police

NYPD creates Twitter-sniffing, Facebook-frisking unit

Why walk the streets when you can sit back at Starbucks, open your laptop, and listen to them?

Why pay snitches when you have some of the finest snitches of all in Facebook and Twitter? Not the companies themselves, you understand. Just the people on their sites.

That seems to be the spirit of a new unit created by the New York Police Department.

Conscious of the realities of virtual communication, the department has, so the New York Daily News tells me, decided bad deeds can be anticipated or corralled on Twitter and Facebook. So it has set up a … Read more

Verizon workers go on strike

Comcast offers a $9.95 Internet Essentials service to low-income families, the FBI releases an iPhone app that helps parents with a missing child, and Verizon workers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic go on strike after negotiations fail to produce a contract.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Verizon workers go on strike HP TouchPad 4G and $50 in the App Catalog Education iMac? AntiSec hackers post police data Comcast $10 Internet Essentials plan FBI Child IDapp in App Store Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (HD) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS HD

Two N.C. police departments going green with dual-fueled fleets

Most folks only think of propane as the gas that fires their grill, but the clean-burning fuel has become an alternative for municipalities looking to save money.

According to the Department of Energy, propane is considered clean-running because it releases 20 to 40 percent less carbon monoxide and about 80 percent less particulate matter than gasoline. The Department of Energy is funding programs around the U.S. to introduce cleaner government fleet vehicles.

This week, for example, dual-fueled patrol cars that run on propane and gasoline have rolled out of two North Carolina police departments as a cost-cutting measure, reported … Read more

Taxi dash cam nabs phone thief in the act

Sometimes, when it comes to hidden cameras, good people can be watching.

That must surely be the view of a woman who was walking down a San Francisco street and had her cell phone snatched from her by a miscreant.

In shock, she paused for a few seconds before wondering what she should do. Before she had time to decide, a cab pulled up beside her. The driver explained that he'd not only seen the incident but also recorded it.

More precisely, his cab's 180-degree dashboard video camera had recorded it.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the … Read more

Arizona lawmen hit a third time by hackers

For the third time in a week, hackers have released information pilfered from compromised online accounts of Arizona law enforcement officers.

Under the "AntiSec" umbrella, the combined Anonymous-LulzSec hacker group is targeting government agencies, financial institutions, and other high-profile targets. AntiSec first released e-mails, phone numbers, passwords, and other information belonging to the Arizona Department of Public Safety on June 23. The hackers said they are targeting the police organization to protest "racial-profiling anti-immigrant" policies, specifically SB1070, which makes it a crime to be in Arizona without documentation proving United States residency.

Earlier this week, AntiSec … Read more

Is this the end for red light cameras?

There seems to be a strange whiff of honesty swirling around the robot policemen known as red light cameras.

In different parts of the world, authorities are wondering whether there is any real benefit in having them at all. Yes, even financial benefit.

In the home of the automobile--no, not Detroit, Los Angeles--the Police Commission is, according to MSNBC, requesting that red light cameras should be removed before the Lakers and Clippers begin their new season.

You might wonder whether these objections are based on curiously moral grounds. Well, some objectors do, indeed, believe that red light cameras are merely … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1488: Sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads (Podcast)

On today's show, it's the Summer of Hackers: Anonymous hits the Spanish police website and threatens the Federal Reserve (which, frankly, we find to be a target that's probably worthy of a little DDoS action). Plus, a nation-state may have hacked IMF, but they're not saying much, and the Bitcoin market crashes (buy low!). Plus, scientists create jellyfish that can shoot tiny, weak lasers ... a stepping stone to the scariest sharks ever.

Anonymous takes down Spanish police site

After Spain's national police arrested three hackers allegedly linked to Anonymous and the Sony PlayStation Network hacks, the amorphous collective claims to have successfully taken the agency's site offline in retaliation.

According to a Saturday posting on AnonOps Communications, "Operation Policia (#OpPolicia) is the name for the successful DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack that paralyzed the Official National Police website (Página Oficial del Cuerpo Nacional de Policía www.policia.es) for hours on Saturday, making it inaccessible to visitors. The DDoS attack is a protest tactic often deployed by Anonymous."

The … Read more

Police use sat-nav data to place speed cameras

Those worried about what location information their phones are gathering might want to scrutinize their car navigation systems first.

Police in the Netherlands have used aggregate data from TomTom's satellite navigation systems to install speed cameras where drivers tend to exceed the speed limit, TomTom said yesterday. The practice doesn't involve any individual data, but TomTom is barring it in the future after customers objected.

The company's sat-nav systems can send position data back to TomTom, and the company uses the information for purposes such as routing people around traffic jams and providing accurate estimates of journey … Read more