Congress has absolutely zero constitutional authority to investigate a private website for its editorial decisions. Zero. None. This is First Amendment 101.

Yet House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairwoman Nancy Mace have decided otherwise. In a letter to Wikimedia Foundation CEO Maryana Iskander, these two Republicans are demanding that Wikipedia hand over editor identities, internal communications, and arbitration records because some studies suggest there might be bias in Wikipedia articles about Israel-Palestine issues.

Imagine for a moment if Democratic members of Congress sent an identical letter to Fox News, demanding they explain their editorial choices on Israel coverage and turn over internal communications, source identities, and decision-making records. Comer would be on every cable news show screaming about government censorship and the death of the First Amendment. And he’d be right.

But because it’s Wikipedia—a platform that operates on transparent editing processes and neutral point of view policies—suddenly government intimidation is perfectly fine.

Government Doxxing With Official Letterhead

The letter’s requests read like a fishing expedition designed by people who fundamentally misunderstand both Wikipedia and the Constitution. They want:

• Records of all editor conduct disputes and disciplinary actions
• “Identifying and unique characteristics” of editor accounts, including IP addresses and activity logs
• Internal communications about “coordination by nation state actors”
• Analysis of “patterns of manipulation or bias related to antisemitism and conflicts with the State of Israel”

Let’s translate that bureaucratic language. When they say “identifying and unique characteristics” and “IP addresses,” what they really mean is: they want to doxx Wikipedia editors. They’re demanding that Wikimedia turn over personal information about volunteer contributors so Congress can identify and potentially target people whose edits they don’t like.

That’s not oversight. That’s government-sponsored doxxing with official letterhead.

This isn’t oversight—it’s an attempt to intimidate volunteer editors and chill speech by threatening to expose their identities to government scrutiny. The fact that they’re specifically targeting coverage of Israel-Palestine issues makes the political motivation embarrassingly obvious.

What This Is Really About: Working the Refs

Don’t be fooled by the concern trolling about “foreign manipulation” and “academic institutions subsidized by taxpayer dollars.” This investigation has nothing to do with protecting Wikipedia’s integrity and everything to do with destroying it.

This is “working the refs” taken to its logical extreme—and it’s exactly the kind of government pressure that should terrify anyone who actually cares about free speech. The goal isn’t to fix supposed bias; it’s to create actual bias by making editors afraid to include information that doesn’t align with MAGA talking points.

Can’t win the argument on Wikipedia using reliable sources and neutral editing processes? No problem—just get Congress to investigate until editors start self-censoring out of fear that their personal information might end up in the hands of hostile government officials.

The chilling effect isn’t an accidental side effect. It’s the entire point.

Wikipedia’s strength comes from its army of volunteer editors who contribute their time and expertise to building a free, accessible encyclopedia. These volunteers now have to worry that Congress might demand their personal information if politicians don’t like their edits.

Think about what this means in practice: a volunteer editor researching Israeli settlement policies or documenting civilian casualties in Gaza now has to consider whether adding well-sourced information might result in Congress demanding their IP address and personal details. That’s not oversight—that’s intimidation designed to silence inconvenient facts.

The Wikimedia Foundation should tell Comer and Mace exactly where they can stick their unconstitutional demands. Wikipedia doesn’t answer to Congress about its editorial decisions, and Congress has no business trying to intimidate volunteer editors.

Free Speech Absolutists Suddenly Go Quiet

Here’s what’s particularly galling, though not at all surprising: the same people who spent years screaming about “government censorship” when social media companies made actually independent editorial decisions are now dead silent about actual government officials actually threatening to investigate a platform for its speech.

Where are all those passionate defenders of free speech now? Hey Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger! Where’s the outrage about government overreach? Where are the warnings about authoritarianism?

Oh right, they only care about “free speech” when it means protecting their ability to spread misinformation without consequences. When it comes to actual First Amendment violations by government officials trying to intimidate encyclopedia editors, suddenly they’re nowhere to be found.

Wikipedia Has a Well-Known Reality Bias

Wikipedia isn’t perfect. No human endeavor is. But it’s built on transparent processes, neutral point of view policies, and verifiable sources. When those processes lead to conclusions that don’t align with certain political narratives, the problem isn’t with Wikipedia.

The problem is with people who can’t accept that reality doesn’t always conform to their preferred version of events.

If Comer and Mace think Wikipedia articles about Israel-Palestine issues are biased, they’re free to create accounts and try to improve them using reliable sources and Wikipedia’s established editing processes. That’s how the system works. But, of course, Comer and Mace know that such action would require them to do actual work, and likely would fail as they’d be unable to back up their assertions with credible sources.

What they can’t do—or at least, what they shouldn’t be able to do in a country with a functioning First Amendment—is use the power of government to intimidate editors into compliance with their political preferences.

But here we are.

The Wikimedia Foundation should fight this tooth and nail. And every American who actually cares about free speech should be paying attention to what happens next. Because if Congress can investigate Wikipedia for “bias,” they can investigate any platform, any media outlet, any website that publishes information they don’t like.

And that’s a road that leads nowhere good.

Today we need to examine something that reveals the machinery of authoritarian propaganda with surgical precision: how a handful of violent incidents across a few city blocks in Los Angeles was transformed into a “crisis” justifying the deployment of federal troops against American citizens. And how easily that transformation succeeded.

I write this from Los Angeles, where I’ve lived long enough to witness actual citywide chaos. I was here during the widespread unrest following George Floyd’s murder. I was here during the rioting after the Dodgers won the World Series. I’ve seen what it looks like when a city of four million people truly erupts in violence.

What happened this past weekend wasn’t that. Not even close.

Yet somehow, a few isolated incidents of vandalism and confrontation—contained within a handful of city blocks—became the justification for deploying Marines against American protesters. More disturbing still, this manufactured crisis worked exactly as intended. Millions of Americans now believe that military force was not just justified but necessary to restore order in a city that was never actually in disorder.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And what we witnessed was not urban chaos but the deliberate manufacture of consent for military rule through carefully orchestrated propaganda.

The anatomy of this deception reveals the terrifying efficiency of post-truth manipulation. It begins with the amplification of isolated incidents into the appearance of widespread mayhem. A broken window here, a confrontation there, perhaps a small fire somewhere else—all genuine incidents, but scattered across a metropolitan area larger than many states. In the hands of propagandists, these become “Los Angeles in flames” or “chaos consuming the city.”

This isn’t to minimize the genuine violence that occurred. Videos of protesters hurling chunks of concrete torn from infrastructure at police officers are genuinely shocking. Such attacks represent serious criminal behavior that deserves prosecution. But here’s what the propaganda deliberately obscures: the number of people engaging in this violence could be counted on two hands. The geographic area where these incidents occurred spans perhaps a few city blocks in a metropolitan area of over 500 square miles.

Most importantly, the system worked exactly as it’s supposed to. Many of these individuals have already been apprehended. Social media footage is being used to identify and arrest those who haven’t been caught yet. Local law enforcement, supported by existing legal frameworks, is handling the situation through normal investigative and prosecutorial channels.

This is precisely what makes the propaganda so insidious—it takes genuine criminal behavior by a handful of individuals and transforms it into justification for military deployment against an entire city. The concrete-throwing incidents become “widespread violence.” The few blocks where confrontations occurred become “chaos consuming Los Angeles.” The handful of criminals become representative of all protesters.

The propagandists understand that dramatic images of real violence are far more effective than fabricated ones. A video of someone hurling concrete at police is genuinely disturbing and naturally generates strong emotional responses. But that same video, stripped of context about scale and containment, repeated endlessly across multiple platforms, creates the impression of systematic breakdown rather than isolated criminal behavior being addressed through normal legal processes.

The crucial element is decontextualization. Videos of specific incidents circulate without time stamps, location markers, or scale indicators. A thirty-second clip of one intersection becomes representative of an entire city. Social media algorithms, designed to maximize engagement, naturally boost content that triggers fear and outrage while burying anything that might provide proportion or context.

Mainstream media, trapped in its own engagement-driven incentives, amplifies rather than clarifies. Headlines speak of “widespread unrest” and “violence erupting across Los Angeles” without mentioning that we’re talking about incidents covering perhaps twenty square blocks in a city spanning over 500 square miles. The scale of the actual disturbances gets lost in the imperative to make everything sound dramatic and urgent.

The result is a population that believes they’re witnessing something far more serious than reality warrants. Americans in other states, consuming this curated content, develop the impression that Los Angeles is in the grip of systematic breakdown requiring extraordinary intervention. The manufactured crisis becomes indistinguishable from a real one in the minds of people who have no baseline for comparison.

This sets the stage for the propaganda’s true purpose: convincing Americans that military force is necessary to restore order. Once the impression of chaos has been established, military deployment becomes not just reasonable but obviously required. “Local law enforcement can’t handle it” becomes the refrain, even though local law enforcement was never actually overwhelmed and never requested federal assistance.

The genius of this propaganda operation lies in how it reframes the debate entirely. The question is no longer whether military deployment against civilians is constitutional or appropriate. The question becomes whether you support “law and order” or you support “chaos and violence.” Anyone questioning the use of federal troops gets cast as someone who doesn’t care about public safety or who actively supports destruction.

This false binary eliminates the possibility of reasonable middle ground. You cannot argue that the incidents were isolated without being accused of minimizing violence. You cannot question military deployment without being labeled an enemy of order itself. The propaganda creates a rhetorical trap where any opposition to extraordinary measures becomes evidence of extremism.

What makes this particularly insidious is how it exploits genuine human psychology. People naturally extrapolate from limited information, especially when that information triggers fear responses. A few dramatic images repeated endlessly create the impression of systematic breakdown even when the reality is far more contained. The mind fills in gaps with assumptions, and those assumptions become indistinguishable from observed fact.

The propagandists understand this perfectly. They know that context kills crisis, so they systematically strip away anything that might provide scale or proportion. They know that repetition creates reality, so they flood information channels with the same decontextualized clips. They know that fear overwhelms reason, so they frame everything in terms of immediate threat requiring immediate response.

Most Americans consuming this content have no direct experience of actual urban warfare or citywide riots. They have no baseline for distinguishing between genuine crisis and manufactured emergency. When they see curated clips of violence repeated endlessly across multiple platforms, their natural assumption is that this represents the broader reality rather than isolated incidents being amplified for political effect.

This psychological vulnerability becomes a political weapon. Once Americans believe they’re witnessing systematic breakdown, military deployment seems not just reasonable but obviously necessary. The idea that federal troops shouldn’t be deployed against civilians—a principle that was considered sacred just a few years ago—suddenly seems naive or even dangerous in the face of manufactured emergency.

The success of this operation should terrify anyone who understands how democracies die. We’re not just witnessing media manipulation or political spin—we’re watching the real-time manufacture of consent for military rule through carefully curated chaos. Each successful deployment makes the next one easier to justify. Each manufactured crisis normalizes extraordinary measures as ordinary responses.

This is exactly how authoritarian consolidation works in practice. You don’t announce that you’re ending civilian control over the military—you create conditions where military control seems like the only reasonable response to ongoing emergencies. You don’t eliminate constitutional protections in one dramatic gesture—you erode them gradually through crisis management that becomes permanent.

The precedent established in Los Angeles will not remain confined to Los Angeles. Once Americans accept that federal troops can be deployed against protesters whenever local incidents can be framed as widespread chaos, every future demonstration becomes a potential justification for military intervention. The threshold for extraordinary measures gets lower with each successful deployment.

Consider how this dynamic will operate in the future. Any protest that produces even isolated incidents of vandalism or confrontation can now be framed as requiring federal military response. The mere possibility of violence becomes sufficient justification for preemptive deployment. The distinction between peaceful demonstration and dangerous riot becomes whatever federal authorities claim it to be.

This represents a fundamental transformation in how power operates in American society. We’re moving from a system where military deployment against civilians requires extraordinary justification to one where such deployment becomes a routine response to political dissent. The change isn’t happening through constitutional amendment or legislative action—it’s happening through the gradual normalization of what was previously unthinkable.

The media’s role in this transformation cannot be understated. By treating manufactured crisis as genuine emergency, by amplifying decontextualized images without providing scale or proportion, by framing military deployment as reasonable response rather than constitutional violation, mainstream outlets become unwitting accomplices in their own irrelevance. When reporters present authoritarian power grabs as ordinary policy disagreements, they help normalize what should be shocking.

Perhaps most disturbing is how effectively this propaganda has convinced ordinary Americans to support what amounts to the militarization of domestic law enforcement. People who consider themselves patriots now applaud the deployment of Marines against American citizens. People who claim to defend constitutional principles now support the violation of fundamental restrictions on military power. The propaganda has made authoritarianism seem patriotic.

This cognitive dissonance reveals the true power of manufactured crisis. When people believe they’re facing genuine emergency, they willingly surrender protections they would normally defend. The Constitution becomes less important than immediate security. Constitutional principles become luxuries we can’t afford during times of crisis. The fact that the crisis is largely manufactured becomes irrelevant once the psychological impact takes hold.

We are witnessing the live construction of an authoritarian consensus through carefully orchestrated deception. A few broken windows and isolated acts of violence in Los Angeles became the justification for crossing a constitutional line that previous generations would have died to defend. And it worked precisely because most Americans have lost the ability to distinguish between genuine emergency and manufactured crisis.

The implications extend far beyond immigration enforcement or protest suppression. Once the principle is established that federal troops can be deployed whenever authorities claim local breakdown, there are no meaningful constraints on military power over civilian life. Every future crisis—economic, political, social—becomes a potential justification for extraordinary measures that gradually become ordinary.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And when a few isolated incidents can be transformed into justification for military deployment through propaganda alone, you’re no longer living in a constitutional republic—you’re living in a system where perception matters more than reality and manufactured crisis justifies unlimited power.

The center cannot hold when truth becomes whatever serves authority and crisis becomes whatever power claims it to be. We have crossed a line that will be very difficult to uncross, not because the precedent is legally binding but because the psychological transformation it represents may be irreversible.

The manufactured crisis succeeded. Americans now accept military deployment against civilians as normal and necessary. What comes next will be worse, because the machinery of deception has proven its effectiveness and the appetite for resistance has been systematically eroded through careful manipulation of fear.

The propaganda worked. And that should terrify every American who understands what we’ve just surrendered.

Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.

Earlier this month authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras while looking for a woman who they said had a self-administered abortion, including cameras in states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois, according to multiple datasets obtained by 404 Media.

The news shows in stark terms how police in one state are able to take the ALPR technology, made by a company called Flock and usually marketed to individual communities to stop carjackings or find missing people, and turn it into a tool for finding people who have had abortions. In this case, the sheriff told 404 Media the family was worried for the woman’s safety and so authorities used Flock in an attempt to locate her. But health surveillance experts said they still had issues with the nationwide search. 

“You have this extraterritorial reach into other states, and Flock has decided to create a technology that breaks through the barriers, where police in one state can investigate what is a human right in another state because it is a crime in another,” Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund, who researches both ALPR systems and abortion surveillance, told 404 Media. 

On May 9, an officer from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas searched Flock cameras and gave the reason as “had an abortion, search for female,” according to the multiple sets of data. Whenever officers search Flock cameras they are required to provide a reason for doing so, but generally do not require a warrant or any sort of court order. Flock cameras continually scan the plates, color, and model of any vehicle driving by, building a detailed database of vehicles and by extension peoples' movements. 

Cops are able to search cameras acquired in their own district, those in their state, or those in a nationwide network of Flock cameras. That single search for the woman spread across 6,809 different Flock networks, with a total of 83,345 cameras, according to the data. The officer looked for hits over a month long period, it shows.

Flock users are able to run a “Network Audit” to see what other agencies have searched their cameras. The data reviewed by 404 Media shows this was a nationwide search because evidence of the search appeared in logs held by different police departments on the other side of the country from Texas. Muckrock user Rose Terse obtained two of the sets of data from Yakima and Prosser police departments in Washington via public records requests. The same search also appears on the audit report for the Mount Prospect, Illinois Police Department.

Sheriff Adam King of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office told 404 Media in a phone call that the woman self-administered the abortion “and her family was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital.”

“We weren’t trying to block her from leaving the state or whatever to get an abortion,” he said. “It was about her safety.” 

He said the search “got a couple hits on her on Flocks in Dallas,” but Flock was not responsible for ultimately finding her. Two days later the Sheriff’s Office was able to establish contact with the woman and verify she was okay, he added.

On the fact that the Sheriff’s Office performed a nationwide search and not just one in Texas, King said “that way we’re hitting everything, every possibility.”

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at digital rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told 404 Media “The idea that the police are actively tracking the location of women they believe have had self administered abortions under the guise of ‘safety’ does not make me feel any better about this kind of surveillance.”

Elizabeth Ling, senior counsel for If/When/How, a reproductive rights group that runs a reproductive legal rights hotline, told 404 Media that many criminal cases they’ve seen originate after someone close to the person getting an abortion reports it to police. A research report published by the group found “about a quarter of adult cases (26%) were reported to law enforcement by acquaintances entrusted with information, such as friends, parents, or intimate partners.”

“Self-managed abortion is extremely safe. What we have found in our work and our research is that the greatest risk posed to people self-managing their abortion is state violence and criminalization. I understand wanting to keep your loved ones safe,” Ling told 404 Media. “When people have died from pregnancy or from being denied an abortion, it makes sense that people are scared that they could lose a loved one. But, when police and prosecutors have wrongly investigated and punished people for their abortion or pregnancy loss it is equally fair to fear criminalization if police are aware of your abortion. All of this shows why it is essential for people to have access to accurate information about their options and legal risk. Because no one should face criminalization for their abortion.”

Almost all abortions are illegal in Texas, where the officer who performed the search was based. But in Washington and Illinois, where at least some searched Flock cameras were located, abortion is legal before viability of the fetus and is seen as a fundamental right. Courts have repeatedly protected people’s right to travel to get an abortion, but the specter of this type of surveillance has led to widespread fear among people who have sought legal advice from abortion helplines like If/When/How.

“We hear this every day on the helpline, there is an overwhelming fear that they’re being watched and tracked by the state, whether that’s through their internet history or through traveling,” Ling told 404 Media. “There have been multiple court decisions within the abortion context reaffirming the right to travel, but you have law enforcement agencies utilizing tools to extend their reach outside of their jurisdiction to surveil and try to find people. Even if that doesn’t ultimately result in an actual criminal prosecution, that is still a complete invasion of someone’s privacy and it increases people’s fear.”

The surveillance of women seeking abortions has long been a problem, and with the 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision allowing states to criminalize abortion, experts have warned that patients, the people who help them, and their doctors are at a much higher risk of surveillance and criminal prosecution. 

“One of the biggest issues that has emerged in the post-Dobbs era is there’s all these things that are possible in terms of how people might use the tools available to go after abortion seekers or surveil abortion seekers but then you’re not sure which ones are actually going to be used,” Bertash said. “Knowing this helps us hone in what tools in the field law enforcement is actually using.” 

“We saw the groundwork for this laid pretty early. You had anti-abortion activists doing surveillance of abortion clinics, license plates, the people driving in and out, but they would stand in the parking lot with pen and paper writing down license plates,” she added. “When you have this legacy of manual surveillance and then a large tech company offers this type of surveillance as a service, those same tactics, techniques, and customers coming from an antiabortion legacy are handed these automated tools handed on a silver platter, it’s shocking to see it but also it felt inevitable.”

Ashley Emery, senior policy analyst in reproductive health and rights at the National Partnership for Women & Families, told 404 Media “The risks of this intrusive government monitoring cannot be overstated: law enforcement could deploy this surveillance technology to target and try to build cases against pregnant people who travel for abortion care and those who help them. This incident is undeniably a harbinger of more AI-enabled reproductive surveillance and investigations to come. Especially for women of color who are already over-surveilled and over-policed, the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

“Police in one state can investigate what is a human right in another state because it is a crime in another.”

Neither the Yakima or Prosser police departments responded to a request for comment asking if they were aware an officer in Texas had searched their cameras for an abortion-related reason.

Flock told 404 Media in a statement: “Flock is committed to ensuring every customer, including law enforcement, can leverage technology in a way that reflects their values, and we support democratically-authorized governing bodies to determine what that means for their community. Flock does not decide which criminal codes to enforce in Texas or Washington. We rely on the democratic process. And in this case, it appears Flock was used to try to locate a vulnerable person who may have been a danger to herself.”

Earlier this week, 404 Media reported about the use of Flock cameras and its lookup tools to help the Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Ling of If/When/How said the use of Flock in that context cannot be separated from the use of it in an abortion context.

“This use of license plate recognition in an immigration context is not separate and apart from the criminalization of abortion. In both cases we’re talking about the state wanting to control what people do with their bodies,” Ling said. “There is a firmly established constitutional right to travel, but unfortunately that does not mean that the state will not do everything in its power to infringe on people’s bodily autonomy. It’s really important to understand that this is happening at the county level, because regardless of what is happening at a national level, there are decision makers at the state and county levels who feel emboldened to use these tools of punishment and surveillance.”

In October, 404 Media reported on a tool bought by the U.S. government which tracked cellphones and could be used to monitor visits to abortion clinics.

Update: this piece has been updated with additional comment from Ashley Emery.

Marketers promote AI-assisted developer tools as workhorses that are essential for today’s software engineer. Developer platform GitLab, for instance, claims its Duo chatbot can “instantly generate a to-do list” that eliminates the burden of “wading through weeks of commits.” What these companies don’t say is that these tools are, by temperament if not default, easily tricked by malicious actors into performing hostile actions against their users.

Researchers from security firm Legit on Thursday demonstrated an attack that induced Duo into inserting malicious code into a script it had been instructed to write. The attack could also leak private code and confidential issue data, such as zero-day vulnerability details. All that’s required is for the user to instruct the chatbot to interact with a merge request or similar content from an outside source.

AI assistants’ double-edged blade

The mechanism for triggering the attacks is, of course, prompt injections. Among the most common forms of chatbot exploits, prompt injections are embedded into content a chatbot is asked to work with, such as an email to be answered, a calendar to consult, or a webpage to summarize. Large language model-based assistants are so eager to follow instructions that they’ll take orders from just about anywhere, including sources that can be controlled by malicious actors.

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