Law enforcement

11 Oct 2023
When the Los Angeles Police Department opted to monitor the messages posted in forums on Neighbors, a companion app to Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, the system forwarded over 13,000 messages in just over two years. Research shows, however, that this type of surveillance does a poor job of
08 Feb 2021
The 2020 Belarus protests were the largest in the country's history and brought an unprecedented crackdown, in which protesters nationwide were tortured and criminally prosecuted as a means of repressing peaceful assembly. A report finds that these cases became political as the government violated
19 Jun 2020
US Customs and Border Protection Data show that the Department of Homeland Security deployed helicopters, airplanes, and drones over 15 cities, including New York City, Buffalo, Dayton OH, and Philadelphia, where demonstrators assembled to protest the killing of George Floyd and collected at least
26 Apr 2021
A surveillance plane flown by the Florida Highway Patrol circled repeatedly over a news conference in which two civil rights lawyers announced a lawsuit against local police and demanded a federal investigation into the killing of two unarmed black teenagers. Publicly available flight data confirmed
23 Mar 2021
As the long Minnesota winter came to an end in March 2021, both protesters and police began preparing for the beginning of tunneling work to build the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. Intended to update the decaying previous structure and double its capacity. Police practiced a variety of crowd control
10 Sep 2020
The Citizen app, which was designed to allow users to see unverified reports of crime in their neighbourhoods, is partnering with Los Angeles County for its contact tracing app, SafePass, which uses Bluetooth and GPS to track interactions with other people. Citizen has been criticised in the past
An “intelligence note” found in a trove of law enforcement documents known as BlueLeaks shows that the US Department of Homeland Security fears that face masks are breaking law enforcement facial recognition. The note came from the post-9/11 Minnesota Fusion Center and was distributed on May 26
24 Jun 2020
The October 2019 Presidential Decree 98/2019 granted the Hellenic Police the option of using drones in policing and border management for broad purposes; previously they were limited to using them for purposes such as preventing forest fires or helping rescue people after a natural disaster or an
05 Jun 2020
UK police reported to be planning separate contact tracing system Police forces in the UK are planning their own contact tracing system because they are concerned that giving details to the national contact tracing system would compromise undercover operations and working methods. Options under
03 Jun 2020
Zoom said it would deliver end-to-end encryption as one of a number of security enhancements to its service, but it will only be available to enterprise and business customers whose identity they can verify and not on the free service. The company says it wants to be able to work with law
26 May 2020
Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people in England are 54% more likely than white people to be fined for violations of the coronavirus rules, according to an analysis of data published by the National Police Chiefs' Council showing the racial breakdown of the 13,445 fixed-penalty notices recorded
01 Jun 2020
Concerns that contact tracing could expand to purposes beyond public health gained some weight when the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner John Harrington told press that law enforcement was using “contact tracing” to investigate protesters arrested after the murder of George Floyd
A remote-controlled yellow and black robot dog built by Boston Dynamics has been deployed in a Singapore central park for a two-week trial in which the dog politely, in a female voice, in English, reminds cyclists and joggers to stay at least one metre apart. Breaking the lockdown rules attracts
03 May 2020
The state of Utah gave the AI company Banjo real time access to state traffic cameras, CCTV, and public safety cameras, 911 emergency systems, location data for state-owned vehicles, and other data that the company says it's combining with information collected from social media, satellites, and
06 May 2020
In Colombia, Peru, and Panama, quarantine regulations assign men and women different days to go out. For transgender people, these gender-based restrictions mean discrimination and violence for law enforcement and others, leading to numerous complaints. In Bogota, where law enforcement has been
24 Apr 2020
At least four law enforcement agencies in the US - two in California, and one in each of Maryland and Texas - are using drones to communicate with homeless people about maintaining social distance because encampments are located in areas that are difficult to access and police do not have to visit