The Hound | Sept. 10

Hi there,

It’s Thursday. Flock Safety called the police on a reporter who filmed one of their employees in public. The employee fled the scene, declined to give his name to the 911 operator, and sent three police cruisers after an award-winning journalist who was committing no crime.

🖊️ Sign the petition to call on the media to cover Flock's treatment of this reporter not as an amusing irony, but as a revealing window into the company's true character. A surveillance giant that weaponizes police against journalists filming public property is not a public safety company — it is an authoritarian one.

Flock's chief communications officer had the audacity to frame mass warrantless surveillance as a community service. When asked why Americans can't opt out, he said: "You can, if you want to opt out of society." The public deserves reporting that holds Flock to the same standard it applies to everyone else: if you're in public, you can be filmed.

In addition, Trump’s war on Iran and other international spats caused global oil prices to once again spike to nearly $100 a barrel. And, in the lead-up to the midterms, Trump gives his rich friends another gift — proposing the SEC revoke its decades-old pay-to-play which prevents investment advisers from appearing to buy government contracts.

Read about these, and more, in today’s stories:

Flock Employee Calls Cops on Reporter Filming Them (The New Republic)

Trump Proposes Revoking SEC’s Decades-Old Pay-to-Play Rule (Common Dreams)

AI Giants Work Hand-in-Hand With the Pentagon, Contracts Reveal (The Intercept)

Mamdani releases 170,000 pages of records regarding impact on air quality of 9/11 attacks (The Guardian)

What to watch as Republicans gather in Dallas for Trump's unusual midterm convention (PBS News)

Families lost weeks of food they couldn’t afford to replace. Then their SNAP claims were denied. (The 19th News)

As Hostilities Flare and Oil Prices Spike, U.S. Consumers Pay at the Pump (Inside Climate News)

Until next time,

Harry from The Hound

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