Vehicles associated with protesters are being tracked via a nationwide system of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras. One man, who has no criminal record, was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after a "protest" marker was placed against his car after he attended a small protest against duck and pheasant shooting. ANPR "interceptor teams" are being deployed on roads leading to protests to monitor attendance.
One of the creepiest details to emerge in the shooting rampage were reports that troops from nearby Fort Rucker were brought into Samson and other surrounding areas to patrol the streets. This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, every freedom-loving American's worst nightmare. ...Strangely enough, there was almost no media coverage of the occupation -- you had to rely on various right-wing outlets like CNSNews.com, whose article I blogged at the time, or the left-wing Democratic Underground.
Powell's apology ... for his use of faulty intelligence prior to the Iraq War grabbed the headlines at the time, but he also delivered a far less-noticed warning against what Olbermann now calls "an entire aspect of the nexus of politics and terror."
A disabled pensioner was hauled before the courts and charged with assault after she prodded a teenage 'hoodie' in the chest with her finger. Renate Bowling, 71, confronted the 17-year-old youth in the street after stones were thrown at her home. During the conversation the frail widow, who fled to Britain from Communist East Germany and walks with a steel frame, prodded the youth in the chest with her finger.
The 'Internet Eyes' service involves players scouring thousands of CCTV cameras installed in shops, businesses and town centres across Britain looking for law-breakers. Players who help catch the most criminals each month will win cash prizes up to 1,000.
President Barack Obama has quietly decided to bypass Congress and allow the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects without charges. The move, which was controversial when the idea was first floated in The Washington Post in May, has sparked serious concern among civil liberties advocates. Such a decision allows the president to unilaterally hold "combatants" without habeas corpus -- a legal term literally meaning "you shall have the body" -- which forces prosecutors to charge a suspect with a crime to justify the suspect's detention.
The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday. Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law's authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called ''lone wolf'' terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps.
Welcome to Tiburon. Click. Your presence has been noted. The posh and picturesque town that juts into San Francisco Bay is poised to do something unprecedented: use cameras to record the license plate number of every vehicle that crosses city limits.
The East Hampton Town Police Department will acquire a license plate reader (LPR), which will allow cameras on a passing patrol car to read the license plates of nearby cars and check them against Motor Vehicle Department records automatically, within the next few months. Funded through a grant from the district attorneys office, East Hampton Town Chief of Police Todd Sarris said he is waiting for the equipment to arrive. ... Cameras on the LPR system can read the license plates of parked or moving vehicles. According to Chief Sarris, the LPR system will be an effective enforcement tool and a deterrent to those who drive with suspended registrations.
Police in Grand Forks are testing a new system that scans license plates of passing vehicles. Police say the device reads an average of 3,500 license plates daily to see if any are stolen or if the owners are wanted by authorities. The license numbers are checked through the FBI's National Crime Information Center and other databases.
Jacqueline Mercado, a 33-year-old Peruvian immigrant, took a few photos of her young children at bath time. A week later, Richardson police were rummaging through her house for kiddie porn, and a state child welfare worker came to take her kids away. The photo in question: Jacqueline Mercado and Johnny Fernandez say they took this image last October to memorialize the breast-feeding stage of their son's life. Below: The Lucca Madonna, painted in the 15th century by the Dutch master Jan van Eyck. Defense lawyers argued that while breast-feeding images are a second-degree felony in Richardson, they are also on public display in the finest art museums in the world.
Two people have been successfully prosecuted for refusing to provide authorities with their encryption keys, resulting in landmark convictions that may have carried jail sentences of up to five years. The government said today it does not know their fate. The power to force people to unscramble their data was granted to authorities in October 2007. Between 1 April, 2008 and 31 March this year the first two convictions were obtained.
A 34-YEAR-OLD woman, the mother of a 12-year-old girl, has been locked up in a Virginia jail for three weeks and could remain there for at least another month. Her crime? Blogging about the police. Elisha Strom, who appears unable to make the $750 bail, was arrested outside Charlottesville on July 16 when police raided her house, confiscating notebooks, computers and camera equipment.
It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when its almost illegal to be poor. You wont be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, youre well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the 80s and 90s. If youre lying on a sidewalk, whether youre homeless or a millionaire, youre in violation of the ordinance, a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole Frances immortal observation that ``the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.''
Then the group noticed five or six police cruisers surrounding two cars in an apparent traffic stop on the other side of the street. It seemed to Tuma that was more cops than necessary. "That's why I hate the police," Tuma said. He told the Huffington Post that in a loud sing-song voice, he then chanted, "I hate the police, I hate the police."
Federal law now criminalizes activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. Consequently, every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law and end up serving time in federal prison.
Equality Maryland, the state's largest gay rights group, was among the peaceful protest groups to be classified as terrorists in a Maryland State Police database. The group was designated a "security threat" by the Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, which also kept dossiers on dozens of activists and at least a dozen groups. Police kept files on Equality Maryland's plans to hold rallies outside the State House in Annapolis to press for legislation reversing the state's ban on same-sex marriage. They plan to purge the files.
The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft. The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.
When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police. ... Never did Jacqueline Mercado imagine that four rolls of film dropped off at an Eckerd Drugs one-hour photo lab near her home would turn her life inside out, threaten to send her to jail and prompt the state to take away her kids.
As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens. Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones. Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls. It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.
"Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews", according to the report. The proviso that any type of blog could be scrutinized frames this assault on free speech in a wider context than just individuals making claims about products advertised on their websites.
Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected. That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate. The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records."
Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as "low-level terrorism," according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
More than 300 elite Scotland Yard detectives are suspected of defrauding the taxpayer of millions of pounds by abusing their corporate credit cards, the Observer can disclose.
More than 2,000 10 and 11-year-olds will see a short film, which urges them to tell the police, their parents or a teacher if they hear anyone expressing extremist views. The film has been made by school liaison officers and Eastern Divisions new Preventing Violent Extremism team, based at Blackburn. It uses cartoon animals to get across safety messages. A lion explains that terrorists can look like anyone, while a cat tells pupils that should get help if they are being bullied and a toad tells them how to cross the road.
