Robotics, AI and Other Tech

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Zooming Out: WebinarTV’s Rampant Scraping of Online Meetings


Zooming Out: WebinarTV’s Rampant Scraping of Online Meetings

Summary
CyberAlberta recently discovered that a webinar hosting platform known as WebinarTV is actively scraping and redistributing both public and private Zoom webinars without knowledge or consent of organizers. Initial access is typically gained through third-party browser extensions such as AI-powered transcription or auto-join tools. These extensions are inadvertently provided calendar permissions by their users and, in some cases, users are willfully submitting meeting details to the WebinarTV platform without the knowledge or consent of the organizers.

While WebinarTV’s CEO claims to be compliant with copyright law and offers a takedown process, multiple users have reported unauthorized content uploads and ineffective removal procedures. The platform's business model and associated infrastructure suggest a deliberate and scalable operation that poses ongoing privacy, reputational, and legal risks. Webinar organizers are strongly encouraged to audit their meeting configurations, restrict access to third-party tools, and take steps to safeguard against users intentionally leveraging WebinarTV....

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This Company Is Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into AI Podcasts

WebinarTV, a company that bills itself as “a search engine for the best webinars,” is secretly scanning the internet for Zoom meeting links, recording the calls, and turning them into AI-generated podcasts for profit. In some cases, people only found out that their Zoom calls were recorded once WebinarTV reached out to them directly to say their call was turned into a podcast in an attempt to promote WebinarTV’s services.

WebinarTV claims to host more than 200,000 webinars. It’s not clear how it’s recording so many Zoom calls without permission, but in some cases the stolen videos posted to WebinarTV can put call participants at risk...

 

Verona has waited months for Flock cameras to come down after canceling contract

Feb 2

On Wednesday, work to remove a set of AI-powered, license plate reading Flock cameras from the City of Verona is expected to begin. Until then, local officials have chosen to physically cover the cameras, blocking their ability to monitor passing traffic.

A lack of public trust not in the police department, but in the company Flock Safety, fueled the decision. Despite the Verona Common Council vote last fall not to renew the city’s contract with Flock, and the contract lapsing in December, the cameras have remained in place.

Mayor Luke Diaz said the police department had made several requests to Flock for the cameras to be removed. “They weren’t removing them,” Diaz told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We kind of looked at the contract, talked it over amongst staff, and the thing we felt most comfortable with was just covering them so they could stop spying on people.”

“I’m 100% certain that they were still working,” Diaz said, adding that some other communities have had similar experiences with Flock refusing to remove unwanted cameras. “It could have been an accident, it could have been an oversight on their part, but I think it was deliberate,” Diaz told the Examiner.“Because I think that they want to keep the cameras up, whether they have permission or not.”

Concerns about Flock cameras, which are equipped with AI-powered automatic license plate reader technology, are on the rise nationwide. The cameras take pictures of passing vehicles, storing them for up to 30 days in a database which organizes the images based on identifiable license plates and vehicle descriptions. Law enforcement agencies are able to search Flock’s network of images, including those captured in other parts of the country.

Any Flock network could contain thousands or even millions of compiled law enforcement searches. Exactly why those searches are being done, however, isn’t always clear. An analysis of Flock audit data by the Wisconsin Examiner found that from January to May of 2025, Flock’s network was searched by 221 unique local and state law enforcement agencies. The most common search term turned out to be “investigation” without other context to determine the reason for the search.

Some agencies used even vaguer terms such as “cooch,” “hunt,” or just “.” After the Examiner’s first report on Flock, a Waukesha police officer who repeatedly used only a period to label Flock searches underwent re-training on proper use of the system. By contrast the West Allis Police Department, which used “.” to search Flock more than any other Wisconsin law enforcement agency from January to May 2025, admitted no wrongdoing and asserted that its officers are properly trained on the Flock system. Recently, 404 Media reported that law enforcement officers in some parts of the country have been advised to be as “vague as permissible” when entering reasons for using Flock’s network.

Other cases have also emerged involving officers outright misusing the Flock system. A Menasha police officer is currently facing charges of felony misconduct in public office for using Flock’s network to track a vehicle belonging to a private person while off duty. In Kenosha County, a sheriff’s deputy was accused of using Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to stalk one of his co-workers. Similar cases of officers using Flock to stalk love interests or others have also surfaced, as well as at least one use of Flock by a Texas sheriff’s office in an abortion-related case.

There are also fears about how the cameras can be used by the federal government to monitor local communities, especially for immigration enforcement. Those sorts of questions led Verona city officials to take a closer look at what their own police department’s Flock data revealed. In Minneapolis, immigration and border patrol agents have been involved in numerous clashes with local residents, raising concerns about monitoring of protesters and legal observers.

Just before Verona voted not to renew its contract with Flock, Verona Police Chief Dave Dresser tried to ease some of the public’s concerns. “The data’s only stored for 30 days, which is actually very restrictive,” said Dresser. “After 30 days, the data is purged. I believe there is misinformation that the data’s held for months and months or years, it’s not. It’s purged.” Dresser added, “we’ve opted out of sharing data with federal agencies, we understand the concerns there. We have revoked automatic access to our data from out of state agencies to address some of the privacy concerns.”

In a document outlining her own review of Verona’s Flock data, Ald. Beth Tucker Long stressed that “I am not against participation in the Flock network because I think our officers are doing anything inappropriate.” In fact, Tucker Long wrote, “I am very proud of our police force and I know that our officers conduct themselves with honor and integrity.” Tucker Long said that “Flock is not operating with integrity,” and focused on the federal government’s level of access.

Within Verona’s Flock network there were 974 searches tagged as “federal” in October 2025, Tucker Long said, despite federal access to Flock having allegedly been cut off months before. Another 1,628 searches were done by organizations “self-identifying as ICE,” according to Tucker Long. “This does not include organizations that did not disclose that the searches were for ICE.” Over 5,700 Flock searches were done for “other image search,” which means that law enforcement did not search for a license plate, but rather used AI to search the full contents of an image. Tucker Long also pointed to nearly 1,100 searches which were logged as “Outside Assist,” implying that information was shared with another organization whose identity was not recorded in the system.

When Flock first came to Verona, Diaz explained, there wasn’t much debate. Although Diaz couldn’t remember everything, he believes it was handled administratively as the sort of equipment request from the police department which wouldn’t necessarily come before the common council for approval. “I don’t think there was the awareness of the abuses the company Flock has made, and I think there’s a lot of stuff happening at the national level where it’s clear and obvious that we have a federal government that doesn’t believe in the Fourth Amendment, or the First Amendment, or the Fourteenth, and the Fifth. And that this Supreme Court isn’t going to stand up for the Constitution either, and so I think that’s created a lot of angst and awareness. And that people are looking around at these Flock things and saying these aren’t benign. They aren’t just like a helpful tool for the local police department. They’re a way for the feds to spy on our communities.”

A Verona police spokesperson told the Examiner that the department is “committed to exploring other alternative tools and strategies” which will maintain the high standards city residents have come to expect. The spokesperson added that the department was encouraged that the decision to remove Flock was due to a lack of confidence in the multi-billion dollar company, and not the police department.

 

Using a VPN May Subject You to NSA Spying

US lawmakers are pressing Tulsi Gabbard to reveal whether using a VPN that connects to overseas servers can strip Americans of their constitutional protections against warrantless surveillance.

Six Democratic lawmakers are pressing the nation's top intelligence official to publicly disclose whether Americans who use commercial VPN services risk being treated as foreigners under United States surveillance law—a classification that would strip them of constitutional protections against warrantless government spying...

 

I don't know the behind the scenes decisions on how that particular Robot was chosen, but it wasn't an Optimus (Tesla - Musk) Robot.

Melania Trump shares the spotlight with a robot at an education and technology event

WASHINGTON — Melania Trump often commands the attention of any room she enters but all eyes — and cameras — were trained on her humanoid companion on Wednesday.

The robot accompanied the first lady to the White House East Room for the final day of a summit she had convened with counterparts from around the world through her Fostering the Future Together global initiative. The group has been discussing ways to empower children using education, innovation and technology, including artificial intelligence.

Melania Trump and the humanoid walked slowly side by side along the red carpet from the opposite end of the hallway. The first lady paused just before entering the East Room while the robot walked around the table with the panelists and took up a position in the center of the room.

It took a moment to scan the audience before speaking.

"Thank you, first lady Melania Trump, for inviting me to the White House. It is an honor to be at Fostering the Future Together's global coalition inaugural meeting," it said.

"I'm Figure 03, a humanoid built for the United States of America," it continued. "I am grateful to be part of this historic movement to empower children with technology and education."

"Welcome," it said before offering similar greetings in 10 other languages. The robot then thanked everyone and retraced its steps back down the red carpet.

The first lady thanked the robot for joining her, adding: "It's fair to state, you are my first American-made humanoid guest in the White House."

The startup robotics company Figure AI, based in Sunnyvale, California, introduced Figure 03 in October 2025 as its third-generation humanoid robot for people to use at home for help with such household tasks as laundry, cleaning and washing dishes, according to its website and company literature.

CEO Brett Adcock said on social media he was "proud to see F.03 make history as the first humanoid robot in the White House."

The startup is competing with others, including Boston Dynamics and Elon Musk's Tesla, as well as a number of companies in China, in building robots that look human-like and do some of the things that people do.