Just a few months ago we re­leased Nano Banana, our Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model. From restor­ing old pho­tos to gen­er­at­ing mini fig­urines, Nano Banana was a big step in im­age edit­ing that em­pow­ered ca­sual cre­ators to ex­press their cre­ativ­ity. Today, we’re in­tro­duc­ing Nano Banana Pro (Gemini 3 Pro Image), our new state-of-the art im­age gen­er­a­tion and edit­ing model. Built on Gemini 3 Pro, Nano Banana Pro uses Gemini’s state-of-the-art rea­son­ing and real-world knowl­edge to vi­su­al­ize in­for­ma­tion bet­ter than ever be­fore.

How Nano Banana Pro helps you bring any idea or de­sign to life­Nano Banana Pro can help you vi­su­al­ize any idea and de­sign any­thing - from pro­to­types, to rep­re­sent­ing data as in­fo­graph­ics, to turn­ing hand­writ­ten notes into di­a­grams.With Nano Banana Pro, now you can:Gen­er­ate more ac­cu­rate, con­text-rich vi­su­als based on en­hanced rea­son­ing, world knowl­edge and real-time in­for­ma­tion­With Gemini 3’s ad­vanced rea­son­ing, Nano Banana Pro does­n’t just cre­ate beau­ti­ful im­ages, it also helps you cre­ate more help­ful con­tent. You can get ac­cu­rate ed­u­ca­tional ex­plain­ers to learn more about a new sub­ject, like con­text-rich in­fo­graph­ics and di­a­grams based on the con­tent you pro­vide or facts from the real world. Nano Banana Pro can also con­nect to Google Search’s vast knowl­edge base to help you cre­ate a quick snap­shot for a recipe or vi­su­al­ize real-time in­for­ma­tion like weather or sports.

An in­fo­graphic of the com­mon house plant, String of Turtles, with in­for­ma­tion on ori­gins, care es­sen­tials and growth pat­terns.Prompt: Create an in­fo­graphic about this plant fo­cus­ing on in­ter­est­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Step-by-step in­fo­graphic for mak­ing Elaichi Chai (cardamom tea), demon­strat­ing the abil­ity to vi­su­al­ize recipes and real-world in­for­ma­tion.Prompt: Create an in­fo­graphic that shows how to make elaichi chai

We used Nano Banana Pro to pull in real-time weather via Search ground­ing to build a pop-art in­fo­graphic.

Generate bet­ter vi­su­als with more ac­cu­rate, leg­i­ble text di­rectly in the im­age in mul­ti­ple lan­guages­Nano Banana Pro is the best model for cre­at­ing im­ages with cor­rectly ren­dered and leg­i­ble text di­rectly in the im­age, whether you’re look­ing for a short tagline, or a long para­graph. Gemini 3 is great at un­der­stand­ing depth and nu­ance, which un­locks a world of pos­si­bil­i­ties with im­age edit­ing and gen­er­a­tion - es­pe­cially with text. Now you can cre­ate more de­tailed text in mock­ups or posters with a wider va­ri­ety of tex­tures, fonts and cal­lig­ra­phy. With Gemini’s en­hanced mul­ti­lin­gual rea­son­ing, you can gen­er­ate text in mul­ti­ple lan­guages, or lo­cal­ize and trans­late your con­tent so you can scale in­ter­na­tion­ally and/​or share con­tent more eas­ily with friends and fam­ily.

A black and white sto­ry­board sketch show­ing an es­tab­lish­ing shot, medium shot, close-up, and POV shot for a film scene.

The word ‘BERLIN’ in­te­grated into the ar­chi­tec­ture of a city block, span­ning across mul­ti­ple build­ings.Prompt: View of a cozy street in Berlin on a bright sunny day, stark shad­ows. the old houses are oddly shaped like let­ters that spell out “BERLIN” Colored in Blue, Red, White and black. The houses still look like houses and the re­sem­blance to let­ters is sub­tle.

Calligraphy in­spired by mean­ing, show­cas­ing the abil­ity to gen­er­ate ex­pres­sive text with a wider va­ri­ety of tex­tures and fonts.Prompt: make 8 min­i­mal­is­tic lo­gos, each is an ex­pres­sive word, and make let­ters con­vey a mes­sage or sound vi­su­ally to ex­press the mean­ing of this word in a dra­matic way. com­po­si­tion: flat vec­tor ren­der­ing of all lo­gos in black on a sin­gle white back­ground

A bev­er­age cam­paign con­cept show­cas­ing ac­cu­rate trans­la­tion and ren­der­ing of English text into Korean.Prompt: trans­late all the English text on the three yel­low and blue cans into Korean, while keep­ing every­thing else the same

Prompt: A vi­brant, eye-catch­ing “TYPOGRAPHY” de­sign on a tex­tured off-white back­ground. The let­ters are bold, blocky, ex­tra con­densed and cre­ate a 3D ef­fect with over­lap­ping lay­ers of bright blue and hot pink, each with a halftone dot pat­tern, evok­ing a retro print aes­thetic. 16:9 as­pect ra­tio

Blending text and tex­ture in a cre­ative way by in­te­grat­ing the phrase into a wood­chop­ping scene.Prompt: Create an im­age show­ing the phrase “How much wood would a wood­chuck chuck if a wood­chuck could chuck wood” made out of wood chucked by a wood­chuck.

Consistency by de­sign: With Nano Banana Pro, you can blend more el­e­ments than ever be­fore, us­ing up to 14 im­ages and main­tain­ing the con­sis­tency and re­sem­blance of up to 5 peo­ple. Whether turn­ing sketches into prod­ucts or blue­prints into pho­to­re­al­is­tic 3D struc­tures, you can now bridge the gap be­tween con­cept and cre­ation. Apply your de­sired vi­sual look and feel to your mock­ups with ease, en­sur­ing your brand­ing re­mains seam­less and con­sis­tent across every touch­point.

Maintaining the con­sis­tency of up to 14 in­puts, in­clud­ing mul­ti­ple char­ac­ters, across a com­plex com­po­si­tion.Prompt: A medium shot of the 14 fluffy char­ac­ters sit­ting squeezed to­gether side-by-side on a worn beige fab­ric sofa and on the floor. They are all fac­ing for­wards, watch­ing a vin­tage, wooden-boxed tele­vi­sion set placed on a low wooden table in front of the sofa. The room is dimly lit, with warm light from a win­dow on the left and the glow from the TV il­lu­mi­nat­ing the crea­tures’ faces and fluffy tex­tures. The back­ground is a cozy, slightly clut­tered liv­ing room with a braided rug, a book­shelf with old books, and rus­tic kitchen el­e­ments in the back­ground. The over­all at­mos­phere is warm, cozy, and amused.

Prompt: Combine these im­ages into one ap­pro­pri­ately arranged cin­e­matic im­age in 16:9 for­mat and change the dress on the man­nequin to the dress in the im­age

Prompt: Combine these im­ages into one ap­pro­pri­ately arranged cin­e­matic im­age in 16:9 for­mat

A high-fash­ion ed­i­to­r­ial shot set in a desert land­scape that main­tains the con­sis­tency and re­sem­blance of the peo­ple from the 6 in­put pho­tos.Prompt: Put these five peo­ple and this dog into a sin­gle im­age, they should fit into a stun­ning award-win­ning shot in the style if [sic] a fash­ion ed­i­to­r­ial. The iden­tity of all five peo­ple and their at­tire and the dog must stay con­sis­tent through­out but they can and should be seen from dif­fer­ent an­gles and dis­tances in [sic] as is most nat­ural and suit­able to the scene. Make the colour and light­ing look nat­ural on them all, they look like they nat­u­rally fit into this fash­ion show.

Studio-quality cre­ative con­trols: With Nano Banana Pro’s new ca­pa­bil­i­ties we are putting ad­vanced cre­ative con­trols di­rectly into your hands. Select, re­fine and trans­form any part of an im­age with im­proved lo­cal­ized edit­ing. Adjust cam­era an­gles, change the fo­cus and ap­ply so­phis­ti­cated color grad­ing, or even trans­form scene light­ing (e.g. chang­ing day to night or cre­at­ing a bokeh ef­fect). Your cre­ations are ready for any plat­form, from so­cial me­dia to print, thanks to a range of avail­able as­pect ra­tios and avail­able 2K and 4K res­o­lu­tion

Change the look and feel of an im­age for a range of plat­forms by adapt­ing the as­pect ra­tio.Prompt: change as­pect ra­tio to 1:1 by re­duc­ing back­ground. The char­ac­ter, re­mains ex­actly locked in its cur­rent po­si­tion

Lighting and fo­cus con­trols ap­plied to trans­form a scene from day to night.

Obscure or en­lighten a sec­tion of your im­age with light­ing con­trols to achieve spe­cific dra­matic ef­fects.

Prompt: Generate an im­age with an in­tense chiaroscuro ef­fect. The man should re­tain his orig­i­nal fea­tures and ex­pres­sion. Introduce harsh, di­rec­tional light, ap­pear­ing to come from above and slightly to the left, cast­ing deep, de­fined shad­ows across the face. Only sliv­ers of light il­lu­mi­nat­ing his eyes and cheek­bones, the rest of the face is in deep shadow.

Bring out the de­tails of your com­po­si­tion by ad­just­ing the depth of field or fo­cal point (e.g., fo­cus­ing on the flow­ers).

How you can try Nano Banana Pro to­day­Across our prod­ucts and ser­vices, you now have a choice: the orig­i­nal Nano Banana for fast, fun edit­ing, or Nano Banana Pro for com­plex com­po­si­tions re­quir­ing the high­est qual­ity and vi­su­ally so­phis­ti­cated re­sults.Con­sumers and stu­dents: Rolling out glob­ally in the Gemini app when you se­lect ‘Create im­ages’ with the ‘Thinking’ model. Our free-tier users will re­ceive lim­ited free quo­tas, af­ter which they will re­vert to the orig­i­nal Nano Banana model. Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra sub­scribers re­ceive higher quo­tas. For AI Mode in Search, Nano Banana Pro is avail­able in the U.S. for Google AI Pro and Ultra sub­scribers. For NotebookLM, Nano Banana Pro is also avail­able for sub­scribers glob­ally.Pro­fes­sion­als: We’re up­grad­ing im­age gen­er­a­tion in Google Ads to Nano Banana Pro to put cut­ting-edge cre­ative and edit­ing power di­rectly into the hands of ad­ver­tis­ers glob­ally. It’s also rolling out start­ing to­day to Workspace cus­tomers in Google Slides and Vids.Developers and en­ter­prise: Starting to roll out in the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, and in Google Antigravity to cre­ate rich UX lay­outs & mock­ups; en­ter­prises can start build­ing in Vertex AI for scaled cre­ation to­day and it’s com­ing soon to Gemini Enterprise.Creatives: Starting to roll out to Google AI Ultra sub­scribers in Flow, our AI film­mak­ing tool, to give cre­atives, film­mak­ers and mar­keters even more pre­ci­sion and con­trol over their frames and scenes.

How to iden­tify AI-generated im­ages in the Gemini ap­pWe be­lieve it’s crit­i­cal to know when an im­age is AI-generated. This is why all me­dia gen­er­ated by Google’s tools are em­bed­ded with our im­per­cep­ti­ble SynthID dig­i­tal wa­ter­mark.To­day, we are putting a pow­er­ful ver­i­fi­ca­tion tool di­rectly in con­sumers’ hands: you can now up­load an im­age into the Gemini app and sim­ply ask if it was gen­er­ated by Google AI, thanks to SynthID tech­nol­ogy. We are start­ing with im­ages, but will ex­pand to au­dio and video soon.

In ad­di­tion to SynthID, we will main­tain a vis­i­ble wa­ter­mark (the Gemini sparkle) on im­ages gen­er­ated by free and Google AI Pro tier users, to make im­ages even more easy to de­tect as Google AI-generated.Recognizing the need for a clean vi­sual can­vas for pro­fes­sional work, we will re­move the vis­i­ble wa­ter­mark from im­ages gen­er­ated by Google AI Ultra sub­scribers and within the Google AI Studio de­vel­oper tool.You can find out more about how we’re in­creas­ing trans­parency in AI con­tent with SynthID in our blog post.

Add AP News as your pre­ferred source to see more of our sto­ries on Google.

Add AP News as your pre­ferred source to see more of our sto­ries on Google.

The U. S. Border Patrol is mon­i­tor­ing mil­lions of American dri­vers na­tion­wide in a se­cre­tive pro­gram to iden­tify and de­tain peo­ple whose travel pat­terns it deems sus­pi­cious, The Associated Press has found.

The pre­dic­tive in­tel­li­gence pro­gram has re­sulted in peo­ple be­ing stopped, searched and in some cases ar­rested. A net­work of cam­eras scans and records ve­hi­cle li­cense plate in­for­ma­tion, and an al­go­rithm flags ve­hi­cles deemed sus­pi­cious based on where they came from, where they were go­ing and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag lo­cal law en­force­ment.

Suddenly, dri­vers find them­selves pulled over — of­ten for rea­sons cited such as speed­ing, fail­ure to sig­nal, the wrong win­dow tint or even a dan­gling air fresh­ener block­ing the view. They are then ag­gres­sively ques­tioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law en­force­men­t’s radar.

Once lim­ited to polic­ing the na­tion’s bound­aries, the Border Patrol has built a sur­veil­lance sys­tem stretch­ing into the coun­try’s in­te­rior that can mon­i­tor or­di­nary Americans’ daily ac­tions and con­nec­tions for anom­alies in­stead of sim­ply tar­get­ing wanted sus­pects. Started about a decade ago to fight il­le­gal bor­der-re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties and the traf­fick­ing of both drugs and peo­ple, it has ex­panded over the past five years.

The Border Patrol has re­cently grown even more pow­er­ful through col­lab­o­ra­tions with other agen­cies, draw­ing in­for­ma­tion from li­cense plate read­ers na­tion­wide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, pri­vate com­pa­nies and, in­creas­ingly, lo­cal law en­force­ment pro­grams funded through fed­eral grants. Texas law en­force­ment agen­cies have asked Border Patrol to use fa­cial recog­ni­tion to iden­tify dri­vers, doc­u­ments show.

This ac­tive role be­yond the bor­ders is part of the quiet trans­for­ma­tion of its par­ent agency, U. S. Customs and Border Protection, into some­thing more akin to a do­mes­tic in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tion. Under the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s height­ened im­mi­gra­tion en­force­ment ef­forts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 bil­lion to build out bor­der sur­veil­lance sys­tems such as the li­cense plate reader pro­gram by lay­er­ing in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and other emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies.

The re­sult is a mass sur­veil­lance net­work with a par­tic­u­larly American fo­cus: cars.

This in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the first to re­veal de­tails of how the pro­gram works on America’s roads, is based on in­ter­views with eight for­mer gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials with di­rect knowl­edge of the pro­gram who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity be­cause they weren’t au­tho­rized to speak to the me­dia, as well as dozens of fed­eral, state and lo­cal of­fi­cials, at­tor­neys and pri­vacy ex­perts. The AP also re­viewed thou­sands of pages of court and gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments, state grant and law en­force­ment data, and ar­rest re­ports.

The Border Patrol has for years hid­den de­tails of its li­cense plate reader pro­gram, try­ing to keep any men­tion of the pro­gram out of court doc­u­ments and po­lice re­ports, for­mer of­fi­cials say, even go­ing so far as to pro­pose drop­ping charges rather than risk re­veal­ing any de­tails about the place­ment and use of their covert li­cense plate read­ers. Readers are of­ten dis­guised along high­ways in traf­fic safety equip­ment like drums and bar­rels.

The Border Patrol has de­fined its own cri­te­ria for which dri­vers’ be­hav­ior should be deemed sus­pi­cious or tied to drug or hu­man traf­fick­ing, stop­ping peo­ple for any­thing from dri­ving on back­coun­try roads, be­ing in a rental car or mak­ing short trips to the bor­der re­gion. The agen­cy’s net­work of cam­eras now ex­tends along the south­ern bor­der in Texas, Arizona and California, and also mon­i­tors dri­vers trav­el­ing near the U. S.-Canada bor­der.

And it reaches far into the in­te­rior, im­pact­ing res­i­dents of big met­ro­pol­i­tan ar­eas and peo­ple dri­ving to and from large cities such as Chicago and Detroit, as well as from Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Houston to and from the Mexican bor­der re­gion. In one ex­am­ple, AP found the agency has placed at least four cam­eras in the greater Phoenix area over the years, one of which was more than 120 miles (193 kilo­me­ters) from the Mexican fron­tier, be­yond the agen­cy’s usual ju­ris­dic­tion of 100 miles (161 kilo­me­ters) from a land or sea bor­der. The AP also iden­ti­fied sev­eral cam­era lo­ca­tions in met­ro­pol­i­tan Detroit, as well as one placed near the Michigan-Indiana bor­der to cap­ture traf­fic headed to­wards Chicago or Gary, Indiana, or other nearby des­ti­na­tions.

Border Patrol’s par­ent agency, U. S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use li­cense plate read­ers to help iden­tify threats and dis­rupt crim­i­nal net­works and are “governed by a strin­gent, multi-lay­ered pol­icy frame­work, as well as fed­eral law and con­sti­tu­tional pro­tec­tions, to en­sure the tech­nol­ogy is ap­plied re­spon­si­bly and for clearly de­fined se­cu­rity pur­poses.”

“For na­tional se­cu­rity rea­sons, we do not de­tail the spe­cific op­er­a­tional ap­pli­ca­tions,” the agency said. While the U. S. Border Patrol pri­mar­ily op­er­ates within 100 miles of the bor­der, it is legally al­lowed “to op­er­ate any­where in the United States,” the agency added.

While col­lect­ing li­cense plates from cars on pub­lic roads has gen­er­ally been up­held by courts, some le­gal schol­ars see the growth of large dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance net­works such as Border Patrol’s as rais­ing con­sti­tu­tional ques­tions. Courts have started to rec­og­nize that “large-scale sur­veil­lance tech­nol­ogy that’s cap­tur­ing every­one and every­where at every time” might be un­con­sti­tu­tional un­der the Fourth Amendment, which pro­tects peo­ple from un­rea­son­able searches, said Andrew Ferguson, a law pro­fes­sor at George Washington University.

Today, pre­dic­tive sur­veil­lance is em­bed­ded into America’s road­ways. Mass sur­veil­lance tech­niques are also used in a range of other coun­tries, from au­thor­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ments such as China to, in­creas­ingly, democ­ra­cies in the U. K. and Europe in the name of na­tional se­cu­rity and pub­lic safety.

“They are col­lect­ing mass amounts of in­for­ma­tion about who peo­ple are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … en­gag­ing in drag­net sur­veil­lance of Americans on the streets, on the high­ways, in their cities, in their com­mu­ni­ties,” Nicole Ozer, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in re­sponse to the AP’s find­ings. “These sur­veil­lance sys­tems do not make com­mu­ni­ties safer.”

In February, Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo, a dri­ver for a small truck­ing com­pany that spe­cial­izes in trans­port­ing fur­ni­ture, cloth­ing and other be­long­ings to fam­i­lies in Mexico, was dri­ving south to the bor­der city of Brownsville, Texas, car­ry­ing pack­ages from im­mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties in South Carolina’s low coun­try.

Gutierrez Lugo was pulled over by a lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cer in Kingsville, a small Texas city near Corpus Christi that lies about 100 miles from the Mexican bor­der. The of­fi­cer, Richard Beltran, cited the truck’s speed of 50 mph (80 kph) in a 45 mph (72 kph) zone as the rea­son for the stop.

But speed­ing was a pre­text: Border Patrol had re­quested the stop and said the black Dodge pickup with a white trailer could con­tain con­tra­band, ac­cord­ing to po­lice and court records. U. S. Route 77 passes through Kingsville, a route that state and fed­eral au­thor­i­ties scru­ti­nize for traf­fick­ing of drugs, money and peo­ple.

Gutierrez Lugo, who through a lawyer de­clined to com­ment, was in­ter­ro­gated about the route he drove, based on li­cense plate reader data, per the po­lice re­port and court records. He con­sented to a search of his car by Beltran and Border Patrol agents, who even­tu­ally ar­rived to as­sist.

They un­earthed no con­tra­band. But Beltran ar­rested Gutierrez Lugo on sus­pi­cion of money laun­der­ing and en­gag­ing in or­ga­nized crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity be­cause he was car­ry­ing thou­sands of dol­lars in cash — money his su­per­vi­sor said came di­rectly from cus­tomers in lo­cal Latino com­mu­ni­ties, who are ac­cus­tomed to pay­ing in cash. No crim­i­nal charges were ul­ti­mately brought against Gutierrez Lugo and an ef­fort by pros­e­cu­tors to seize the cash, ve­hi­cle and trailer as con­tra­band was even­tu­ally dropped.

Luis Barrios owns the truck­ing com­pany, Paquetería El Guero, that em­ployed the dri­ver. He told AP he hires peo­ple with work au­tho­riza­tion in the United States and was taken aback by the treat­ment of his em­ployee and his trailer.

“We did every­thing right and had noth­ing to hide, and that was ul­ti­mately what they found,” said Barrios, who es­ti­mates he spent $20,000 in le­gal fees to clear his dri­ver’s name and get the trailer out of im­pound.

Border Patrol agents and lo­cal po­lice have many names for these kinds of stops: “whisper,” “intel” or “wall” stops. Those stops are meant to con­ceal — or wall off — that the true rea­son for the stop is a tip from fed­eral agents sit­ting miles away, watch­ing data feeds show­ing who’s trav­el­ing on America’s roads and pre­dict­ing who is “suspicious,” ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments and peo­ple in­ter­viewed by the AP.

In 2022, a man from Houston had his car searched from top to bot­tom by Texas sher­if­f’s deputies out­side San Antonio af­ter they got a sim­i­lar tipoff from Border Patrol agents about the dri­ver, Alek Schott.

Federal agents ob­served that Schott had made an overnight trip from Houston to Carrizo Springs, Texas, and back, court records show. They knew he stayed overnight in a ho­tel about 80 miles (129 kilo­me­ters) from the U. S.-Mexico bor­der. They knew that in the morn­ing Schott met a fe­male col­league there be­fore they drove to­gether to a busi­ness meet­ing.

At Border Patrol’s re­quest, Schott was pulled over by Bexar County sher­if­f’s deputies. The deputies held Schott by the side of the road for more than an hour, searched his car and found noth­ing.

“The beau­ti­ful thing about the Texas Traffic Code is there’s thou­sands of things you can stop a ve­hi­cle for,” said Joel Babb, the sher­if­f’s deputy who stopped Schott’s car, in a de­po­si­tion in a law­suit Schott filed al­leg­ing vi­o­la­tions of his con­sti­tu­tional rights.

According to tes­ti­mony and doc­u­ments re­leased as part of Schott’s law­suit, Babb was on a group chat with fed­eral agents called Northwest Highway. Babb deleted the WhatsApp chat off his phone but Schott’s lawyers were able to re­cover some of the text mes­sages.

Through a pub­lic records act re­quest, the AP also ob­tained more than 70 pages of the Northwest Highway group chats from June and July of this year from a Texas county that had at least one sher­if­f’s deputy ac­tive in the chat. The AP was able to as­so­ci­ate nu­mer­ous phone num­bers in both sets of doc­u­ments with Border Patrol agents and Texas law en­force­ment of­fi­cials.

The chat logs show Border Patrol agents and Texas sher­iffs deputies trad­ing tips about ve­hi­cles’ travel pat­terns — based on sus­pi­cions about lit­tle more than some­one tak­ing a quick trip to the bor­der re­gion and back. The chats show how thor­oughly Texas high­ways are sur­veilled by this fed­eral-lo­cal part­ner­ship and how much de­tailed in­for­ma­tion is in­for­mally shared.

In one ex­change a law en­force­ment of­fi­cial in­cluded a photo of some­one’s dri­ver’s li­cense and told the group the per­son, who they iden­ti­fied us­ing an ab­bre­vi­a­tion for some­one in the coun­try il­le­gally, was headed west­bound. “Need BP?,” re­sponded a group mem­ber whose num­ber was la­beled “bp Intel.” “Yes sir,” the of­fi­cial an­swered, and a Border Patrol agent was en route.

Border Patrol agents and lo­cal law en­force­ment shared in­for­ma­tion about U. S. cit­i­zens’ so­cial me­dia pro­files and home ad­dresses with each other af­ter stop­ping them on the road. Chats show Border Patrol was also able to de­ter­mine whether ve­hi­cles were rentals and whether dri­vers worked for rideshare ser­vices.

In Schott’s case, Babb tes­ti­fied that fed­eral agents “actually watch travel pat­terns on the high­way” through li­cense plate scans and other sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies. He added: “I just know that they have a lot of toys over there on the fed­eral side.”

After find­ing noth­ing in Schott’s car, Babb said “nine times out of 10, this is what hap­pens,” a phrase Schott’s lawyers claimed in court fil­ings shows the sher­if­f’s de­part­ment finds noth­ing sus­pi­cious in most of its searches. Babb did not re­spond to mul­ti­ple re­quests for com­ment from AP.

The Bexar County sher­if­f’s of­fice de­clined to com­ment due to pend­ing lit­i­ga­tion and re­ferred all ques­tions about the Schott case to the coun­ty’s dis­trict at­tor­ney. The dis­trict at­tor­ney did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

The case is pend­ing in fed­eral court in Texas. Schott said in an in­ter­view with the AP: “I did­n’t know it was il­le­gal to drive in Texas.”

Today, the deserts, forests and moun­tains of the na­tion’s land bor­ders are dot­ted with check­points and in­creas­ingly, sur­veil­lance tow­ers, Predator drones, ther­mal cam­eras and li­cense plate read­ers, both covert and overt.

Border Patrol’s par­ent agency got au­tho­riza­tion to run a do­mes­tic li­cense plate reader pro­gram in 2017, ac­cord­ing to a Department of Homeland Security pol­icy doc­u­ment. At the time, the agency said that it might use hid­den li­cense plate read­ers ”for a set pe­riod of time while CBP is con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of an area of in­ter­est or smug­gling route. Once the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete, or the il­licit ac­tiv­ity has stopped in that area, the covert cam­eras are re­moved,” the doc­u­ment states.

But that’s not how the pro­gram has op­er­ated in prac­tice, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­views, po­lice re­ports and court doc­u­ments. License plate read­ers have be­come a ma­jor — and in some places per­ma­nent — fix­ture of the bor­der re­gion.

In a bud­get re­quest to Congress in fis­cal year 2024, CBP said that its Conveyance Monitoring and Predictive Recognition System, or CMPRS, “collects li­cense plate im­ages and matches the processed im­ages against es­tab­lished hot lists to as­sist … in iden­ti­fy­ing travel pat­terns in­dica­tive of il­le­gal bor­der re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties.” Several new de­vel­oper jobs have been posted seek­ing ap­pli­cants to help mod­ern­ize its li­cense plate sur­veil­lance sys­tem in re­cent months. Numerous Border Patrol sec­tors now have spe­cial in­tel­li­gence units that can an­a­lyze li­cense plate reader data, and tie com­mer­cial li­cense plate read­ers to its na­tional net­work, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments and in­ter­views.

Border Patrol worked with other law en­force­ment agen­cies in Southern California about a decade ago to de­velop pat­tern recog­ni­tion, said a for­mer CBP of­fi­cial who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymity for fear of reprisal. Over time, the agency learned to de­velop what it calls “patterns of life” of ve­hi­cle move­ments by sift­ing through the li­cense plate data and de­ter­min­ing “abnormal” routes, eval­u­at­ing if dri­vers were pur­posely avoid­ing of­fi­cial check­points. Some cam­eras can take pho­tos of a ve­hi­cle’s plates as well as its dri­ver’s face, the of­fi­cial said.

Another for­mer Border Patrol of­fi­cial com­pared it to a more tech­no­log­i­cally so­phis­ti­cated ver­sion of what agents used to do in the field — de­velop hunches based on ex­pe­ri­ence about which ve­hi­cles or routes smug­glers might use, find a le­gal ba­sis for the stop like speed­ing and pull dri­vers over for ques­tion­ing.

The cam­eras take pic­tures of ve­hi­cle li­cense plates. Then, the pho­tos are “read” by the sys­tem, which au­to­mat­i­cally de­tects and dis­tills the im­ages into num­bers and let­ters, tied to a ge­o­graphic lo­ca­tion, for­mer CBP of­fi­cials said. The AP could not de­ter­mine how pre­cisely the sys­tem’s al­go­rithm de­fines a quick turn­around or an odd route. Over time, the agency has amassed data­bases re­plete with im­ages of li­cense plates, and the sys­tem’s al­go­rithm can flag an un­usual “pattern of life” for hu­man in­spec­tion.

The Border Patrol also has ac­cess to a na­tion­wide net­work of plate read­ers run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, doc­u­ments show, and was au­tho­rized in 2020 to ac­cess li­cense plate reader sys­tems sold by pri­vate com­pa­nies. In doc­u­ments ob­tained by the AP, a Border Patrol of­fi­cial boasted about be­ing able to see that a ve­hi­cle that had trav­eled to “Dallas, Little Rock, Arkansas and Atlanta” be­fore end­ing up south of San Antonio.

Documents show that Border Patrol or CBP has in the past had ac­cess to data from at least three pri­vate sec­tor ven­dors: Rekor, Vigilant Solutions and Flock Safety.

Through Flock alone, Border Patrol for a time had ac­cess to at least 1,600 li­cense plate read­ers across 22 states, and some coun­ties have re­ported look­ing up li­cense plates on be­half of CBP even in states like California and Illinois that ban shar­ing data with fed­eral im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties, ac­cord­ing to an AP analy­sis of po­lice dis­clo­sures. A Flock spokesper­son told AP the com­pany “for now” had paused its pi­lot pro­grams with CBP and a sep­a­rate DHS agency, Homeland Security Investigations, and de­clined to dis­cuss the type or vol­ume of data shared with ei­ther fed­eral agency, other than to say agen­cies could search for ve­hi­cles wanted in con­junc­tion with a crime. No agen­cies cur­rently list Border Patrol as re­ceiv­ing Flock data. Vigilant and Rekor did not re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

Where Border Patrol places its cam­eras is a closely guarded se­cret. However, through pub­lic records re­quests, the AP ob­tained dozens of per­mits the agency filed with Arizona and Michigan for per­mis­sion to place cam­eras on state-owned land. The per­mits show the agency fre­quently dis­guises its cam­eras by con­ceal­ing them in traf­fic equip­ment like the yel­low and or­ange bar­rels that dot American road­ways, or by la­bel­ing them as job­site equip­ment. An AP pho­tog­ra­pher in October vis­ited the lo­ca­tions iden­ti­fied in more than two dozen per­mit ap­pli­ca­tions in Arizona, find­ing that most of the Border Patrol’s hid­den equip­ment re­mains in place to­day. Spokespeople for the Arizona and Michigan de­part­ments of trans­porta­tion said they ap­prove per­mits based on whether they fol­low state and fed­eral rules and are not privy to de­tails on how li­cense plate read­ers are used.

Texas, California, and other bor­der states did not pro­vide doc­u­ments in re­sponse to the AP’s pub­lic records re­quests.

CBP’s at­tor­neys and per­son­nel in­structed lo­cal cities and coun­ties in both Arizona and Texas to with­hold records from the AP that might have re­vealed de­tails about the pro­gram’s op­er­a­tions, even though they were re­quested un­der state open records laws, ac­cord­ing to emails and le­gal briefs filed with state gov­ern­ments. For ex­am­ple, CBP claimed records re­quested by the AP in Texas “would per­mit pri­vate cit­i­zens to an­tic­i­pate weak­nesses in a po­lice de­part­ment, avoid de­tec­tion, jeop­ar­dize of­fi­cer safety, and gen­er­ally un­der­mine po­lice ef­forts.” Michigan redacted the ex­act lo­ca­tions of Border Patrol equip­ment, but the AP was able to de­ter­mine gen­eral lo­ca­tions from the name of the county.

One page of the group chats ob­tained by the AP shows that a par­tic­i­pant en­abled WhatsApp’s dis­ap­pear­ing mes­sages fea­ture to en­sure com­mu­ni­ca­tions were deleted au­to­mat­i­cally.

The Border Patrol’s li­cense plate reader pro­gram is just one part of a steady trans­for­ma­tion of its par­ent agency, CBP, in the years since 9/11 into an in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tion whose reach ex­tends far be­yond bor­ders, ac­cord­ing to in­ter­views with for­mer of­fi­cials.

CBP has qui­etly amassed ac­cess to far more in­for­ma­tion from ports of en­try, air­ports and in­tel­li­gence cen­ters than other lo­cal, state and fed­eral law en­force­ment agen­cies. And like a do­mes­tic spy agency, CBP has mostly hid­den its role in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­tel­li­gence on purely do­mes­tic travel through its use of whis­per stops.

Border Patrol has also ex­tended the reach of its li­cense plate sur­veil­lance pro­gram by pay­ing for lo­cal law en­force­ment to run plate read­ers on their be­half.

A fed­eral grant pro­gram called Operation Stonegarden, which has ex­isted in some form for nearly two decades, has handed out hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to buy au­to­mated li­cense plate read­ers, cam­era-equipped drones and other sur­veil­lance gear for lo­cal po­lice and sher­iffs agen­cies. Stonegarden grant funds also pay for lo­cal law en­force­ment over­time, which dep­u­tizes lo­cal of­fi­cers to work on Border Patrol en­force­ment pri­or­i­ties. Under President Donald Trump, the Republican-led Congress this year al­lo­cated $450 mil­lion for Stonegarden to be handed out over the next four fis­cal years. In the pre­vi­ous four fis­cal years, the pro­gram gave out $342 mil­lion.

In Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels said Stonegarden grants, which have been used to buy plate read­ers and pay for over­time, have let his deputies merge their mis­sion with Border Patrol’s to pri­or­i­tize bor­der se­cu­rity.

“If we’re shar­ing our au­thor­i­ties, we can put some con­se­quences be­hind, or de­ter­rence be­hind, ‘Don’t come here,’” he said.

In 2021, the Ward County, Texas, sher­iff sought grant fund­ing from DHS to buy a “covert, mo­bile, License Plate Reader” to pipe data to Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector Intelligence Unit. The sher­if­f’s de­part­ment did not re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Other doc­u­ments AP ob­tained show that Border Patrol con­nects lo­cally owned and op­er­ated li­cense plate read­ers bought through Stonegarden grants to its com­puter sys­tems, vastly in­creas­ing the fed­eral agen­cy’s sur­veil­lance net­work.

How many peo­ple have been caught up in the Border Patrol’s drag­net is un­known. One for­mer Border Patrol agent who worked on the li­cense plate reader pat­tern de­tec­tion pro­gram in California said the pro­gram had an 85% suc­cess rate of dis­cov­er­ing con­tra­band once he learned to iden­tify pat­terns that looked sus­pi­cious. But an­other for­mer of­fi­cial in a dif­fer­ent Border Patrol sec­tor said he was un­aware of suc­cess­ful in­ter­dic­tions based solely on li­cense plate pat­terns.

In Trump’s sec­ond term, Border Patrol has ex­tended its reach and power as bor­der cross­ings have slowed to his­toric lows and freed up agents for op­er­a­tions in the heart­land. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, for ex­am­ple, was tapped to di­rect hun­dreds of agents from mul­ti­ple DHS agen­cies in the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s im­mi­gra­tion sweeps across Los Angeles, more than 150 miles (241 kilo­me­ters) from his of­fice in El Centro, California. Bovino later was el­e­vated to lead the ag­gres­sive im­mi­gra­tion crack­down in Chicago. Numerous Border Patrol of­fi­cials have also been tapped to re­place ICE lead­er­ship.

The re­sult has been more en­coun­ters be­tween the agency and the gen­eral pub­lic than ever be­fore.

“We took Alek’s case be­cause it was a clear-cut ex­am­ple of an un­con­sti­tu­tional traf­fic stop,” said Christie Hebert, who works at the non­profit pub­lic in­ter­est law firm Institute for Justice and rep­re­sents Schott. ”What we found was some­thing much larger — a sys­tem of mass sur­veil­lance that threat­ens peo­ple’s free­dom of move­ment.”

AP found nu­mer­ous other ex­am­ples sim­i­lar to what Schott and the de­liv­ery dri­ver ex­pe­ri­enced in re­view­ing court records in bor­der com­mu­ni­ties and along known smug­gling routes in Texas and California. Several po­lice re­ports and court records the AP ex­am­ined cite “suspicious” travel pat­terns or vague tipoffs from the Border Patrol or other un­named law en­force­ment agen­cies. In an­other fed­eral court doc­u­ment filed in California, a Border Patrol agent ac­knowl­edged “conducting tar­geted analy­sis on ve­hi­cles ex­hibit­ing sus­pi­cious travel pat­terns” as the rea­son he sin­gled out a Nissan Altima trav­el­ing near San Diego.

In cases re­viewed by the AP, lo­cal law en­force­ment some­times tried to con­ceal the role the Border Patrol plays in pass­ing along in­tel­li­gence. Babb, the deputy who stopped Schott, tes­ti­fied he typ­i­cally uses the phrase “subsequent to prior knowl­edge” when de­scrib­ing whis­per stops in his po­lice re­ports to ac­knowl­edge that the tip came from an­other law en­force­ment agency with­out re­veal­ing too much in writ­ten doc­u­ments he writes memo­ri­al­iz­ing mo­torist en­coun­ters.

Once they pull over a ve­hi­cle deemed sus­pi­cious, of­fi­cers of­ten ag­gres­sively ques­tion dri­vers about their trav­els, their be­long­ings, their jobs, how they know the pas­sen­gers in the car, and much more, po­lice records and body­worn cam­era footage ob­tained by the AP show. One Texas of­fi­cer de­manded de­tails from a man about where he met his cur­rent sex­ual part­ner. Often dri­vers, such as the one work­ing for the South Carolina mov­ing com­pany, were ar­rested on sus­pi­cion of money laun­der­ing merely for car­ry­ing a few thou­sand dol­lars worth of cash, with no ap­par­ent con­nec­tion to il­le­gal ac­tiv­ity. Prosecutors filed law­suits to try to seize money or ve­hi­cles on the sus­pi­cion they were linked to traf­fick­ing.

Schott warns that for every suc­cess story touted by Border Patrol, there are far more in­no­cent peo­ple who don’t re­al­ize they’ve be­come en­snared in a tech­nol­ogy-dri­ven en­force­ment op­er­a­tion.

“I as­sume for every one per­son like me, who’s ac­tu­ally stand­ing up, there’s a thou­sand peo­ple who just don’t have the means or the time or, you know, they just leave frus­trated and an­gry. They don’t have the abil­ity to move for­ward and hold any­one ac­count­able,” Schott said. “I think there’s thou­sands of peo­ple get­ting treated this way.”

When it comes to shar­ing mo­ments be­tween fam­ily and friends, what de­vice you have should­n’t mat­ter — shar­ing should just work. But we’ve heard from many peo­ple that they want a sim­pler way to share files be­tween de­vices.

Today, we’re in­tro­duc­ing a way for Quick Share to work with AirDrop. This makes file trans­fer eas­ier be­tween iPhones and Android de­vices, and starts rolling out to­day to the Pixel 10 fam­ily.

We built this with se­cu­rity at its core, pro­tect­ing your data with strong safe­guards that were tested by in­de­pen­dent se­cu­rity ex­perts. It’s just one more way we’re bring­ing bet­ter com­pat­i­bil­ity that peo­ple are ask­ing for be­tween op­er­at­ing sys­tems, fol­low­ing our work on RCS and un­known tracker alerts.

We’re look­ing for­ward to im­prov­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­pand­ing it to more Android de­vices. See it in ac­tion on the Pixel 10 Pro in this video, and try it out for your­self!

Preserving code that shaped gen­er­a­tions: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source

A game that changed how we think about play

Today, we’re pre­serv­ing a cor­ner­stone of gam­ing his­tory that is near and dear to our hearts. Together, Microsoft’s Open Source Programs Office (OSPO), Team Xbox, and Activision are mak­ing Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III avail­able un­der the MIT License. Our goal is sim­ple: to place his­tor­i­cally im­por­tant code in the hands of stu­dents, teach­ers, and de­vel­op­ers so they can study it, learn from it, and, per­haps most im­por­tantly, play it.

A game that changed how we think about play

When Zork ar­rived, it did­n’t just ask play­ers to win; it asked them to imag­ine. There were no graph­ics, no joy­stick, and no sound­track, only words on a screen and the play­er’s cu­rios­ity. Yet those words built worlds more vivid than most games of their time. What made that pos­si­ble was­n’t just clever writ­ing, it was clever en­gi­neer­ing.

Beneath that world of words was some­thing qui­etly rev­o­lu­tion­ary: the Z-Machine, a cus­tom-built en­gine. Z-Machine is a spec­i­fi­ca­tion of a vir­tual ma­chine, and now there are many Z-Machine in­ter­preters that we used to­day that are soft­ware im­ple­men­ta­tions of that VM. The orig­i­nal main­frame ver­sion of Zork was too large for early home com­put­ers to han­dle, so the team at Infocom made a prac­ti­cal choice. They split it into three games ti­tled Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III, all pow­ered by the same un­der­ly­ing sys­tem. This also meant that in­stead of re­build­ing the game for each plat­form, they could use the Z-Machine to in­ter­pret the same story files on any com­puter. That de­sign made Zork one of the first games to be truly cross-plat­form, ap­pear­ing on Apple IIs, IBM PCs, and more.

Game preser­va­tion takes many forms, and it’s im­por­tant to con­sider re­search as well as play. The Zork source code de­serves to be pre­served and stud­ied. Rather than cre­at­ing new repos­i­to­ries, we’re con­tribut­ing di­rectly to his­tory. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jason Scott, the well-known dig­i­tal archivist of Internet Archive fame, we have of­fi­cially sub­mit­ted up­stream pull re­quests to the his­tor­i­cal source repos­i­to­ries of Zork I, Zork II, and Zork III. Those pull re­quests add a clear MIT LICENSE and for­mally doc­u­ment the open-source grant.

Accompanying doc­u­men­ta­tion where avail­able, such as build notes, com­ments, and his­tor­i­cally rel­e­vant files.

Clear li­cens­ing and at­tri­bu­tion, via MIT LICENSE.txt and repos­i­tory-level meta­data.

This re­lease fo­cuses purely on the code it­self. It does not in­clude com­mer­cial pack­ag­ing or mar­ket­ing ma­te­ri­als, and it does not grant rights to any trade­marks or brands, which re­main with their re­spec­tive own­ers. All as­sets out­side the scope of these ti­tles’ source code are in­ten­tion­ally ex­cluded to pre­serve his­tor­i­cal ac­cu­racy.

More than forty years later, Zork is still alive and eas­ier than ever to play. The games re­main com­mer­cially avail­able via The Zork Anthology on Good Old Games. For those who en­joy a more hands on ap­proach, the games can be com­piled and run lo­cally us­ing ZILF, the mod­ern Z-Machine in­ter­preter cre­ated by Tara McGrew. ZILF com­piles ZIL files into Z3s that can be run with Tara’s own ZLR which is a sen­tence I never thought I’d write, much less say out loud! There are a huge num­ber of won­der­ful Z-machine run­ners across all plat­forms for you to ex­plore.

Here’s how to get started run­ning Zork lo­cally with ZILF. From the com­mand line, com­pile and as­sem­bly the zork1.zil into a runnable z3 file.

Then run your Z3 file in a Zmachine run­ner. I’m us­ing Windows Frotz from David Kinder based on Stefan Jokisch’s Frotz core:

Or, if you’re of a cer­tain age as I am, you can ap­ply a CRT fil­ter to your Terminal and use a CLI im­ple­men­ta­tion of a Zmachine like Matthew Darby’s “Fic” writ­ten in Python:

We will use the ex­ist­ing his­tor­i­cal repos­i­to­ries as the canon­i­cal home for Zork’s source. Once the ini­tial pull re­quests land un­der the MIT License, con­tri­bu­tions are wel­come. We chose MIT for its sim­plic­ity and open­ness be­cause it makes the code easy to study, teach, and build upon. File is­sues, share in­sights, or sub­mit small, well-doc­u­mented im­prove­ments that help oth­ers learn from the orig­i­nal de­sign. The goal is not to mod­ern­ize Zork but to pre­serve it as a space for ex­plo­ration and ed­u­ca­tion.

Zork has al­ways been more than a game. It is a re­minder that imag­i­na­tion and en­gi­neer­ing can out­last gen­er­a­tions of hard­ware and play­ers. Bringing this code into the open is both a cel­e­bra­tion and a thank you to the orig­i­nal Infocom cre­ators for in­vent­ing a uni­verse we are still ex­plor­ing, to Jason Scott and the Internet Archive for decades of stew­ard­ship and part­ner­ship, and to col­leagues across Microsoft OSPO, Xbox, and Activision who helped make open source pos­si­ble.

Chrono Divide is a fan-made pro­ject which aims to recre­ate the orig­i­nal “Red Alert 2” from the “Command & Conquer” se­ries us­ing web tech­nolo­gies. The re­sult is a game client that runs in your web browser, with no ad­di­tional plu­g­ins or ap­pli­ca­tions in­stalled.

The pro­ject ini­tially started out as an ex­per­i­ment and was meant to prove that it was pos­si­ble to have a fully work­ing, cross-plat­form RTS game run­ning in a web browser. Now, with a playable ver­sion al­ready avail­able, the end-goal is reach­ing fea­ture par­ity with the orig­i­nal vanilla “Red Alert 2” en­gine.

40 years ago — on November 18, 1985 — a new comic strip ap­peared in the news­pa­per: Calvin and Hobbes.

Hobbes was a stuffed tiger, but in the mind of 6-year-old Calvin he was a wryly ob­ser­vant com­pan­ion for his day-to-day chal­lenges and wildly imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­tures.

Adventures of the beloved duo lasted just a decade. Their cre­ator — car­toon­ist Bill Watterson — walked away from Calvin and Hobbes at the height of its pop­u­lar­ity.

Watterson — who has given few in­ter­views — seam­lessly com­bined the silly, the fan­tas­tic and the pro­found in his strip. That slightly de­mented qual­ity cap­tured ed­i­tor Lee Salem, who spoke with NPR’s Renee Montagne in 2005.

The fol­low­ing ex­change has been edited for length and clar­ity.

Lee Salem: I re­mem­ber it when I first read it, and it all… it lit­er­ally took my breath away. And I cir­cu­lated it in the of­fice, and the re­sponse was im­me­di­ate. It was fresh, it was funny, the art was strong, and here’s this ar­che­typal lit­tle boy liv­ing a life that some of us lived or wanted to live or re­mem­bered liv­ing. …

One of the sin­gle fa­vorites that I have is ac­tu­ally on my wall in the of­fice, and it shows Calvin in bed, ob­vi­ously with a fever or some­thing. He’s got a ther­mome­ter in his mouth. You hear the words from a tele­vi­sion. He’s watch­ing a soap opera — you know, “If you leave your spouse and I’ll leave mine and we can get mar­ried.” And it goes on and on and on, as lurid soap op­eras some­times do. And Calvin turns to the reader with a big grin on his face, and he says, “Sometimes, I learn more when I stay home from school than when I go.” And I just thought that was so funny. And, amaz­ingly, when it ran, we ac­tu­ally got com­plaints from read­ers who said, “Well, you know, you’re ad­vo­cat­ing that chil­dren stay home and watch adult soap op­eras.” And some­how, the whole sense of irony was lost in that, but I don’t think it was lost on me. I love that strip.

Renee Montagne: You know, I de­scribe him as a lit­tle boy with his tiger friend, but there’s so much more to it than that. So there’s one where they’re sit­ting phi­los­o­phiz­ing, as they of­ten do, on the grass, this time un­der a tree. Hobbes is look­ing at the sky and say­ing, “Do you think there’s a god?” And they’re both gaz­ing and think­ing, and then in the fourth panel, Calvin thinks about it. And then do you re­mem­ber what he says?

Salem: Yeah. “Yeah, well, some­one is out to get me.”

Montagne: Calvin was pre­ceded into ex­is­tence by some pretty fa­mous lit­tle boys: Charlie Brown, Dennis the Menace. What made him dif­fer­ent?

Salem: You know, we saw Calvin liv­ing in a world he never made, pop­u­lated by adults and teach­ers, and he was try­ing to deal with that and ac­com­plish what he could. I think Calvin has a bit more per­haps Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in him than Charlie Brown. Hobbes I see al­most as the al­ter ego of Calvin. He’s a bal­anc­ing act that al­lows Calvin to ex­ist. He pro­vides com­men­tary on some of Calvin’s crazy ad­ven­tures and at­ti­tudes.

Montagne: Hobbes goes from be­ing a stuffed tiger when there’s any other per­son in the room, to the real Hobbes we know and love. Is Hobbes real or not?

Salem: He is to me, and ob­vi­ously he is to Calvin. Whether he is to the other char­ac­ters or not is an open ques­tion. But I think one of the things Bill brought to the art board was this won­der­ful abil­ity to take a child’s imag­i­na­tion and fan­tasy life and make it real. It re­ally is ir­rel­e­vant whether Hobbes has an ex­is­tence as we would de­fine it. For Calvin, he is there. He’s a buddy, he’s a com­pan­ion, he’s a friend.

Lee Salem edited Calvin and Hobbes un­til the comic strip ended in 1995. Creator Bill Watterson said at the time that he wanted to ex­plore a can­vas be­yond the four pan­els of a daily news­pa­per, and to work at what he called “a more thought­ful pace,” but has pro­duced lit­tle pub­lic work since then.

40 years ago — on November 18, 1985 — a new comic strip ap­peared in the news­pa­per: Calvin and Hobbes.

Hobbes was a stuffed tiger, but in the mind of 6-year-old Calvin he was a wryly ob­ser­vant com­pan­ion for his day-to-day chal­lenges and wildly imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­tures.

Adventures of the beloved duo lasted just a decade. Their cre­ator — car­toon­ist Bill Watterson — walked away from Calvin and Hobbes at the height of its pop­u­lar­ity.

Watterson — who has given few in­ter­views — seam­lessly com­bined the silly, the fan­tas­tic and the pro­found in his strip. That slightly de­mented qual­ity cap­tured ed­i­tor Lee Salem, who spoke with NPR’s Renee Montagne in 2005.

The fol­low­ing ex­change has been edited for length and clar­ity.

Lee Salem: I re­mem­ber it when I first read it, and it all… it lit­er­ally took my breath away. And I cir­cu­lated it in the of­fice, and the re­sponse was im­me­di­ate. It was fresh, it was funny, the art was strong, and here’s this ar­che­typal lit­tle boy liv­ing a life that some of us lived or wanted to live or re­mem­bered liv­ing. …

One of the sin­gle fa­vorites that I have is ac­tu­ally on my wall in the of­fice, and it shows Calvin in bed, ob­vi­ously with a fever or some­thing. He’s got a ther­mome­ter in his mouth. You hear the words from a tele­vi­sion. He’s watch­ing a soap opera — you know, “If you leave your spouse and I’ll leave mine and we can get mar­ried.” And it goes on and on and on, as lurid soap op­eras some­times do. And Calvin turns to the reader with a big grin on his face, and he says, “Sometimes, I learn more when I stay home from school than when I go.” And I just thought that was so funny. And, amaz­ingly, when it ran, we ac­tu­ally got com­plaints from read­ers who said, “Well, you know, you’re ad­vo­cat­ing that chil­dren stay home and watch adult soap op­eras.” And some­how, the whole sense of irony was lost in that, but I don’t think it was lost on me. I love that strip.

Renee Montagne: You know, I de­scribe him as a lit­tle boy with his tiger friend, but there’s so much more to it than that. So there’s one where they’re sit­ting phi­los­o­phiz­ing, as they of­ten do, on the grass, this time un­der a tree. Hobbes is look­ing at the sky and say­ing, “Do you think there’s a god?” And they’re both gaz­ing and think­ing, and then in the fourth panel, Calvin thinks about it. And then do you re­mem­ber what he says?

Salem: Yeah. “Yeah, well, some­one is out to get me.”

Montagne: Calvin was pre­ceded into ex­is­tence by some pretty fa­mous lit­tle boys: Charlie Brown, Dennis the Menace. What made him dif­fer­ent?

Salem: You know, we saw Calvin liv­ing in a world he never made, pop­u­lated by adults and teach­ers, and he was try­ing to deal with that and ac­com­plish what he could. I think Calvin has a bit more per­haps Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in him than Charlie Brown. Hobbes I see al­most as the al­ter ego of Calvin. He’s a bal­anc­ing act that al­lows Calvin to ex­ist. He pro­vides com­men­tary on some of Calvin’s crazy ad­ven­tures and at­ti­tudes.

Montagne: Hobbes goes from be­ing a stuffed tiger when there’s any other per­son in the room, to the real Hobbes we know and love. Is Hobbes real or not?

Salem: He is to me, and ob­vi­ously he is to Calvin. Whether he is to the other char­ac­ters or not is an open ques­tion. But I think one of the things Bill brought to the art board was this won­der­ful abil­ity to take a child’s imag­i­na­tion and fan­tasy life and make it real. It re­ally is ir­rel­e­vant whether Hobbes has an ex­is­tence as we would de­fine it. For Calvin, he is there. He’s a buddy, he’s a com­pan­ion, he’s a friend.

Lee Salem edited Calvin and Hobbes un­til the comic strip ended in 1995. Creator Bill Watterson said at the time that he wanted to ex­plore a can­vas be­yond the four pan­els of a daily news­pa­per, and to work at what he called “a more thought­ful pace,” but has pro­duced lit­tle pub­lic work since then.

Michael Larabel is the prin­ci­pal au­thor of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a fo­cus on en­rich­ing the Linux hard­ware ex­pe­ri­ence. Michael has writ­ten more than 20,000 ar­ti­cles cov­er­ing the state of Linux hard­ware sup­port, Linux per­for­mance, graph­ics dri­vers, and other top­ics. Michael is also the lead de­vel­oper of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org au­to­mated bench­mark­ing soft­ware. He can be fol­lowed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or con­tacted via MichaelLarabel.com.