Day: August 21, 2026

WASHINGTON — Federal agents seized electronic devices from former Rep. Eric Swalwell and searched his Washington home as part of an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct by the ex-Democratic congressman from California, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Swalwell’s devices were seized at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and agents executed a search warrant at his home a day later, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A message seeking comment was left Thursday with an attorney for Swalwell, who has denied allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. The Daily Mail first reported the seizure of Swalwell’s devices on Thursday.

Swalwell announced his resignation from Congress in April following allegations that Swalwell had sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. The San Francisco Chronicle, followed by CNN, first reported the allegations. CNN also reported that three other women alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by Swalwell, including sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.

The seven-term lawmaker had been seen as one of the leading candidates in California’s gubernatorial race before dropping out after the allegations surfaced.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg confirmed in April that it was investigating Swalwell after a former staffer told CNN and the Chronicle that Swalwell raped her at a hotel while he was in New York City for a charity gala in 2024. In a statement, Bragg’s office encouraged “survivors and anyone with knowledge of these allegations to contact our Special Victims Division.”

A lawyer representing Lonna Drewes, a California woman who in April said she had been raped in 2018 by Swalwell, said his team was cooperating with all law enforcement agencies investigating the former congressman.

“We are encouraged to learn about the escalation of the FBI’s investigation into the allegations against Eric Swalwell,” attorney Arick Fudali said in a statement.

Drewes spoke of the assault at a news conference days after Swalwell dropped out of the California governor’s race. She said it occurred at a hotel in Southern California. Swalwell denied that assault.

Swalwell, an Iowa native, was elected in 2012 and represented a House district east of San Francisco. He launched a presidential run in April 2019 but ended it a few months later after failing to catch on with voters.

He was one of Republican President Donald Trump’s top Democratic antagonists in Congress. He was a prominent member of the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees during Trump’s first term and served as one of several Democratic prosecutors for Trump’s second impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Swalwell was removed from the Intelligence Committee by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in 2023 based on Swalwell’s contact with a suspected Chinese spy, Christine Fang.

Fang was reported to have come into contact with Swalwell’s campaign as he was first running for Congress in 2012 and to have participated in fundraising for his 2014 campaign.

Federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their concerns and briefed Congress about Fang in 2015, at which point Swalwell says he cut off contact with her. He was not accused of wrongdoing and a House Ethics Committee investigation that was opened in 2021 closed two years later without any action.

California lawmaker Aisha Wahab secured victory Thursday in a special election to serve the rest of Swalwell’s House term, which ends in January. She will run again in the November election to represent the district for a full two-year term.

A few times a week, Brady O’Rourke walks to the busiest street near his house in Crystal, Minn., carrying a long metal pole with a bright yellow sign taped to the end.

It’s a roof rake, normally used to scrape snow off a house, but O’Rourke has different plans for this one. At the intersection, he stops at a Flock camera, an automated license plate reader that police use to track vehicles.

Normally, this camera records everyone who drives down this street. But not right now: O’Rourke lifts his rake into the air and blocks the camera with his sign. He waves at passing cars. Some drivers smile and wave back. A few people honk their horns.

“I don’t want to pay to be surveilled,” O’Rourke says. “My tax dollars are funding cameras at the end of my block. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t think anybody should have to live like that.”

O’Rourke, inspired by a man in Florida who used a pool skimmer to do the same thing, is part of a growing movement against automated license plate readers like Flock.

What Flock cameras do

This week, Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based maker of the cameras, held its annual conference amid intense backlash.

According to the company, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use its technology. More broadly, there are more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license plate readers on American streets, according to DeFlock, an advocacy group that tracks the cameras.

Every month, those cameras capture billions of license plates and other details about cars, including makes, models, colors and any alterations. That allows police to see where drivers have been over time.

“They monitor, quite simply, when we go to and from work, where we go to the doctor, where we drop our kid off at daycare. What we’ve enabled in practical reality is law enforcement to go back and look at where any of us was at any given point in time,” says Clare Garvie, deputy director of technology law and policy at New York University’s Policing Project.

Police leaders say Flock cameras help them locate stolen vehicles and missing people, and a recent preliminary study suggests that Flock cameras can deter car theft.

“There’s no question that license plate readers can be very helpful tools for law enforcement,” says Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

But the expansion of the technology — combined with advancements in AI and the centralization of data in cloud networks — has increased the risk of abuse, says Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU.

And the technology has been misused: Some police officers, for instance, have used it to stalk ex-partners, or accessed the data for immigration enforcement purposes without a local government’s consent. A sheriff’s office in Texas used it to track a woman who may have had an abortion.

“The potential for police fishing expeditions is unlimited,” says Stanley. “What a lot of these AI, big data techniques do is they try to boil the ocean, to reduce huge amounts of data down to various people who they think could be involved. The problem with that, of course, is it sweeps up potentially enormous numbers of innocent people.”

And sometimes, the data is wrong: A 2024 analysis by a police department in California found Flock misread license plates in 71% of the alerts it sent to police.

The indiscriminate nature of the data collection, Garvie says, also raises concerns that the cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from being searched unreasonably.

“We did not set up a system of governance in this country that says, ‘Just don’t do anything wrong and you won’t have anything to worry about.’ What we said is, ‘No, actually, law enforcement is affirmatively restricted against getting up in our business as we go about our daily lives,'” she says.

Garvie says she wants to see more oversight of the technology from lawmakers.

Last week, Flock changed some of its features to help prevent abuse, including shortening how long it recommends data be stored and cutting off access to officers who appear to be misusing the tool.

“We are so transparent about the business. We don’t own this data. We don’t sell this data. Cities have control over how long it’s stored. And who it’s shared with,” Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told NPR.

Flock camera vandalism across dozens of states 

An increasing number of people are combating the technology in both legal and illegal ways. According to an NPR review of local news reports, Flock cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states.

People have stolen the cameras, sawed them down, crashed into them with cars, covered them in paint and stickers, and shot at them.

Social media is filled with tongue-in-cheek how-to videos, instructing viewers on things like how to discreetly saw through a metal pole.

The comments on Facebook posts from local news stations about the vandalism are rife with snark: “Not all heroes wear capes,” one commenter wrote.

“These are people being amped up to go do something. And I don’t think they’re being given the level of information they should that they’re also committing a felony,” Langley says.

Langley says if people have concerns with his company’s technology, they should take it up with their city council.

And many people have. According to DeFlock, at least 100 cities have deactivated the cameras or canceled contracts with Flock or similar companies.

Stanley, of the ACLU, says there’s a deep well of dislike in the U.S. for the notion of being surveilled by the government.

“We’re seeing opposition from the left. We’re seeing opposition from MAGA Republicans. We’re seeing opposition from mainstream Republicans, from centrists. And so it really is a nonpartisan issue,” he says. “This grassroots uprising is just really remarkable. At the end of the day, it’s not like anything I’ve seen in my 20-plus years as a privacy advocate.”

Organizers with DeFlock are holding a National Week of Action through Saturday. They say more than 25,000 people are registered for events around the country — things like protests and education sessions — that offer people a legal way to use their voice.