In the months since Flock cameras have helped put an easily recognized and hated name to the broader threat of a deeply repressive technological surveillance state– Darth Vader activist performance art and all–I’ve been waiting for a story to come along that would truly crystalize the stakes involved here. Flock cameras, and the tech they now culturally represent, automated license plate readers (ALPRs), are increasingly hated in bipartisan fashion, but it hasn’t felt like there’s been that one news story that could succinctly demonstrate for the average person exactly how dangerous the technology can be for personal liberty. Until now, that is.
Because what else would you call the account of a woman who was arrested by incompetent police based on nothing more than a single Flock camera piece of data, and held in jail for 13 days (partially in solitary confinement) until they realized it was definitely the wrong person? You couldn’t ask for a more egregious demonstration of how this technology is being abused by police who need no additional help in trampling over American civil liberties.
The woman in question is named Lindsey Isaacs. She’s a 23-year-old resident of Palm Beach, Florida. One morning in October of 2025, she woke up at 2 a.m. to find that state troopers were outside her apartment, and a tow truck was currently in the process of confiscating her car, a black Dodge Durango. The police had reportedly used images and data captured by a Flock ALPR camera to connect Isaacs and her car to a deadly car accident that had happened one day earlier, which had resulted in the loss of three lives. According to witnesses at the scene, the deadly collision had been perpetrated by a Dodge Durango. The Flock camera, meanwhile, had recorded Isaacs’ car and its license plate several miles away from the site of the accident, sometime around the time of the incident.
“They said, ‘We have your plate on a Flock camera, and your car has damage consistent with a collision,'” said Isaacs this week, now testifying before Congress. “And I said, ‘Where’s the damage? You’ve got the wrong person.'"
Isaacs was right. It should have taken only a cursory examination of her car to see that hey, this vehicle really didn’t look like one that had been part of an accident 24 hours earlier that killed three people! And oh, wait, do we think it’s relevant that the eyewitnesses were saying that it had been a maroon Durango that had been involved in the incident, and Isaacs’ car was instead black? Nevertheless, her car was instead entered as evidence into a case and impounded, and Florida Highway Patrol issued a warrant for her arrest on April 17, 2026, some SEVEN MONTHS LATER. This, despite the fact that there appears to have been zero physical evidence actually linking Isaacs to the scene of the crime besides a Flock camera sighting indicating she had been nearby that day, and this despite the fact that her car was not actually damaged, something that police had seven months to investigate and ascertain. She would spent the next two weeks in a maximum security jail housing, including 86 consecutive hours that she spent in solitary confinement. She told the U.S. Senate in her testimony, meanwhile, that correctional officers told her she was being put in solitary because of “the severity of the charges.” You know, to the crime she did not commit.
“I was terrified,” Isaacs understandably said to U.S. legislators this week. “I was facing the possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison for a crash that I knew I had not been involved in. I did not know if I would ever get out of jail. At my lowest point, I didn’t want to be alive.”
Yeah! I can understand a person feeling completely hopeless and utterly abandoned by not only an uncaring but actively misanthropic justice system after being arrested and charged with eight felonies, including three counts of vehicular homicide, when you know that you had nothing to do with it! I can understand the utter rage that Isaacs must have been feeling during each day she sat behind bars, wondering aloud why the Florida Highway Patrol wasn’t doing the BARE MINIMUM of investigation of its own into this case, such as noticing that the so-called murder weapon of her vehicle had not actually been involved in a crash. What is an average citizen supposed to do when facing a criminal justice apparatus that simply doesn’t give a shit, and one that is so eager to rely on AI-assisted tools like Flock cameras and ALPRs that they’ll arrest and jail a person before they even bother to check the most basic facts of their case?
According to reporting from The Center Square, after the two weeks she spent in jail, Isaacs only managed to be released “when her attorney was able to present photos to the judge of her possessed vehicle–which, contrary to the claims of the troopers who possessed it, showed no damage.” After that, she was finally granted bond and released from jail, and in May 2026 the state of Florida dropped all charges against Lindsey Isaacs. Around the same time, police arrested another woman on suspicion of the same fatal collision. Just how confident do you think they feel about this perp?
Regardless, the true takeaway of Isaacs’ experience is that ALPR technology, whether it’s from Flock or any of the other competitors in this space providing the same functionality (Axon, etc), is dangerous not only because it is so easily abused by police (or even by hackers) to invade the privacy and liberty of citizens, but also because it enables a lazy police department to outsource basic critical thinking to machines and then take action based on a single data point to ruin a person’s life. Imagine waking up in the dead of night to find police officers at your door, claiming that you’d killed three people, with no evidence beyond the fact that your car was seen by a Flock camera. Imagine losing your job following the arrest, and the effect on your professional livelihood and social existence. What kind of monetary figure is the right compensation for being jailed for two weeks, put in solitary confinement and wanting to die? We’ll likely find out as a result of Lindsey Isaacs’ pending civil lawsuit against Florida Highway Patrol troopers.
But as for Isaacs in the meantime, she appeared before Congress this week in the hope of communicating how the surveillance state allows this kind of truly random injustice to befall ANY OF US, at any time.
“I came here today because I want you to understand that surveillance technology does not exist in a vacuum,” Isaacs said. “Information collected by technology can become part of an investigation that affects a real human being. In my case, a Flock camera captured my vehicle a few miles from the scene of a terrible crash. That piece of information became part of an investigation that ultimately led to my arrest on three counts of vehicular homicide and 13 days in jail for a crash I had nothing to do with.”
When police show up at your door, what will you do any differently?
Margot Robbie, the human woman and actress, has not changed. She is still a human woman AND an actress. However, legally speaking, she is now Margot Ackerly. I know. Not nearly as perfect a stage name as Margot Robbie, but to each their own.
On Friday, the tabloids concurrently reported that Robbie—Ackerly? Margot? Let’s just call her Margot—“ quietly” changed her name, “quietly” being code for the fact that she didn’t formally announce it herself; someone just happened to notice after updated documents for her production company LuckyChap Entertainment listed her name as “Margot Elise Ackerley,” according to the U.K.’s Companies House. No “Robbie” to be seen.
The name “Ackerley” comes from her husband, producer Tom Ackerley, whom she married in 2016. In the decade since their marriage, Margot has continued to use her maiden name Robbie, both legally and on screen. So why the sudden change? Bad dad?
we not calling u that no shade https://t.co/a9TXGWMCl2
— cay (@koralinadean) September 24, 2026
One posited reason is that in 2024, she and Tom welcomed their first child, a baby boy. And, unfortunately, in our patriarchal-heteronormative world, having a different last name than your child can be a hindrance in many stupid bureaucratic processes. She and Tom also share ownership of LuckyChap Entertainment, which helped produce some of Margot’s films, like Barbie, I, Tonya, and Birds of Prey. I suppose the reasons behind the change are for her and her loved ones to know only.
Plus, maybe the “quiet” change wasn’t as recent as we think, because sleuths have since found her deleted Letterboxd account with the handle Margaret Ackerley, which she operated pre- Barbie. Rest assured, you can always discover the truth through the clandestine Letterboxd account.
Just to add here are two examples of Margot using Tom’s surname on both a zoom meeting & on her now deleted Letterboxd account https://t.co/Drs3Vu4pbz pic.twitter.com/8x1eOvIIrY
— Margot Robbie Unofficial 🇵🇸 (@margotrobbieuno) September 23, 2026
So not to fret, she will continue to use the name Margot Robbie on screen because, duh, it’s a perfect name. I couldn’t possibly think up a better name to appear on a marquee. Well, maybe Rose Bean.
Marjorie Taylor Greene took a bunch of potshots at her former friends, the entirety of the MAGA movement, on Thursday while speaking at the 2026 Texas Tribune Festival.
“When you vote for someone, not only are you supporting them, but you’re holding them accountable,” she said to the assembled crowd. But, the former congresswoman continued, if they can’t hold Trump accountable and make him keep his promises, “They’re liars, and they’re hypocrites and they’re in a cult.” You do not, however, have to hand it to Greene. Lest we somehow forget, during the interregnum of the Biden administration she kept the MAGA cult alive and thriving with an almost slavish devotion to its policies and Trump himself.
Greene entered the political arena as one of the founding members of the MAGA cult that she now derides. Before she was an politician, Greene was known for harassing the victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school mass shooting. When she decided to run for Congress, Greene was an avid believer of the QAnon conspiracy and relished in making violent political ads. After she won her race, Greene perpetuated his lie about the 2020 presidential election being stolen, defended the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, and spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. Her antics got so bad that after claiming that Jewish people control the weather with space lasers, the House voted to strip her of committee assignments. Despite being a menace, at best and a danger, at worst, to her colleagues, Greene remained in Congress, handily winning re-election twice thanks to living in a deep red district.
One might think that when Trump returned to power, she’d be at the pinnacle of her career. But by November of last year, the cracks in the Trump-Greene relationship began to show. The President refused to release the Epstein files, the trove of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who was found to have groomed and abused young women for decades, which incensed Greene. Then she hit the Trump for bailing out Argentina while ignoring the struggle of American cattle ranchers. And though this has been the case for more than a decade, Greene also took the opportunity to hit the GOP for not having a healthcare plan. She announced she would be leaving Congress, effective January 2026. Trump, who does not tolerate dissent, delighted in coming up with dumb, confusing nicknames for her (“Marjorie Taylor Brown”?) and claimed that Greene only quit because the president wouldn’t return her phone calls.
Since then Greene has taken every opportunity to call out Trump and the Republican Party for its failings, joining the likes of Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host turned podcaster, who want us to suddenly believe that they’ve had a change of heart. But she has never actually denounced any of her past beliefs and said on Thursday that she’s still in fact “America first,” the set of policies have come to define the Trump agenda. Instead, she claims that Trump is the one who’s changed. In fact, it appears that she still wants to style herself as MAGA’s strongest soldier, just by a different name.
If you can say for a fact that mifepristone is safe, that an IUD is not a form of abortion, and that the EPA’s obsession with testing wastewater for abortion medication is rooted in a bunch of hogwash, then… congratulations! You’re already eons more qualified than Heidi Overton to lead the FDA.
Overton, Trump’s pick to replace Marty Makary as FDA commissioner, appeared before the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) Committee at a confirmation hearing on Thursday, where she spent nearly two hours skirting questions about where she stands on vaccines; committed to help the administration carry out its re-review of abortion pills; and refused to say whether she believed Trump could “ever be wrong.” Oh, and she kicked things off by—“first and foremost”—thanking her lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Which… Jesus Christ.
The HELP Committee was also meant to hear from Nicole Saphier, MAGA’s surgeon general-hopeful, on Thursday, but it was postponed. Both Overton and Saphier have extensive anti-abortion records.
“Trump’s decision to put anti-abortion extremists like Heidi Overton and Nicole Saphier in powerful positions at HHS is no accident,” Mini Timmaraju, President and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, told Jezebel in a statement. “It’s his strategy. He knows he can’t get a national abortion ban through Congress, so he’s stacking his administration with ideologically extreme loyalists who will weaponize the federal government to ignore the will of the voters and effectively impose one.”
This all comes after Makary was kicked out of the FDA role in May, after reportedly dragging his feet on the re-review of mifepristone, the first of two pills taken in a medication abortion. And while mifepristone has been considered safe by the FDA for more than a decade—because of studies based on real science and data—the administration one year ago launched a needless re-review of its “efficacy,” after Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) spent almost all of 2024 amplifying a bogus, non-peer-reviewed “study” pointing to its “adverse effects.” (That “study,” which was published by a co-sponsor of Project 2025, has since been denounced by more than 300 reproductive health researchers in an amicus brief.) We still know next to nothing about the investigation, besides the fact that it seems to be a shameless move to restrict—and ultimately eliminate—abortion access.
Oh, and that Overton’s apparently 100% planning on moving forward with it. “That safety study is ongoing and very important,” she said during her hearing.
Of course, none of this should be too particularly surprising given Overton also claimed in 2023 that mifepristone is “dangerous to women,” a paper that was brought up by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) during her questioning. Specifically, it was why Murray asked Overton point-blank if she now believes that mifepristone is safe. ( It is, BTW.) “The fact that you would blatantly contradict decades of high-quality scientific evidence—and the millions of patients that use [mifepristone]—is alarming to me,” Murray said. Still, Overton—of course—refused to acknowledge the medication’s safety.
At another point during the hearing, Murray asked Overton if she agreed that IUD “is an abortifacient,” to which Overton, again, refused to get into the specifics. (PSA: IUDs are not abortifacients.) Instead, she gave a non-answer, saying, “If I’m confirmed as FDA commissioner, I’ll be fully briefed on all their prior decisions and make determinations according to the standards of safety and efficacy.”
“I don’t think you answered the question,” Murray replied. “I think it is outrageous and should be deeply alarming to all Americans right now that the prospect of an FDA commissioner who doesn’t know that birth control is not an abortion is deeply concerning.” I’ll say.
