Police Use Flock to Jail Completely Innocent Woman for Weeks

Police Use Flock to Jail Completely Innocent Woman for Weeks

Joe Wilkins

When 23-year old Lindsey Brooke Isaacs surrendered to police at the advice of her attorney, she was treated like a hardened criminal. Facing eight felony charges, including three counts of vehicular homicide, she spent her first days in custody in solitary confinement, separated from the rest of the jail population.

Having been denied bond, Isaacs would spend nearly two weeks in jail, swallowing the prospect of spending the rest of her life behind similar bars. 

“I was devastated, I was scared,” Isaacs told Fox News. “I thought my life was over.”

As grim as it looked, the Florida woman did have one thing going for her: she was completely innocent.

Isaacs’ arrest was first reported by WESH2 in June, but resurfaced by Fox News, which notes that the case around Isaacs proceeded solely based on evidence gathered from an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) provided by the extremely controversial company Flock Safety. Her charges stemmed from an incident in October 2025, when a horrific crash in DeBary, Florida killed three people, including a county official and his wife. One driver involved had fled, leading police to conclude that they were behind the tragic accident.

Using the Flock’s network of ALPRs, investigators canvased hours of surveillance footage recorded near the incident, following a tip by witnesses. The fleeing vehicle had been identified as a Dodge Durango — the exact kind of vehicle Isaac drove.

Sure enough, Fox News reports Isaacs’ Durango was traveling in the area at the time. A Flock ALPR had identified her vehicle three miles away from the crash site two miles prior to the incident, moving in the direction of the fatal crash. But that sighting is where the coincidences end, and the life-altering guesswork began.

During the investigation, witnesses and residue left on the impacted vehicle both pointed to a maroon-colored vehicle. On top of sporting a black paintjob, Isaacs’ Durango bore no damage indicating it had even scratched another vehicle per a Florida Highway Patrol analysis, let alone hit one hard enough to kill three people.

“Where is the damage on the vehicle?” the woman told Fox News, recalling her discussion with police, who impounded her car anyway. “Because I’m standing right in front of it and I don’t see any damage.”

Half a year later, Isaacs received the call from her attorney, informing her of the charges and advising her to surrender to police. After a 13-day stint in jail, she was released, after the Florida attorney general declined to bring any of the eight charges police had attempted to stick her with. Another woman was later identified as the driver of the maroon SUV and arrested on nine felony charges.

For her part, Isaacs says she’s filed a federal civil rights suit against two Florida Highway Patrol officers, claiming false arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.

“This took and is going to take maybe years to get better mentally, physically, emotionally,” she told Fox News of the ordeal. While the director of the Florida Highway Patrol extended a personal apology, it’s an insufficient gesture in the face of obviously shoddy police work and abuse of the ALPR network.

Even for the wrongfully accused, a two-week jail term is difficult to come back from. If Isaacs had a job she likely lost it, and there’s no telling what kind of reputational harm the ordeal will have on her career or her relationship with her community. That’s to say nothing of the psychological scars that come along with wrongful imprisonment, let alone a holding period in solitary confinement.

And though Flock was the technical lynchpin in this case, Isaacs told Fox News she holds more blame for police officers eager to snag a conviction, regardless of whether the accused was innocent or guilty.

The sad fact is that police in the US have long behaved this way, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll stop on their own. But now with unfettered access to Flock’s network of over 100,000 ALPRs, it’s becoming remarkably easy for officers to sculpt a criminal to fit their crime — inculpatory evidence be damned.

EU Pushes Digital ID AGE CHECKS To GAME, Use Social Media

EU Pushes Digital ID AGE CHECKS To GAME, Use Social Media

Steve Watson

Brussels is preparing to treat a new Steam account the same way it treats a passport check. The forthcoming EU Kids Act, due to be unveiled by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and tech chief Henna Virkkunen, would force age verification on social media, video-sharing sites, “risky” online games and AI chatbots. 

Officials are wrapping it in child protection. The machinery looks a lot more like a continent-wide identity gate.

Internal documents obtained by Euractiv set the tone. “The EU Kids Act will oblige providers of social media services and video-sharing platforms to perform age verification when a user opens a new account.” 

Those checks would run through an EU age-verification tool or another solution prepared by public authorities. Tech firms would also pay the Commission “enforcement costs.” Spain and the Netherlands pushed last week to drag games and AI companions into the net.

The draft sets an EU-wide minimum age of 15 for an autonomous account, with a ladder of controls below that. Children under three would be barred from high-risk services. 

Ages three to 13 would get parent-controlled “child-friendly” access. Thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds would need parental “introductory” accounts with limited features. Even 15- to 18-year-olds would remain under “safe by design” rules targeting infinite scroll and other so-called addictive features. 

Existing accounts would face “proportionate” checks. Which games count as “risky to minors” is still conveniently vague.

Von der Leyen is expected to preview the plan in her State of the Union address, with the formal pitch on Thursday. The Commission already has an age-verification “mini wallet” built on the same specs as the European Digital Identity Wallet due by the end of 2026. 

Officials sell it as privacy-preserving proof of age. Platforms in Britain and Australia have already demanded phone numbers, facial scans, government ID or credit cards.

 Sony locked PlayStation comms features in the UK and Ireland behind those checks. Steam in Australia now wants an Australian credit card for R18+ titles, locking out adults who only hold debit cards.

PlayStation’s 2011 breach exposed data on about 77 million users. Asking the same industry to hoard fresh biometric and ID data, then invoice Brussels for the privilege of policing it, is not a child-safety plan. It is an identity architecture.

The next move is already on the record. When users try to route around the gates, Brussels wants the exits sealed.

Virkkunen has said preventing circumvention of age-verification systems would be among the “next steps” policymakers need to examine. Von der Leyen frames the whole project as a way to “defend children’s rights.” 

France has already pointed at VPNs after its own under-15 social media clampdown. Once every login needs a state-approved age token, a VPN is no longer a privacy tool. It is a loophole.

This is not a one-off gaming rule. It sits on top of a stack Brussels has been assembling for years.

Chat Control would force providers to scan private messages and break end-to-end encryption in the name of finding child sexual abuse material. Signal’s Meredith Whittaker warned it “could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe.” WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart said the presidency text still “breaks end-to-end encryption, risking everyone’s privacy and security.”

The so-called Democracy Shield layers the Digital Services Act with “disinformation” codes, trusted flaggers and political-ad rules that treat speech about family, nation or faith as a moderation problem. 

Jerzy Kwa?niewski of Ordo Iuris put it plainly: under the banner of protecting democracy, the EU is rolling out regulations that “curb free expression, sideline conservative voices, and reshape the public sphere through opaque moderation, labeling, and algorithmic controls.”

When member states lag, the Commission sues. Brussels has already taken countries to court for failing to enforce its digital rulebook hard enough.

Washington noticed. President Trump has weighed travel bans on EU officials behind the DSA, a law the White House treats as an attempt to export European speech controls onto American platforms and users. The State Department said it was “monitoring increasing censorship in Europe with great concern.”

If you want to know what the finished product looks like, take a peek across the Channel. Former British PM Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under-16s and said, “We’re giving children their childhoods back.” The fine print is mandatory age verification for adults: facial scans, passports, credit cards. 

Elon Musk called it “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” whose “real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.”

Telegram founder Pavel Durov saw the pattern immediately. “Once somebody says child protection, all of a sudden it triggers very ancient, very deep parts of our brain. Who would be against protecting children? It completely bypasses logic.” His verdict on the West: “Our ship has already hit the iceberg.”The policing stats are not theoretical. Big Brother Watch’s FOI haul found at least 62,199 arrests for communications offences in England and Wales between 2021 and 2025 — about 34 a day. Only about one in five of those arrests produced a conviction. The knock on the door is the punishment.

That is the sequence. Ban the kids. Verify the adults. Scan the devices. Flag the posts. Call it safety.

Gamers are simply the next population Brussels can march through the same gate. Parents already have tools, ratings and the off switch. What they are being offered instead is a Commission-approved age token, a bill sent to Silicon Valley, and a standing excuse to treat VPNs, anonymous accounts and unapproved speech as a child-protection emergency.

Skyrocketing fuel prices spark protests around the globe

Skyrocketing fuel prices spark protests around the globe

Lauren Kent, Hira Humayun

Protesters are taking to the streets around the world to voice anger about skyrocketing fuel prices and rolling blackouts, as the war in Iran drives up the cost of energy.

Oil prices climbed back above the $100 per barrel mark last week in the wake of further US strikes on Iranian oil tankers in the Gulf and reignited fighting in Yemen that threatens shipping in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

For the United States, that has meant elevated gas prices and stark warnings for households that rely on heating oil to keep warm in the winter, as analysts forecast a 30% jump in prices amid the Iran war.

As the price of fuel ratchets up, so does the anger of people who can no longer afford to pay for gas, get to work, run their businesses or even carry out essential services.

In Syria, protesters burned tires on a busy highway. In Guatemala, they blocked roads to demand immediate government action. And in Portugal, local business leaders and workers marched to the prime minister's home.

Here's a closer look at the protests and the global impacts of sky-high energy costs:

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Tehran's widening death campaign:

Iran's regime came for teenage twins. Their fate offers a glimpse of Tehran's widening death campaign

Efrat Lachter

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were 19, still in high school and living with their mother when masked men came for them in the middle of the night.

According to their U.S.-based cousin, the twin sisters were dragged from their beds with bags placed over their heads about a month after they joined anti-regime protests in Isfahan. Their family was given no explanation and spent months searching courts, hospitals and government offices trying to determine where they had been taken.

Four months later, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, was finally allowed to see them at Dowlatabad Prison. She barely recognized her daughters.

Their cousin, Masoud Nourmohammadi, told The Guardian that the twins had badly swollen and bruised faces, injuries to their elbows, hands and feet, and significant hair loss that he said resulted from guards pulling them by their hair as they were moved between cells. He said their mother also learned that the sisters had been held in solitary confinement.

Now 20, Taraneh Rahimi faces execution over her alleged role in the January protests, while her twin sister could spend decades in prison, in a case unfolding amid a sharp rise in Iran's use of the death penalty.

Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that Taraneh was sentenced to death and an additional 11 years in prison, while Romina received a 36-year sentence. The sentences were issued by Branch 1 of the Isfahan Revolutionary Court and remain initial-stage verdicts.

The twins are among 16 defendants prosecuted in what has become known as the "Isfahan Shohada Square" case. HRANA said 10 defendants received death sentences and the 16 defendants collectively received 256 years in prison.

The sisters' family says the abuse was intended to force confessions.

Nourmohammadi told The Guardian that Taraneh was threatened that prison guards would rape Romina in front of her unless she signed a confession. The outlet reported that Taraneh later told the court that admissions attributed to her had been obtained through torture. Her mother was not permitted to attend the trial, according to the family.

Radio Farda separately reported, citing Nourmohammadi, that the sisters suffered physical and psychological abuse and were forced to confess to accusations they deny. The Hana Human Rights Organization told Fox News Digital they have verified the torture allegations.

Concerns about torture extend beyond the sisters. HRANA reported that another defendant in the same case, Ahmadreza Saeidi, told judges during the hearing that the investigating judge personally used an electric stun gun on his neck and genitals. Defense lawyers also reportedly complained that they had not been given access to substantial portions of the case file or adequate time to examine evidence before trial.

The Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran documented 901 executions during the first seven months of 2026, including 56 people executed on political or national-security charges.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran program senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the executions should be viewed as part of a broader campaign by Tehran to suppress dissent at home.

"Despite the war in the region, despite the drone war, the missile war, the war over the Strait of Hormuz, the real war is the one that's happening on a day-to-day basis inside the Islamic Republic," Ben Taleblu said. "The Islamic Republic is quite literally cracking skulls, cracking down on civil society, on dissidents, on protesters."

Among those imprisoned in Iran's broader crackdown is Seyed Ahmad Seyedabdollahi, a 32-year-old psychologist whose case Fox News Digital reported in August.

Seyedabdollahi posted an English-language video on Jan. 4 appealing directly to President Donald Trump to support Iranian protesters, according to his relatives and Fox News Digital's previous reporting. He was arrested 10 days later and ultimately sentenced to seven months in prison and barred from government and public services for five years.

"We saw this trend in the aftermath of the 12-day war as well," Ben Taleblu said. "Lose a war abroad, come home and pretend like you're the victor."

"Simply here, the Islamic Republic is continuing the longest war it's ever fought, which is the 47-year war against the Iranian people," he added.

Wednesday marks four years since the Sept. 16, 2022, death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was detained three days earlier by Iran's morality police over what authorities described as "improper hijab." Her death sparked nationwide protests that became known internationally as the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement. The U.N. said reports that Amini had been beaten in custody warranted an independent investigation, while Iranian authorities maintained that she died of "natural causes."

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US Troops Leak New Iran War Photos Of Gulf Bases: 'Major Damage Hidden From American Public'

US Troops Leak New Iran War Photos Of Gulf Bases: 'Major Damage Hidden From American Public'

TYLER DURDEN

As we've been documenting, it is clear that major damage has yet to be communicated to the American public regarding Iran's major retaliation on US bases in the Gulf and Mideast since the start of Trump's Operation Epic Fury. 

During the same week that a long awaited Pentagon/Department of War Inspector General's report was released covering the first four months of the Iran War, new leaked photographs have emerged of never-before-seen base damage.

"New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks," according to a bombshell Tuesday CBS report. Below is from Prince Sultan AFB, Saudi Arabia:

The outlet describes that the photos have been submitted by US service members under strict secrecy and anonymity - given the Pentagon has sought to enforce a crackdown on troops sharing the extent of damage, and amid orders aimed at maintaining operational security. But critics say the Pentagon and Trump administration are engaged in a cover-up and propaganda. 

"This is major damage to our bases that hasn't been communicated to the American public," an actively deployed unnamed service member said to CBS News.

The service member added: "We're standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face."

Recent Iranian attacks on bases in Jordan have continued intermittently over the past weeks, and some pundits have warned that American personnel that continue to be stationed there are essentially sitting ducks.

The ballistic missile volleys from Iran have only gotten bigger, such as the last major attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during the night of September 8-9.

On Monday the newly released Pentagon Inspector General's report said that "hundreds" of buildings and structures at US bases have been destroyed...

“Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict.”

It was not just bases that got directly hit, and mainly within merely the opening weeks of Operation Epic Fury - but even consulates, embassies, and intelligence buildings have been targeted and suffered damage.

"U.S. diplomatic facilities in four countries—Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—suffered physical damage from Iranian strikes," the Pentagon has conceded.

American service members in Saudi are leaking photos of bases destroyed by Iranian strikes that the Pentagon is trying to cover up pic.twitter.com/glyqOKBWwA

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