. Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:19:29 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/courts/judge-says-pentagon-illegally-blacklisted-anthropic A federal judge struck down the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic, ruling Thursday that the Trump administration illegally retaliated against the artificial intelligence company for criticizing the government.

U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin found that the administration violated Anthropic’s First Amendment and due process rights and that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth improperly designated the company a national-security supply chain risk.

“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin wrote.

The ruling vacated Hegseth’s designation and barred the administration from enforcing the measures Anthropic challenged.

Anthropic sued after the Pentagon designated it a supply chain risk and moved to cut it off from federal work. The company argued that officials retaliated after it resisted demands to remove restrictions on using its Claude models for mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons.

The ruling confirms concerns Lin raised at a hearing last month, when she said the government had failed to produce evidence showing Anthropic posed the threat officials claimed.

Lin found that Anthropic’s public criticism was a substantial factor in the government’s actions. She pointed to statements from President Donald Trump and Hegseth attacking the company and said officials sought to “make a public example out of Anthropic” after the dispute became public.

The administration argued that Anthropic could not be trusted and that its conduct raised concerns it could interfere with military systems.

Lin rejected that argument, saying she found no “articulable basis” to believe Anthropic would sabotage its models and said the government had not shown the company could alter them after they were deployed on national security systems.

“An IT vendor does not become a potential adversary of the United States whenever it asks probing questions or stubbornly insists on particular contracting terms, even if doing so causes DoW to doubt its trustworthiness,” Lin wrote.

Anthropic praised the ruling.

“We welcome the court’s ruling that this supply chain risk designation was unlawful. We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology,” an Anthropic spokesperson told The Verge.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Anthropic was the first U.S. company publicly designated a supply chain risk under the law the Pentagon invoked, which is intended to protect military systems from threats including sabotage. Lin found that Anthropic’s contract dispute and public criticism did not meet the law’s definition of a supply chain risk.

The judge also found that the administration’s continued dealings with Anthropic also undermined its national security argument.

A day after Anthropic was formally designated a supply chain risk, Pentagon under secretary Emil Michael told the company that the two sides were “very close” to reaching a deal. The White House later discussed possible uses of Anthropic’s newer Mythos model in sensitive settings, according to the ruling.

“None of that is consistent with a genuine fear that Anthropic is a saboteur who would poison its software to harm national security,” Lin wrote.

Lin also found problems with how the Pentagon reached its decision.

Hegseth publicly ordered the designation before officials completed the analysis supporting it. The Pentagon prepared the factual basis afterward, which Lin said suggested the record was assembled “after the fact to justify the foreordained conclusion.”

The Pentagon also failed to adequately consider less-restrictive alternatives and did not give congressional committees the explanation required under federal law. Lin found the designation was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The ruling does not require the Pentagon to use Anthropic’s technology. The Pentagon had continued removing Anthropic’s technology from military systems while the case was pending and expected to finish that process by the end of September, government lawyers said at last month’s hearing.

The government is expected to challenge Thursday’s ruling.

Anthropic has a separate case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit challenging a related supply chain risk designation issued under a different federal law.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/metro/dc-flock-cameras Martin Austermuhle, Jenny Gathright MPD has the powerful license-plate readers at its disposal, but hasn’t disclosed who has used the data — and for what purpose. Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:09:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/metro/dc-flock-cameras In recent months, Francisco Gómez says that he’s become aware of an eye in the sky that has the power to keep tabs on him when he drives to and from his home in Ward 5.

“They’re hidden in plain sight,” he says, referring to the easy-to-miss cameras that occupy a vantage point some 20 feet above the ground on many light poles across D.C. “When people are moving through their lives in a normal fashion, there’s no avoiding these cameras.”

It’s true that Gómez, and everyone else driving in D.C., is being watched and tracked by the Metropolitan Police Department’s 67 Flock automated license-plate readers. The cameras scan an average of 400,000 tags on a daily basis, storing tag numbers and other identifying characteristics of passing vehicles in a police database for up to three months — longer than many jurisdictions that also use the technology.

Whether that’s a positive thing depends on who you ask.

D.C. police officials say the cameras are a critical investigative tool that have helped solve crimes, including a pair of homicides in 2025, and that they have safeguards in place to limit access to the data collected. Additionally, they point out that D.C. has used some variety of license-plate reader for at least 15 years, without much public concern or controversy.

But critics like Gómez — who recently helped found DeFlock DC, which is demanding that the city’s Metropolitan Police Department pull down the cameras — say Flock technology is significantly more powerful than similar technology used in the past, creating a “vehicle fingerprint” that allows officers to track cars in real time and search for tag numbers across state lines.

That has raised fears about how police could use the cameras. There’s been plenty of recent reporting on cases of abuse in other jurisdictions, where officers have misused the technology to spy on their ex-girlfriends or to track a woman suspected of self-administering an abortion.

It’s not clear whether any such abuse has happened with the District’s Flock license-plate readers, which have been in use since early 2025. That’s in part because MPD has never released any information on how its trove of Flock-generated tag data has been used, and it denied an open records request from NOTUS for the data.

At the start of 2026, after inquiries by D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large), MPD stopped allowing other police departments to access its license-plate reader data directly. It now requires them to specifically request data from D.C., part of an effort to ensure the city’s information is used for legitimate criminal investigations. MPD also instituted a new license-plate reader policy in April that requires an annual audit of the data for possible policy violations.

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But for the entire year prior, MPD had allowed thousands of officers across the country nearly unfettered access to its database. And to this day, the department has declined to detail who has used the city’s data — and why.

“My feelings on this have evolved,” Henderson tells NOTUS. “In those initial conversations I had with MPD it definitely seemed like Flock had been rolled out without many guardrails or protocols to ensure that the technology was being used appropriately. But I do think over time MPD has made changes that certainly make me feel more comfortable than in other jurisdictions where they don't have anything in place at all.”

For Gómez, though, no amount of protection will make a difference. To him, the Flock cameras are just one more part in a growing system of surveillance.

“There’s a real chilling effect that happens when you’re monitored at all times,” he said. “Tracking people used to require a warrant and have checks and balances of a judge, but once that wall breaks down you see erosion of free speech and free association and freedom of religion. All of that is extremely concerning.”

Flock Safety did not return a request for comment on the growing backlash to its products. In an automatic reply to an email from NOTUS, the media team wrote that its staff was “currently touching grass and taking a break.”

“Unlike our cameras, we can’t work 24/7, so we’ll get back to you when we’ve had a snack and regained the ability to form coherent sentences,” the email said.

A powerful tool to fight crime

Georgia-based Flock Safety was founded less than a decade ago with the intention of using technology to better help jurisdictions fight crime. It’s now one of the biggest players in the space, valued at more than $8 billion and used in some 6,000 communities across 49 states. More than 100,000 of its signature solar-powered license-plate readers are in use throughout the country.

In D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department signed a $336,000 one-year contract for 67 Flock cameras in December 2024; the contract was later extended through the end of 2026 for another $201,000. (The federal government operates its own Flock cameras on federal land around the city.)
DSC05382 (1).JPG (3504x2336, AR: 1.50)When a car drives past a Flock camera, the technology captures its license plate and other identifying information about it. Because every vehicle is scanned, law enforcement can later query the Flock database to determine when a car was in a certain place.

The tech has proved useful for the District: In May 2025, D.C. officers were able to use MPD’s network of Flock cameras to track and eventually stop three D.C. teenagers who had escaped from a juvenile facility in Pennsylvania and returned to the city in a stolen car, which was then used in a nonfatal shooting. Later in the year, license-plate readers were used to make an arrest in the fatal shooting of Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, a congressional intern working in D.C.

“The expansion of the District’s LPR network has directly contributed to significant public safety gains, helping our investigators identify vehicles connected to serious crimes and locate individuals with outstanding warrants,” said an MPD spokesman, who declined to be identified by his name, in an email.

Because many police departments across the country have adopted the cameras, and because Flock makes it easy for jurisdictions to share information with each other, the cameras have also helped police track suspects across state lines — making it a much more powerful tool for D.C. police than past license-plate reader technology.

“The importance of a shared regional LPR network for the District cannot be overstated,” Jeffery Carroll, MPD’s interim chief, wrote in a February letter to Henderson.

Flock also touts the crimes it says the license-plate readers have helped solve; the company’s website says that more than 10,000 missing people have been located nationally since 2025, and 42% of its customers were able to recover more than half of the stolen vehicles in their respective jurisdictions. Charles Fain Lehman, a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute, has created a website called the Flock Crime Prevention Tracker that aggregates news coverage of where Flock has been used to solve crimes.

‘It’s a database of your life’

But critics of the technology say it can be easily abused or used for purposes far afield of local police departments’ stated missions.

The Washington Post recently reported on dozens of cases in which officers used Flock data improperly, including to spy on or stalk wives, girlfriends, exes or romantic prospects. After the Post’s story came out, Flock changed its policies to boost oversight of police officers’ use of its databases and to impose stricter limits on how long it would keep data from scanned tags. (The default was reduced to seven days from 30, though individual jurisdictions can opt to set their own.)
DC: Flock Cameras Under Fire Over Mass Surveilance Concerns (4500x3000, AR: 1.50)
In other cases, local law enforcement has used the Flock lookup tool to aid federal immigration authorities, according to reports from 404 Media and others. For a time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had direct access to the lookup system through a program that Flock has since paused.

The MPD spokesperson declined to answer questions from NOTUS about whether D.C.’s Flock data had ever been used by federal immigration enforcement, which ramped up in 2025, after President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in the city and deployed the National Guard.

The department also has not responded to public records requests asking for Flock audit logs, which show who has searched the city’s license-plate data and why. A NOTUS reporter’s January request for that data has gone unanswered for months, in violation of a D.C. law requiring that city agencies turn over documents within 15 business days or cite legal reasons why they won’t.

“I am supremely curious what happened in 2025, especially given what was happening with regard to the federal surges that were taking place here in D.C.,” says Henderson. “Hopefully MPD will be able to be a little more forthright about what happened and what changes took place.”

Nationally, activists and community members are pushing back on Flock. There have been efforts to map the locations of more than 135,000 license-plate readers nationwide (largely from Flock), and an app exists to help drivers find routes that avoid Flock cameras. Activists and journalists have pushed to acquire logs of Flock database searches through open-records requests, which have since been used to create an online tool that people can use to check if their license plate has been scanned by a Flock camera.

Locally, some residents in Virginia have started fighting the use of the technology, including in Alexandria, Prince William County and Fairfax County.

“This gets sold as a crime database. It is not. It’s a database of you living your life. It is your movements, your patterns when you’re living your life. That’s government overreach,” said Steven Keener, the director of the Center for Crime, Equity and Justice Research and Policy at Christopher Newport University, during an anti-Flock event in Fairfax County last weekend.

In D.C., members of the DeFlock DC group have opted for more low-tech tactics to raise awareness: Over the summer they put signs reading, “Smile! You’re being spied on,” on every light pole with a Flock camera on it. In mid-August, the group hosted its first public meeting at the MLK Memorial Library; more than three-dozen people attended.

Even some advocates of using Flock concede that some of the worries about its power and possible abuse can’t be ignored. This week, the International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a statement hailing the technology’s potential for fighting crime, while recognizing the need for “strong safeguards” to protect individual rights and maintain public confidence.

‘We have to figure out what the balance is’

In January, in his first month as interim chief, Carroll directed MPD to cease participation in Flock’s National Lookup Tool, which had previously allowed participating departments across the country to search the city’s data.
National Guard Shooting (6000x4000, AR: 1.50)Now, MPD requires other police agencies to enter into a memorandum of agreement before receiving access to D.C.’s Flock data. Such agreements require compliance with D.C. laws, including a local law that prohibits the city from aiding interstate investigations into abortions, Carroll wrote in his letter to Henderson. D.C. also grants other requests for information from its cameras, including requests from federal agencies, on a case-by-case basis, provided there’s a legitimate law enforcement purpose, Carroll said.

In April, MPD also began requiring yearly audits of the data to ensure the rules were being followed. Henderson says lawmakers should continue exploring these types of limits on the technology, while recognizing that license-plate readers can be helpful for improving public safety.

“I think we have to figure out what the balance is, and I think that’s the conversation that we should be having as policymakers,” she says.

But despite the policy updates, some information about the city’s Flock use remains elusive. Asked whether the department had initiated an audit of the data and whether it would commit to publicly releasing the Flock audit log records, the MPD spokesperson declined to answer.

“At this time, we have provided all the information we have available on this matter,” he wrote in an email on Monday.]]>