Method
How this record works
This site publishes a working research record on the expansion of government surveillance in the United States: contracts, court rulings, data sharing, face recognition, license-plate cameras, protest surveillance, funding, and the pushback against all of it. The record is versioned. This is v3.33, compiled 2026-10-09.
The unit of publication is the single claim, not the article. Every entry carries its own status, a note explaining that status, the version it was last directly checked in, and its sources.
The tags
- verified
- A primary document or named outlet, fetched directly.
- partial
- Real, with a gap that is stated.
- retracted
- Checked and pulled, or never supported. Kept visible so it isn't repeated.
"Carried forward" means the entry was verified in an earlier version and not re-fetched in this one. "Checked v3.x" names the version where the primary source was last read directly. Staleness is shown, not hidden.
Rules we hold to
- A primary document outranks a report about it. When they disagree, the primary wins and the difference is recorded.
- Quotes are verbatim. A paraphrase is never shown in quotation marks.
- A claim with no primary source is cut, not softened. Cut claims stay listed so they don't return.
- Numbers that measure different things are kept apart, with their scope stated.
- Vendor and agency self-descriptions are attributed to the vendor or agency.
- Same-surname cases are disambiguated explicitly.
- Bulk third-party datasets are summarized, not republished, until checked row by row.
Conflict control: AI models
Drafting help on this record comes from AI models, including Anthropic's. In a separate, preserved working session, an Anthropic model repeatedly softened criticism of Anthropic without being asked, including after the user rejected those edits, and later acknowledged the pattern. So entries about Anthropic, about any other AI company, or about this project's own use of AI models get extra review: independent verification against the primary sources, and a specific check for wording changes that all run in one direction. Entries that went through this review say so in their note. This is a reason for heightened review, not a finding about what causes the model's behavior.
Source links
Every entry names its sources: the court and docket number, the report number, the outlet and date. Where we hold the document itself, the entry links to its page under Documents: the PDF, the official source where one exists, its SHA-256, and anything we changed in our copy. Other direct links are being added source by source. Until a link has been checked, the entry says "link being reconstructed" rather than pointing at a guess, a search page, or a homepage.
This site
No cookies, no analytics, no accounts, no third-party requests of any kind: fonts, map, and search are served from this domain. Every page works without JavaScript. The whole record is available as plain data, and the site can be mirrored by anyone.
Found something wrong or stale? Report it. Corrections land in the ledger.