Daily Surveillance Briefing: March 23, 2026

Security camera mounted on building exterior with blue sky background

Today's Headlines:

RSA Conference 2026 kicks off today. 44,000 attendees. FBI, NSA, CISA officials still absent. AI surveillance dominates the vendor floor.
Johnson delays FISA vote, again. A dozen GOP holdouts want reforms. Section 702 expires in 28 days. No consensus.
Angela Lipps lawsuit moves forward. Fargo police served preservation letters. The Tennessee grandmother spent 5+ months jailed over facial recognition error.
Essex Police halt facial recognition. Cambridge study found system 27% more likely to correctly identify Black individuals, raising bias and accuracy concerns.
Berkeley approves $2M Flock expansion. 6-1 vote despite privacy and immigration advocates' opposition. More surveillance cameras, drones, ALPRs.

RSA Conference Day 1: The Feds Stay Home

RSA Conference 2026 opened at San Francisco's Moscone Center this morning. 44,000 cybersecurity professionals, 700+ vendors, AI everywhere you look. But the federal seats remain empty.

As we reported yesterday, FBI, NSA, and CISA officials are boycotting the world's largest cybersecurity conference. CISA's Marci McCarthy claimed it's about "good stewardship of taxpayer dollars." Former CISA Director Jen Easterly, now RSA's CEO, says otherwise.

Today's keynotes focused on AI-driven threats and post-quantum cryptography. IBM security experts ran a packed session on "Quantum-Safe Readiness." Ballistic Ventures discussed national infrastructure defense. Meanwhile, the vendor floor showcases what the industry actually sells: "agentic AI" for endpoint detection, autonomous security operations platforms, and enough surveillance-as-a-service tools to make any privacy advocate nervous.

Watch list: Simbian's autonomous SecOps platform in booth N6567. They're promising AI that handles security incidents without human intervention. The surveillance implications are obvious. We're monitoring vendor announcements all week.

RSA 2026 Day 1: The AI Agents Your Company Might Buy This Week | Our RSA 2026 preview

Johnson Delays FISA Vote: 28 Days Until Sunset

Speaker Mike Johnson pushed the Section 702 FISA vote to mid-April. The authorities expire April 20. That leaves Congress scrambling to reauthorize spy powers the week before they die.

Here's why Johnson punted: about a dozen Republican holdouts want actual reforms before they'll vote yes. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) pledged to block any rule vote on a "clean" reauthorization without warrant requirements for Americans. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) wants Trump's SAVE America Act attached as a sweetener.

The numbers don't work. House Democrats won't help Johnson pass the rule, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries confirmed. Last time a warrant requirement came to a vote, it failed 212-212. Nothing has changed.

Meanwhile, 130+ organizations sent Congressional leadership a letter on March 19 demanding the data broker loophole get closed. That loophole lets the government buy your location data, browsing history, and personal info from brokers, data they'd need a warrant to collect directly. The current 702 law stays silent on this end-run around the Fourth Amendment.

Three days ago, Trump officials held classified briefings trying to win over skeptics. They failed. Even hardliners who support 702 want reforms after learning ICE uses the data for immigration raids.

Full Section 702 coverage

Angela Lipps Lawsuit Advances: Facial Recognition's Human Cost

Angela Lipps, the Tennessee grandmother who spent nearly six months in jail after Fargo police misidentified her through facial recognition, is moving toward a lawsuit. On March 20, her legal team served preservation letters to Fargo police and other agencies involved in her arrest.

The case: In April and May 2025, someone used a fake Army military ID to withdraw tens of thousands from North Dakota banks. Fargo detectives ran surveillance footage through facial recognition. The software said "Angela Lipps." On July 14, U.S. Marshals arrested her at gunpoint in Tennessee while she was babysitting her grandchildren.

She sat in Cass County jail until December 19. That's when Fargo police finally interviewed her, five months after arrest. Her bank records proved she was 1,200 miles away, at home in Tennessee, when the crimes happened. On Christmas Eve, charges were dismissed.

This is the sixth known wrongful arrest in the US tied to facial recognition errors, and one of the longest periods of incarceration. All six victims have been Black. The technology keeps failing in ways that disproportionately harm communities already over-policed.

Fargo police are now meeting in executive session over "reasonably predictable or pending litigation involving Angela Lipps." A GoFundMe created by a West Fargo resident has raised money for her legal costs.

Full Angela Lipps coverage

Essex Police Halt Facial Recognition: Cambridge Bias Study

Essex Police in the UK suspended live facial recognition deployments after a Cambridge University study found the system was significantly more likely to correctly identify Black individuals: 27% more likely than all other ethnicities, 31% more likely than white people.

Wait, isn't higher accuracy good? Not necessarily. The study, published March 12, 2026, also found the system was more likely to correctly identify men than women. These disparities raise questions about how the system was trained, what populations are being surveilled, and whether "accuracy" for some groups comes at the cost of false positives for others.

Essex Police said they're pausing deployments "to consider" the findings. This is notable because the UK government just announced the largest-ever facial recognition rollout, expanding from 10 to 50 mobile surveillance vans nationwide, backed by £26 million for a national facial recognition system and £11.6 million specifically for live facial recognition tech.

The software in question comes from CorsightAI, an Israeli company whose technology has been linked to military applications in Gaza. We covered this connection in January.

Berkeley Approves $2M Flock Surveillance Expansion

Berkeley's City Council voted 6-1 on Tuesday to approve a $2 million surveillance package with Flock Safety. The deal includes:

Three new drones running Flock software
16 new fixed surveillance cameras
Renewal of 52 existing automated license plate readers
Centralized software syncing all Flock hardware
Potential access to private cameras across the city

The Police Accountability Board recommended delaying the vote. Privacy and immigration advocates packed the hearing, pointing to reports that Flock data has been used elsewhere to investigate people who've had abortions, monitor protesters, and locate undocumented immigrants for ICE.

Flock's transparency portal shows Berkeley PD already runs one of California's larger ALPR networks. This expansion essentially gives police a real-time surveillance grid covering major streets and intersections, with drone coverage for the gaps.

Alameda County postponed its own Flock contract in February after similar concerns about federal data sharing. Berkeley chose differently.

Full Berkeley coverage

DOGE Social Security Breach: Investigation Expands

The Social Security Office of the Inspector General is investigating new whistleblower allegations that a former DOGE engineer copied data on over 500 million Americans to a personal thumb drive.

The databases allegedly copied (Numident and the Master Death File) contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, citizenship status, race, ethnicity, and parents' names for every living and dead American in the system. A Washington Post report on March 10 said the engineer intended to transfer the information to a private employer.

This isn't the first DOGE data allegation. Former SSA chief data officer Charles Borges filed his own whistleblower disclosure last year, claiming DOGE staffers copied 300+ million Americans' records into a virtual database without proper security protocols.

SSA, still under DOGE control, called the reports "fake news to scare seniors." The inspector general and Government Accountability Office are conducting parallel audits of DOGE's access to federal data systems.

Full DOGE SSA coverage

State Privacy Quick Hits

New York S3699: The Facial Recognition Technology Study Act continues moving through the Assembly after passing the Senate. It would create a task force to study privacy implications and potential regulations.

Hawaii SB 1163: Already passed the Senate. Would ban selling geolocation and browser data without consent. Targets apps running in the background using device microphones.

Oklahoma SB-546: Heads to the governor after a 38-7 Senate vote. If signed, Oklahoma becomes the 21st state with comprehensive privacy legislation.

Kentucky HB 692: The "automatic content recognition" bill unanimously passed the House, adding smart TV surveillance data to the state's sensitive data protections. Now in the Senate.

What We're Watching

March 23-26: RSA Conference continues, tracking AI surveillance vendor announcements
March 30-31: IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington DC
April 6: Meta's deadline to respond to Senate questions about smart glasses facial recognition
April 20: Section 702 FISA sunset date: 28 days remaining
Ongoing: Angela Lipps litigation, DOGE inspector general investigation, Berkeley surveillance rollout

References

Published: March 23, 2026