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.
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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.
17 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%.