A 5-year-old California boy who is missing after being swept away in floodwaters from the state's onslaught of storms reportedly reassured his mother in the moments before they were separated. 

"Mom, it’s OK," Kyle Doan told his mother Lindsy Doan. "Just be calm."

Those were the last words he said to her before the water pulled his hand out of hers.

The family had been driving to Lillian Larsen Elementary School – Kyle was looking forward to seeing his friends after vacation and recovering from a broken leg – in their Chevy Traverse before Doan lost control of the steering and the SUV was carried off Paso Robles' San Marcos Road and pinned against a tree. 

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Doan, a special education teacher at the school, did not think the water flowing over the creek crossing was deeper than normal. They had driven the same route on Sunday, splashing through the waters without a problem.

"Yesterday I got to the point where I think I ran out of tears," she told The Associated Press. "I just don’t know what to expect anymore. I mean, I’ve tried to do a Google search: How long can a child not eat? How long can they be in wet clothes?... We’re worried because I don’t know if they’re going to be able to find him."

The days-long hunt for her son, who is unable to swim, includes more than a hundred people. 

National Guard members, dive teams and searchers using dogs and drones combed through driftwood on the banks of San Marcos Creek. 

So far, only one of his Nike shoes has been found.

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Neil Collins, who helped rescue Doan, told the news agency that he had noticed another body floating in the middle of the creek and thought it looked lifeless. 

It was only when Kyle's mother made it to shore that he realized the other figure was her child.

If Doan had floated another 100 yards, Collins said he is not sure he could have helped her. 

"Time was running out," he said.

California residents have not seen a reprieve from dangerous weather that has claimed the lives of at least 18 people since the end of 2022.

More wet weather was forecast to pound areas already damaged by atmospheric rivers, with impacts felt through next week. 

The plume of moisture lurking off the northern coast stretched all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, making the storm "a true Pineapple Express," according to the National Weather Service.

Despite the precipitation, most of the state has remained in extreme or severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iranian authorities may be using new technology to help enforce the country's strict dress code for women, expanding the use of facial recognition technology to issue fines and other penalties for those breaking the rules.

"Many people haven't been arrested in the streets," Shaparak Shajarizadeh, who fled from Iran to Canada in 2018 after multiple violations of Iran's strict laws and became an activist, told Wired in a report Tuesday. "They were arrested at their homes one or two days later."

Shajarizadeh is one of several observers of Iran who fear that the country's Islamist regime has begun to weaponize facial recognition technology to find and punish women who flaunt laws about their dress and appearance in public, a setback for activists amid months of protesting for women's rights and regime change.

The fears that Iran could be using the technology come a year after such a system was proposed by Iranian lawmakers. Their calls were heard by the head of the government agency responsible for enforcing morality laws, who in a September interview said facial recognition would be used "to identify inappropriate and unusual movements," and a "failure to observe hijab laws."

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Mahsa Alimardani, a University of Oxford researcher who focuses on freedom of expression in Iran, believes there is evidence that the technology is already in use. Speaking to Wired, she cited multiple reports of women who have received citations in the mail for violations of the hijab law despite not having any interactions with law enforcement.

While there could be other explanations for how the women we caught in violation of the law, Alimardani pointed out that the regime has spent years building a biometric database of all citizens, which includes face scans. 

For years, Iran has used monitoring of social media and automated digital surveillance to enforce laws and target critics of the regime, distancing itself from the types of physical patrols that eventually sparked months of protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in police custody.

While Iran reportedly cut back on or abolished the morality police amid the outrage, this was seen by some as a victory for activists. Others noted that Iran could step up its use of technology to fill the void.

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Facial recognition has become a desired tool for authoritarian regimes across the globe in recent years, but not every country has the resources to implement it effectively. That would not be a problem for Iran, which has the technical infrastructure for widespread surveillance.

"Iran is a case where they have both the governmental will and the physical capability," Cathryn Grothe, a research analyst at Freedom House, told Wired.

Perhaps the most infamous example of widespread use of facial recognition technology is China, which has long used similar technologies to track its citizens and stamp out dissent. The Iranian regime may be benefiting from the Chinese experience to build its own program, purchasing much of its surveillance technology from Chinese camera and artificial intelligence company Tiandy.

Tiandy, one of the largest security camera manufacturers in the world, makes the bulk of its sales in China, but in recent years listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian police and government agencies as customers on its website.

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Last month, the U.S. Department of Commerce sanctioned Tiandy for its role in the oppression of China's Uyghur Muslims and using technology developed in the U.S. to sell to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. Intel, at one time, was one of the U.S. companies selling technology to Tianady but said last month that it had ended its relationship with the company.

However, the Iranian regime has already put technology to use, with the country's traffic enforcement agency installing facial recognition systems in 2020 to issue fines for traffic violations. The technology has also been reportedly used to help enforce the country's dress code as well, with women receiving text messages warning them about wearing a hijab while in vehicles.

Iranian leaders have also hinted at new types of penalties for those who break the rules, something they believe facial recognition technology can help them enforce while lessening the risks that citizens have negative interactions with police. 

Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, who is the head of the country’s parliamentary legal and judicial committee, said last year that he supported penalties that include "exclusion from social services and financial fines'' for hijab violations.

"The use of face recording cameras can systematically implement this task and reduce the presence of the police, as a result of which there will be no more clashes between the police and citizens," he said in an interview with Iranian media.