Your Kid's School Surveillance File Starts Before They're Old Enough to Consent. Sometimes It Ends With Police.
A child's school surveillance file can start with a laptop login, a cafeteria fingerprint scan, or a bus ID badge -- years before they're old enough to understand, let alone meaningfully consent to, the bargain. It runs through monitoring software reading their messages, biometric payment systems, GPS-tracked buses, hallway cameras, and data shared with an average of more than 2,700 ed-tech tools per district, most with no FTC action ever taken against them. The most alarming place that file can lead: AI monitoring software has already put a 13-year-old in a jail cell over a joke, and sent dozens more kids to psychiatric holds over false alarms -- one branch of a much bigger tree, not the whole thesis.
Tech & YouUber Built Secret Tools to Track Cops and Rivals. Now It's the Only One of the Four Telling You How Long It Keeps Your Data.
Tech & YouOne Company Analyzes Your Voice for Your Bank, Your Insurer, and the SSA. A Federal Court Just Sided With It.
The SystemYou're Probably in a Database of 188 Million Salaries. You Never Agreed to Join It.
Tech & YouYour Voice Assistant Doesn't Just Mishear You Sometimes. It's Listening Even When It Shouldn't Be.
The SystemThree Systems Are Listening to Your Street. None of Them Need You to Do Anything Wrong First.
TLDR — the podcastThe long version, read to you.▶ Listen
Civic. Travel. Food.
The bottom line, up front.
Eight ordinary places are building a profile of you.
Click a place — car, phone, home, work, store, street, school, or airport — to see what gets collected, who may receive it, and what you can actually do.
The questions we keep answering.
16 parts publishedUnited Surveillance of AmericaOpen the interactive map →
2 parts publishedAdvise and ConsentOpen the series →
7 parts publishedNobody Told YouOpen the series →
2 parts publishedAre We the Bad Guys?Open the series →
5 parts publishedElder CareOpen the series →
6 parts publishedThe OverlookedOpen the series →
5 parts publishedUnder the HoodOpen the series →
7 parts publishedThe Divided States of AmericaOpen the series →
3 parts publishedNatural CausesOpen the series →
4 parts publishedThe RealignmentOpen the series →
1 part publishedQuietly RaisedOpen the series →
TSA's face-scanning checkpoints are legally optional for domestic travelers — but a federal oversight board's own May 2025 report found the agency doesn't clearly tell you that, and TSA's own accuracy testing found a real gap in match rates for Black travelers. For international travel, CBP keeps non-citizens' face data for up to 75 years. It deletes U.S. citizens' photos in 12 hours. Congress has been trying to pause the program since 2023 and hasn't.
The EU's Entry/Exit System (EES) became fully operational across all 29 participating countries on April 10, 2026. Every non-EU visitor — US passport holders included — now has fingerprints and a facial photo taken at the border on short stays, and the passport stamp is gone, replaced by a digital record. The EES is free. A separate online authorization called ETIAS — €20, valid up to three years — is due to launch in the last quarter of 2026, so a trip this summer needs the scan but not yet the form.
For the 2026 season, every one of Mount Fuji's four official summit trails charges a flat ¥4,000 (about $27) entry fee — the free, roll-up-and-climb Fuji is gone. On the three Shizuoka-side trails you register and pay online before you arrive; on the busy Yoshida Trail (the Tokyo route) you can book ahead or pay at the gate, but it's capped at 4,000 climbers a day and can close once it fills. Gates on all trails lock from 2 p.m. to 3 a.m. to stop the exhausting overnight "bullet climb." Practical takeaway: for Yoshida, book early or risk the cap; on the Shizuoka trails, pre-register online; and bring real boots and rain gear either way.
This is the first World Cup spread across three countries — the US, Canada, and Mexico — and each one is its own immigration system that ignores the other two. A US visa or ESTA gets you exactly nowhere in Canada or Mexico; a quick hop to Cancún or Toronto does **not** reset your 90 days in the US; and there is no "Fan ID" or special World Cup visa, whatever anyone selling one tells you. For most fans coming from visa-waiver countries it's a three-item checklist, not chaos. But the traps that strand people aren't the obvious ones — so here's the map before you buy the flights.
Spain is heading for another record ~100 million visitors — and is deliberately steering them off the overcrowded coast (Barcelona, the Balearics, the Canaries) toward 'Empty Spain': inland regions, the green north, and the off-season. It's working — inland visits are up about 60%.