Thomas F. Harrison reports: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struggled Wednesday to figure out whether police can use trickery to conduct unlimited surveillance of social media accounts even if they have no reason to think that anyone did anything wrong. The justices seemed to think that officers can generally conduct undercover operations but they were…
Category: U.S.
The Downside to Surveilling Your Neighbors
The Downside to Surveilling Your Neighbors In one town, police say products like Nextdoor and Ring are helping fight crime. But racism and vigilantism are pervasive on safety platforms By: Todd Feathers In late August, a resident of Mobile, Ala., posted a video on Nextdoor, a social media app that advertises itself as a place…
Cameras, Drones and X-Ray Vans: How 9/11 Transformed the N.Y.P.D. Forever
Ali Watkins reports: It was an unusual forearm tattoo that the police said led them to Luis Reyes, a 35-year-old man who was accused of stealing packages from a Manhattan building’s mailroom in 2019. But the truth was more complicated: Mr. Reyes had first been identified by the New York Police Department’s powerful facial recognition…
NC: Charters call health director’s actions ‘inappropriate’ after requesting student records amid Covid outbreak
Johanna F. Still reports: After deputies served “control measure orders” at two charter schools in Brunswick County, the schools’ leadership penned a letter to the board of commissioners this week to alert them of “inappropriate and precipitous” actions taken by the county health director. Last month county health director Cris Harrelson authorized two health orders…