spine
a reporter hid a tracker in a rare book. it stopped where they cut the spines off.
emanuel maiberg, 404 media. the bookseller asked not to be named. amazon, in a one sentence statement.
a bookseller got an order for about a thousand books through biblio, an online marketplace for used and rare books. orders that size were unusual until recently. now, sellers say, they arrive and the buyer wants everything with a barcode.
so on 17 august 404 media published what happened when its reporter slipped a twenty nine dollar airtag into one of those books. geekwire's account of the piece has the route: california to milwaukee, two weeks at a distribution site in wisconsin, a truck through colorado, and then las vegas.
it stopped inside an amazon building there. the operation is called vgt3. its team logo is a dinosaur, teeth out, holding a book. employees describe the work in two parts: some cut the bindings off the books so the pages feed a scanner faster, others receive the books and scan the barcodes. the printed book does not survive it.
amazon's whole reply: the company purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services its customers use. it did not say what the scanning is for, and the book did not come back.
three years of argument about ai and books, in the abstract. one person finally followed a book.
who benefits: whoever ends up owning the words. who pays: the seller, once, and then the book, which is gone. what should change: a company that buys books by the pallet to scan and shred them says so, in public, before a reporter has to buy a tracker to find out.
the long wayopenclose
the barcode detail is the tell. staff scan the isbn before they scan the book. tom's hardware, reading the same piece, says booksellers see random assortments arrive, everything from serious nonfiction to casual guides, and that one irish seller shipped five thousand books to one buyer. that is not someone choosing books. that is someone working down a list of every book ever printed.
geekwire adds that the bulk orders deliberately leave out books printed before isbns existed. the list, in other words, is the isbn registry.
the same carry says anthropic and xai have said they avoid rare and antiquarian books. amazon has made no such distinction in public.
where it comes from
404 media, emanuel maiberg, 17 august 2026, read at its own page, which shows only the opening to non subscribers. the rest comes from three carries read in full: geekwire, todd bishop, 17 august, updated 18 august; tom's hardware, jake roach, 18 august; the next web, undated on the page. slashdot's 17 august excerpt of the 404 text for the wording on the bindings and the logo.
what is not settled
the 404 piece behind the paywall was not read in full. the carries disagree on who placed the tag: geekwire says the reporter's team did, the next web says the bookseller did; 404's own excerpt says we, so the reporter is credited here. that the order was for rare books rests on 404's headline; the carries describe assortments. what amazon does with the scans is unknown, because amazon did not say.
what was withheld
the bookseller's name, which 404 withheld at the seller's request. a claim that the buyer refused to give a name was in the week's pull and is in no document read; it does not print. one carry's figures on anthropic's and meta's separate book cases are not tied to this warehouse by anyone and do not print.
helmet
the committee called the next speaker. darth vader wanted the cameras to stay.
anthony ralphs, event producer, san diego, named six days later. the public safety and livable neighborhoods committee of the san diego city council.
on wednesday 19 august the san diego city council's public safety and livable neighborhoods committee took public comment on flock, the company whose cameras read licence plates across the city. a man in a full darth vader costume came to the microphone.
his opening line, as 404 media and gizmodo carry it: the emperor is a fan of flock, and we must continue utilizing flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum. upi adds two more: that he needs it so he can stalk his ex girlfriend, and that the city does not need parks, libraries or daycare centers.
the joke is the argument turned inside out. every reason he gave to keep the cameras is a reason the people in the room have been giving to remove them, for about a year. in december 2025, after six hours of debate with most speakers against, the council voted to keep the programme.
on 25 august the man took the helmet off for 404 media. anthony ralphs has produced raves and festivals in san diego for thirteen years. he says he came to meetings for close to a year in a suit, with constitutional arguments, and was ignored. his question for the council, in his own words: when will this end? when will you listen to the vast majority of your constituents?
a year of civics got him nothing. a costume got him the news. the cameras are still up.
who benefits: flock, whose contract survived the joke. who pays: the residents whose plates it reads, and one man's evenings for a year. what should change: a council that hears hundreds of people say no should have to say in writing why the answer was yes.
the long wayopenclose
public comment at a committee meeting is the least watched footage in america, and that is the point of the suit. the argument had already been made properly and lost. what was left was to make it in a way the room could not ignore.
the identity was not revealed at the meeting, and 404's first piece ended by asking whoever it was to get in touch. he did, six days later. the name prints here because he gave it himself.
the vote that matters happened eight months before the costume did. nothing in any report read says the committee changed anything on 19 august.
where it comes from
404 media, samantha cole, 20 august 2026, read at its page, which shows the opening to non subscribers, and her 25 august interview with ralphs, same site. gizmodo, undated on the page, for the full opening line. upi, ben hooper, 21 august, for the ex girlfriend and parks lines and the committee name.
what is not settled
what the committee was deciding on 19 august, and whether it voted, is in none of the pages read. the december 2025 vote and the six hours come from the 25 august interview alone. fox 5 san diego and the hill refused every read, so no local newsroom's account is behind this.
what was withheld
the meeting video was not watched. the name is printed from the 25 august interview, which is outside the window; the event itself is inside it. nothing about ralphs beyond what he told 404 prints.
hands
he is deaf and works at google. he kept saying one sentence. in august a phone listened.
sam sepah, a deaf googler, named by google deepmind as the person who conceived the project. chrissy marshall, deaf writer and director, quoted by forbes.
google deepmind's post of 12 august says it in one line: deaf perspectives shaped every stage of the project, from conceptualization by sam sepah, a deaf googler, to data collection. the model is called sl2t, sign language to text.
the sentence he kept saying is in the same post. earlier attempts, like sign language gloves, were fundamentally limited, because sign languages are not simply english on the hands. gloves see fingers. asl is built from the face, the eyes, the shoulders and the space in front of the body.
so the model watches all of it, as a set of points on the body rather than raw video, and turns american sign language into written english. it lives in gboard and live transcribe on the pixel 11, which went on sale on 20 august. a deaf person can sign a search, a text or a question to a chatbot where they used to type.
it is one language into one language, on one phone. google says more than 200 sign languages exist and about 70 million deaf and hard of hearing people use them. forbes, on the day the phone shipped, gave the last word to chrissy marshall: the technology is remarkable. its greatest value should be giving deaf people more tools to communicate.
twenty years of gloves failed because they listened to the hands. a deaf man had to be in the building for the phone to watch the face.
who benefits: anyone who signs and owns an 899 dollar phone. who pays: the deaf person who still has to hold the phone at the right angle in the right light. what should change: no school, clinic or courtroom gets to point at this feature and cancel the interpreter, which google itself says in writing.
the long wayopenclose
marshall's questions are the ones to keep. asl is not monolithic: regional signs, black asl, generational differences, slang, signing styles, differences in mobility. will an ai model understand the way she signs, or will she have to adapt her language to be understood by the technology? will she have to take her glasses off?
forbes reports google's own limits: the feature is for low stakes communication, not medical appointments, legal proceedings, classrooms, job interviews or government hearings, and institutions are warned not to use it to replace qualified interpreters.
deepmind convened an advisory committee of deaf organisations and published a joint impact report with them that lists what the model cannot do. that is rare enough to be the story on its own, and it is the part most coverage skipped for the model name.
where it comes from
google deepmind, the sign language team, 12 august 2026. forbes, keely cat-wells, 20 august, quoting marshall directly. engadget, igor bonifacic, 12 august. google's pixel launch post, 12 august, for the 20 august sale date and the 899 dollar price; google's how to post, sharlene yuan, 21 august.
what is not settled
sepah is not quoted anywhere read; his role is deepmind's description and forbes's. forbes says he led development, deepmind says he conceived it. the advisory committee's member organisations are not named in the deepmind post read; the names in the week's pull were not verified and do not print. how well it works outside a demo is not reported by anyone independent.
what was withheld
the joint impact report was not read. a claim that this is the first time anyone who signs could talk to a phone without a keyboard was in the pull and is in no source; it does not print.
alert
the robber had no tattoos. he has two. five years later the city agreed it should have looked.
kylese perryman, minnesota. teresa nelson, legal director, aclu of minnesota. manjeet rege, university of st thomas.
in september 2021 two men carjacked a vehicle, robbed women at the mall of america and used the stolen cards at a walmart. kylese perryman, then twenty one, was nowhere near any of it. his records put him clocked in at work for one crime and at a family birthday party for another, with a time stamped photo.
an analyst compared surveillance stills to his booking photo and recommended his arrest. an alert went out. bloomington police stopped him for expired tabs, arrested him on the alert, and held him for five days. no lineup. no call to a witness. the man on the video had no forearm tattoos. perryman has two, and by the complaint he is about five inches and thirty five pounds different from the suspect.
he missed two funerals in the cell, then wore an ankle monitor for thirty days. the charges took fifty two days to drop and months more to expunge. other people were later arrested for the crimes.
on tuesday 18 august 2026 the city of bloomington settled. it pays him an undisclosed sum and adopts two procedures: its officers follow the state's written guidelines for kops alerts, and they may no longer treat a kops alert as an arrest warrant. perryman's statement: nobody should go through the ordeal he went through.
a screen said it was him and everybody downstream stopped looking. the fix is one sentence: an alert is not a warrant.
who benefits: the next person a bloomington officer stops on an alert, who now gets a warrant or nothing. who pays: perryman paid five days and two funerals; the city pays a number it will not say. what should change: every department in the state adopts the same sentence, since the guidelines it points to were already written.
the long wayopenclose
the word facial recognition is not in the settlement release. it says a cursory review of video security footage. the allegation that software matched him is the 2023 complaint's, and the hennepin county sheriff's office told fox 9 at the time that facial recognition technology was not used. how the analyst got from the stills to his booking photo is the part nobody has settled in public.
cbs minnesota asked manjeet rege, who teaches data science at st thomas, and he put it plainly: a match generates a lead. it becomes a risk when there are flaws in the process. the process here was: the lead, then the alert, then the cell.
teresa nelson: the settlement gives him a small measure of justice, but he cannot get that time with his young family back.
perryman, in 2023, said he was trying to change it for his kids' generation. the change is two paragraphs in a police procedure manual. it is also the only part of this that outlives the cheque.
where it comes from
aclu of minnesota, 18 august 2026, the settlement release. cbs minnesota, ubah ali, 18 august, which interviewed rege. kstp, undated on the page, 18 august by its own account. for the 2021 and 2023 facts: aclu of minnesota's 14 august 2023 note on the complaint, and fox 9's report on the filing, read at its page.
what is not settled
whether any facial recognition software was run, and by whom, is disputed: the complaint alleged it, the sheriff's office denied it, and the settlement is silent. the dollar figure is undisclosed. hennepin county's part of the case, including a separate payment the week's pull mentions, was not found in any page read and does not print. the five inch and thirty five pound gaps are the complaint's numbers.
what was withheld
the 10,000 dollar county figure in the pull. perryman's current age and home town, which no page read gives. one carry spells his first name two ways; the aclu's spelling prints.
decoy
he cut down the camera on his street. it was plastic, printed by a cop to catch him.
evan meyer, 24, oviedo. megan sladek, mayor of oviedo. an oviedo police officer who is not named.
between 23 july and 3 august somebody stole several flock cameras, the plate reading kind, from lockwood boulevard in oviedo, a town outside orlando. the police department replaced them with copies. an officer printed the copies at home on a personal 3d printer and donated them to the department. they look right and record nothing. police call them clone bait cameras.
the bait went up around ten on the night of wednesday 19 august and was watched from the moment it was mounted. less than three hours later, by the affidavit wftv read, a sergeant saw a tall man in black, gloves, face covered, walk up to one with pruning shears, knock it off the pole and smash it on the ground.
evan meyer, twenty four, was arrested just before one in the morning on thursday 20 august. he told investigators he was uncomfortable with a camera near his street, that it felt like a constant eye, and that he had read negative things online about the company. he did not know it was fake. he was charged with three felonies, grand theft, criminal mischief over a thousand dollars and damaging computer equipment, on a 7,500 dollar bond.
the mayor found out from the news. megan sladek to clickorlando: that is something she was not aware of, and nobody on city council is.
the cameras on the pole are now a question: is this one watching the road, or watching you? the town's own mayor could not tell.
who benefits: a department that can now charge on what a suspect thought he was breaking. who pays: meyer, who was looking at felonies for two hundred dollars of filament, and a town that learned its cameras might be bait from television. what should change: nobody hangs a fake camera on a public pole without the people who own the pole being told.
the long wayopenclose
the three felonies were priced off a real camera. clickorlando puts a replacement at about eight hundred dollars plus installation, and the charges assumed a device worth a thousand or more. the object he broke was a printed shell. on 15 september, 404 media reports, the state refiled: two second degree misdemeanors, the damage now written as two hundred dollars or less. the case shrank to the size of the thing.
that is what is coming, and not only in oviedo. once a camera can be a decoy, every camera is a maybe. the people who put them up have less reason to say which is which, and the people underneath them have less way to know. the sting worked. the town found out it was in one.
a resident named gerry patterson gave clickorlando the whole policy in one sentence: if they are going to be doing that, then they should be telling people.
where it comes from
wftv, brody wooddell, 21 august 2026, from the arrest affidavit. clickorlando, jarell baker, 23 august, which spoke to the mayor and a resident. 404 media, jason koebler, 25 august, for the officer's home printer and the department's statement, and his 15 september piece for the refiled charges.
what is not settled
the department's own account of the thefts, how many real cameras were taken and what they cost the town is not in any page read; several is the word every report uses. why oviedo did not tell its council is unanswered. the refiling date is not printed in the 404 piece read. meyer has not been quoted anywhere except through the affidavit.
what was withheld
his street, which clickorlando names, does not print. the officer's name is not public and is not guessed at. the reduced charges are a september event and print only as a coda; the arrest is the story.