Freedom of Information is for everyone, but sometimes brushes up against the rights to privacy and safety. We’ve started a project to learn more.

Last month, San Francisco became the first municipality in the country to ban the use of facial recognition by city departments. Later today, Somerville, Massachusetts may join its ranks. Agencies in other cities, however, aren’t waiting for city councils to weigh in, implementing policies that bar the use of facial recognition. Though the agency-level limits are not subject to the public development and enforcement that support city or state-level rules, they can be important measures in an agency’s own relationship with residents.

MuckRock asked all 50 states for a copy of the data frame that they use to track pregnancy-related deaths, in order to figure out if every department is using a similar system, or even tracking the same information. Spoiler alert: they’re all doing their own thing.

Nebraska Emergency Management Agency is the latest, and possibly last, recipient of an Obama-era counterterrorism grant, which awarded the state $300 thousand towards “countering violent extremism in rural and small to mid-sized communities.” NEMA’s proposal, released through a public records request, shows the agency aims to accomplish this by relying on the same flawed, problematic psychology of its predecessors.