"Silicon Valley firms are building surveillance and profiling tools to help government agents make sense of the massive amount of information available on social media and in publicly accessible data sets. Are they using cutting-edge technologies to keep Americans safe, or laying the groundwork for a police state?"
"The body cam of a fellow officer showed one officer picking up the small packet from the ground and placing it in the suspect’s wallet — before making a show of discovering it multiple times for the camera. According Shields’ attorney, Steve Levine, officer Lee seemed stunned when he was shown the video while on the witness stand, saying the officer, 'Looked dumbstruck to me. Period. He had really no answer.' According to an expert discussing how the body cams work, the officer may not have realized that the camera was running 30 seconds before he believed he activated it."
"Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy 'smart' cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior. The program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology could lead to secret 'profiling' and misuse of data."
"What if this bulk surveillance is about power and control and not about safety? What if the use of intelligence data for political purposes and not for safety is a profound danger to democracy? What if government can't keep us safe? What if we falsely think that it does keep us safe? What if that delusion makes us less safe? What if government's bulk acquisition of private data makes us less free? What if government works not for us but for itself? What do we do about it?"
"I was surprised to learn that most state bars have no requirement that prosecutors believe that the evidence they present is truthful. Courts have ruled that even if prosecutors knowingly break the law — such as detaining defense witnesses in order to prevent them from testifying at trial — those who were harmed by the prosecutors’ behavior have no recourse."
"With military-grade equipment available for the cost of pick-up, police forces have been stocking up. While some of that equipment appears actually to have been used in post-hurricane relief work, most of it is better suited for SWAT raids, intimidating protesters, and killing people."
"In George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, if you are an ordinary citizen found guilty of capital murder, the mandatory sentence is either life in prison or the death penalty. If, however, you are a former president of the United States responsible for initiating two illegal wars of aggression, which killed 7,000 U.S. servicemen and at least 210,000 civilians, displaced more than 10 million people from their homes, condoned torture, initiated a global drone assassination campaign, and imprisoned people for years without substantive evidence or trial in Guantanamo Bay, the punishment evidently is to be given the Thayer Award at West Point."
"That planned modernization would increase the total costs of maintaining the current number of nuclear weapons and delivery system by 50 percent over normal operating costs, according to the CBO. The trillion-dollar question on everybody’s mind is: How exactly will the US government foot the bill for such a massive program?"
"It’s very bad parenting always to be ready to pay the kids’ debts. It’s similarly bad citizenship always to be willing to pay the government’s debts."
"They didn't find any drugs on her, but handcuffed the teen anyway before coercing her into sex, her attorney, Michael David, told the New York Post. The detectives, from NYPD's Brooklyn South narcotics squad, have not denied that they engaged in sex acts with the alleged victim, but claimed they were consensual."