Middleboro Review and so on

  This is a sponsored message from one of The New Republic 's valued partners. The New Republic depends in part on advertising partners for support and does not endorse any political organization, service, or product. The views expressed in this email do not constitute any endorsements.   You shouldn’t have to wonder who’s watching you drive home.    But Flock Safety’s network of over 120,000 cameras, posted at traffic stops and street corners across the country, is watching you. The company has made a business of tracking where you’re driving, your usual routes—even what’s on your bumper—and selling that capability to police departments.    Here’s the thing that privacy advocates know. Flock is just one eye in the sky, but many private companies are spying on the public and selling either data collection tools or raw data itself to the highest bidder—including the federal government. These businesses are known as "data brokers."     Agencies li...

  You are being watched. This is not conspiratorial thinking. From your movements to your email, your social media posts to your search history, the government's mass surveillance apparatus has its eyes on you from every angle. Nearly all of this happens without a warrant.    The surveillance state has been growing for decades, under the direction of both Democratic and Republican administrations. And with the introduction of AI being added to the mix, things are on track to get worse — exponentially worse. AI is supercharging the government’s capabilities, making it extraordinarily easy for it to track and profile you without your knowledge.   Your privacy is under serious threat.     POGO has long been advocating for and advancing reform to put guardrails on the surveillance state. So you can go where you want, speak to whom you want, think and read and believe what you want, without the fear of being watched.   Confirmation proceedings for Pres...

  May 23, 2026   CORRUPTION IRS settlement or self-serve fountain of fraud? In a brazen act of self-dealing, the administration  announced a settlement  had been reached between the IRS and President Trump, who had  sued the agency  for $10 billion over leaked tax records. POGO had filed an  amicus brief  questioning the constitutional merits and obvious conflicts of interest in the case, as Trump was essentially suing himself and controlling both sides of the litigation. The lawsuit was unlikely to survive a trial. But the settlement is even more blatantly corrupt. It  “forever” bars  the IRS from examining the president’s past tax returns and creates a $1.8 billion slush fund that will likely  “funnel taxpayer money to President Trump’s allies”  with no obvious criteria or oversight. The “self-dealing settlement” has brought sharp rebukes from  both sides  of  the aisle ...