A Massachusetts newspaper reports that officials from the town of Littleton (population: 10,141) "claim that five of Littletonâ(TM)s Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town..."

Littleton had temporarily disabled the cameras earlier this year, according to the article, but upon discovering the cameras were still active, city officials say they directed the Town Counsel "to initiate cancellation of the contract with Flock Safety and directed the Town Administrator to coordinate the removal of the six cameras on public ways" with the Department of Public Works.

Ironically, it's the same Massachusetts town that last year was breached by a Chinese-state-sponsored hacking group for over 300 days.

Flock has also considered dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers' vehicles "to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed," reports 404 Media, "essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media...
404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided information on the plan."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/08/08/0621205/flock-accused-of-reactivating-its-cameras-without-notifying-a-town?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Linux Torvalds expects Linux 7.2 should be released next weekend "unless something really bad
pops up," Torvalds said while announcing today's release candidate.

But there's something interesting about Linux 7.2-rc7, writes Phoronix. "By the time the Linux kernel typically hits a -rc7 release things have usually settled quite well. But in today's world of AI/LLM coding/review agents, the kernel activity continues at an all-time high."

Tons of bug fixes continued to trickle in across the kernel spectrum for all sorts of issues. The HWMON hardware monitoring subsystem saw several critical and high severity bug fixes, on the memory management side was a nasty race condition leading to a use-after-free in the kernel for the past eight years, Btrfs restored its fixup worker infrastructure to deal with silent data loss, lots of AI patches in the networking realm, and the kernel was patched for the Safe RET Interrupt Vulnerability.

Linus Torvalds wrote in the 7.2-rc7 announcement:

"Another week, another -rc.

I can't say that I'm exactly thrilled about the size of this all, but
it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due
to review by various AI tools.

And nothing looks particularly scary per se — it's just that there's a
lot here. Most of it is fairly small, although we have a couple of
larger diffs: s390/zcrypt fixes stand out in the diffstat, and so does
btrfs bringing back the fixup worker infrastructure. And some
netfilter ipset fixes.

But aside from a few places like that, most of this is just lots of
tiny fixes. It's pretty much spread all over — drivers (gpu, sound,
networking, you name it), filesystems, core networking, arch code...

[ Read more of this story ]( https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/08/10/0014253/ai-reviews-bring-new-normal-to-linux-release-candidates-lots-of-bug-fixes?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

With nearly 70% of the market, "Meta wants its smart glasses to be a big hit," writes the Los Angeles Times. But after some users found ways to disable the light that warns people they're being filmed, "the high-tech specs have also turned into a liability, as some are calling the gadget 'pervert glasses...'"

Some people are using the glasses — which look like a pair of regular spectacles — to record people without their knowledge and publish the videos on social media. The users secretly videotape and share what happens when they try to pick up women. Now, a growing number of people are worried they could be covertly recorded at the gym or even during sex. The backlash has prompted Meta to update its glasses to address privacy concerns, and some places have banned them, adding to the angst surrounding technology that's rapidly evolving...

Concern about the glasses has exploded as more videos of interactions with people who don't know they're being recorded go viral on social media. On Instagram, some videos depict people getting approached in malls and grocery stores and on college campuses and sidewalks. While the videos are portrayed as jokes, the people filmed don't appear to know they're being recorded and sometimes seem uncomfortable, telling the strangers to leave them alone or stop harassing them. The outcry has spread beyond social media, with comedian Jimmy Kimmel calling the Meta devices "pervert glasses" on national television and singer Lorde telling concertgoers that smart glasses are "not sexy..."

Instagram, which is owned by Meta, has been disabling accounts and taking down some of these pickup or prank videos for violating the platform's rules against harassment and bullying... Businesses are making their own calls about smart glasses. The 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, which banned Google Glass in the past, has banned Meta glasses from its diner and dive bar. "Leave your Meta-SpyBan Display at home, they are officially Ray-Ban-ned from all of our restaurants. We serve privacy, not side-eye surveillance," a 2025 Instagram post from the business states.

An Android app that warns people if they're being recorded has roughly 110,000 downloads in the last six months, according to the article. The app's creator says it's a "social problem" that "we don't value privacy, that we feel entitled to use others for our entertainment or our private gain, and technology amplifies that."

The American Civil Liberties Union and more than 70 organizations even sent a letter urging Meta to promise they'd leave facial recognition features out of their smart glasses, according to the article. But a Meta spokesperson said "no final decision has been made."

[ Read more of this story ]( https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/08/10/0152228/privacy-backlash-explodes-against-metas-smart-glasses?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.

Microsoft's cloud storage app OneDrive got a new Photos app in the worst possible way, reports the blog Neowin . "The app is reportedly showing up even on Windows 11 Enterprise machines, despite apparently being a beta application aimed at consumer functionality."

One admin questioned why a beta app was appearing on an Enterprise SKU in the first place, while another described the situation as yet another consumer-oriented feature being forced onto corporate PCs. Things get even more frustrating for IT departments because there does not appear to be a straightforward Microsoft-provided way to disable the app... Enterprise administrators generally need to know what is being installed on their managed devices, particularly when a software is labeled as beta. Quietly adding another application and leaving admins to clean it up themselves is therefore unlikely to win Microsoft many fans.

But there's another problem, according to the blog Windows Latest. "OneDrive Photos automatically scans your system storage for photos," and apparently "doesn't need a Microsoft account to work, as it can also detect your local files."

There's also a People section that groups similar faces in your photos. Microsoft asks for permission before turning it on and explicitly warns that facial data could be considered biometric data in some regions. The company says only you can see the grouped faces, that the data isn't shared with third parties, and that you can delete it by disabling the feature.

In a statement to Neowin,
Microsoft admitted this new photos "experience" they're "incubating" had gone "more broadly than it should have," and then promised that "We're fixing that." The spokesperson also said the Windows Photos app will "always give you the option of local and cloud photos" and, also a choice of whether or not to use it OneDrive."

But there's another "awkward catch," notes the blog Digital Trends. "Users currently can't uninstall OneDrive Photos without removing the main OneDrive app too."

Because OneDrive Photos is tied to the main OneDrive sync client, Windows 11 doesn't currently offer a separate uninstall option. The only straightforward way to get rid of OneDrive Photos right now is to uninstall OneDrive itself... Removing the main client can also affect its File Explorer integration and shortcuts...

Microsoft says this will change. The company is working on controls that will let users remove OneDrive Photos separately from the main OneDrive app. On enterprise PCs managed through Intune, Microsoft says the app will automatically disappear where it isn't supported.

[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/08/10/0229237/microsoft-responds-to-outcry-after-quietly-installing-beta-photos-app-on-enterprise-machines?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.