Archive for the 'Police State' Category
Skype Makes Chats and User Data More Available to Police
July 26th, 2012Via: Washington Post: Skype, the online phone service long favored by political dissidents, criminals and others eager to communicate beyond the reach of governments, has expanded its cooperation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police, said industry and government officials familiar with the changes. Surveillance of the […]
Marine Corps Creates Law-Enforcement Battalions
July 23rd, 2012If you think that this is exclusively for deployment abroad, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya. Via: AP: The Marine Corps has created its first law-enforcement battalions — consolidated units of military police officers trained to investigate a variety of crimes. Combat in Iraq and Afghanistan has underscored the relevance of such a force, […]
Cops Seize Cell Phone, Impersonate Owner
July 21st, 2012Via: Ars Technica: Court says sending texts using a seized iPhone doesn’t violate privacy rights. In November 2009, police officers in the state of Washington seized an iPhone belonging to suspected drug dealer Daniel Lee. While the phone was in police custody, a man named Shawn Hinton sent a text message to the device, reading, […]
Georgia: Columbia County Code Enforcement Officer Enters Woman’s Bedroom Because Her Lawn Needed Mowing
July 11th, 2012Via: AJC: What would you do if you found a burly county agent in your bedroom, demanding that you cut your grass? Erica Masters of Martinez in Columbia County, near Augusta, captured such an encounter recently on her home surveillance camera when code compliance officer Jimmy Vowell entered her bedroom to demand she come out […]
NYPD Brands Couple as Professional Agitators for Posting Videos of Outrageous ‘Stop and Frisks’
July 9th, 2012Via: New York Post: A pair of Occupy Wall Street lovebirds has been branded “professional agitators” by the NYPD, who have plastered their mugs on flyers the couple says look like wanted posters. Christina Gonzalez, 25, and Matthew Swaye, 34, of Harlem say they’ve been singled out for simply posting dozens of videos on YouTube […]
ACLU-NJ Launches Smartphone App That Lets Users Secretly Record Police Stops
July 4th, 2012Via: CBS: New Jersey’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has taken its mission of policing the police to smartphones. The ACLU has released an app called “Police Tape” that lets users secretly record police stops. The ACLU’s Alexander Shalom said the app is easy to use. “There’s really only three buttons that the […]
Land of the Free: the Best Investigative Reporting on U.S. Prisons
July 1st, 2012Via: ProPublica: The U.S. has the highest reported incarceration rate in the world. We’ve rounded up some of the best investigative journalism on U.S. prisons and the problems that plague them. These stories cover juvenile justice, private prisons, immigration detention and other aspects of America’s vast incarceration system. Research Credit: noncompliant
SWAT Team Throws Flashbangs, Raids Wrong Home Due to Open WiFi Network
June 29th, 2012Via: Ars Technica: The long-standing, heavily documented militarization of even small-town American police forces was always going to create problems when it met anonymous Internet threats. And so it has, again—this time in Evansville, Indiana, where officers acted on some Topix postings threatening violence against local police. They then sent an entire SWAT unit to […]
Mexico City Airport Shooting Suspects Are Police
June 26th, 2012Via: MSNBC: Three policemen died in a shootout with two other officers suspected of drug trafficking at Mexico City’s airport on Monday, as panicked travelers scrambled for cover in the busy facility. The shootout occurred when three federal officers approached the two suspects in the airport’s Terminal 2, which handles international and domestic flights. Two […]
G4S Chief Predicts Mass Police Privatisation
June 21st, 2012Via: Guardian: Private companies will be running large parts of the UK’s police service within five years, according to the world’s biggest security firm. David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in […]
