surveillance
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Baltimore Just Approved the Use of Privately Funded Surveillance Planes. This Will Not End Well
Why don’t superheroes go to city council meetings? When Superman is desperately trying to prevent Lex Luthor from disintegrating the entire south side of Gotham, he never seems to wonder how Lex got funding for a nuclear-powered laser gun. Batman should spend more time poring through grant applications to see who gave Mr. Freeze the…
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In Wake of Deadly Charlottesville Protests, University of North Carolina Police Surveilled…Anti-Racism Activists
Police at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, alongside state investigators, monitored the cellphones of antiracism protesters demonstrating against the campus’ Confederate statue, “Silent Sam,” in 2017. NBC News broke the story, which comes just a week after the UNC System revealed it paid upwards of $2.5 million to a Confederate group to take the…
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DHS Says It Will Collect DNA From Detained Immigrants, Including Children
Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced that it will be collecting DNA samples from tens of thousands of immigrants detained in federal facilities, including children, and input that genetic data into a national criminal database. During a Wednesday conference call with reporters, senior DHS officials said the Justice Department was planning to expand upon…
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Eye in the Sky: LAPD Makes Drone Usage Permanent
Anyone who’s lived in L.A. knows that helicopters—particularly, ones manned by the LAPD—are a staple of the city’s skies. Now, a small fleet of drones will be permanently added to the department’s surveillance arsenal, raising concerns from civil liberties advocates. The permanent addition of drones was approved unanimously by a five-member civilian police commission on…
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Chicago’s New GPS-Tracking Ankle Monitors Can Record Kids Without Their Consent
As cities and towns across America come to grips with the country’s mass incarceration problem, many jurisdictions are looking to digital surveillance, particularly ankle monitors, for solutions. But as a new report detailing Chicago’s use of electronic monitoring reveals, these technologies can be every bit as harmful to the people wearing them as putting them…
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Did NYPD Spy on Black Lives Matter Protesters? Judge Rules Police Must Disclose Surveillance Data
A New York State judge ruled on Monday that the NYPD has to disclose whether it spied on Black Lives Matter protesters and interfered with their ability to use their cellphones at protests. The ruling, which came after the New York Civil Liberties Union and protesters affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives were denied…
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Let There Be No Mistake: If You’re Outspoken and Black or Muslim, ‘They’ Are Definitely Watching You
Because I am predisposed to take everything with a grain of salt and was born with the inability to have delusions of grandeur, when friends and acquaintances tell me, “You know they are watching you,” I usually dismiss it with the same relative inattention I pay to accusations of reverse racism or white oppression. After…