In places like Pakistan, people have grudgingly learned to live with the psychological impact of omnipresent drones. They may hate and fear the incessant buzzing of the unmanned aerial vehicles overhead -- and hate the United States all the more for having to hear it -- but on a daily basis there's not much one … Continue reading Military drones could replace police helicopters within a decade
Tag: police
This week, Reuters published a lengthy three part series on deaths linked to police use of Tasers, the "less lethal" stun gun weapons that have become ubiquitous among law enforcement agencies in the United States over the past two decades or so. While the series, "Shock Tactics" is worth reading in its entirety, for … Continue reading Tasers linked to hundreds of deaths despite company denials
Cases of random people impersonating police officers, confusingly to many of the rest of us, are not uncommon. A recently revealed investigation, however, flips the typical script -- with real federal agents posing as members of a fake federal law enforcement agency in order to obtain over a million dollars worth of military gear through … Continue reading Military gives $1.2m of equipment to federal agents posing as police
The last few years have seen the rapid rise of body-worn cameras used by police departments around the United States, fueled by tens of millions of dollars in Justice Department funding. While originally justified on the basis of increasing police accountability and transparency, however, body cameras' usefulness is in question as they begin to incorporate … Continue reading Police body cameras increasingly incorporate facial recognition
Last year, U.S. police used a robot to kill someone for the first time following a mass shooting in Dallas, Texas. Now, this disturbing trend towards automation in policing could move a step further towards normalization. A familiar piece of American foreign policy -- the use of lethal weaponized drones -- may become a part … Continue reading Connecticut bill would allow lethal police drones
The American Civil Liberties Union of California revealed on Tuesday that it has obtained records from prominent social media companies showing that up until recently they had agreements with a controversial data mining company called Geofeedia that markets its social media surveillance services to law enforcement agencies. The companies named in the ACLU report -- … Continue reading Facebook let surveillance company monitor its favorite protest group
An article published Wednesday by the Intercept reveals new details of how Apple works with law enforcement when faced with a court order. Though this new information does not come as much of a surprise, it calls Apple's privacy posturing into question, and comes amidst other revelations that make it particularly troubling. The new revelations … Continue reading Apple Messages metadata added to list of widely abused police resources
Following the death by bomb-armed-robot of the suspect in last week's cop killings in Dallas, which apparently involved an improvised setup that the local police department's robot wasn't built to be used for, a public outcry over police access to high tech weaponry has erupted. "The Dallas Police Department’s unprecedented use of an explosive-laden robot … Continue reading Dallas killer robot raises fears of slippery slope
Three years after the Boston Marathon bombing, previously undisclosed documents continue to emerge that challenge official explanations of circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack, specifically relating to actions of the FBI. In the aftermath of the bombing, it was widely reported that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers sought in connection with the attack who … Continue reading New Documents Raise More Boston Bombing Questions
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