• Bans on Facial Recognition Are Naïve — Hold Law Enforcement Accountable for Its Abuse

    The use of facial recognition technology has become a new target in the fight against racism and brutality in law enforcement. The current controversy over facial recognition purports to be about bias — inaccurate results related to race or gender. Osonde A. Osoba and Douglas Yeung write that “That could be fixed in the near future, but it wouldn’t repair the underlying dilemma: The imbalance of power between citizens and law enforcement. On this, facial recognition ups the ante. These tools can strip individuals of their privacy and enable mass surveillance.

  • COVID-19 Reveals Need for More Research about Guns

    Shortages of toilet paper at neighborhood grocery stores have become a symbol of the nation’s response to the COVID-19 virus, but recent reports suggest that people also reacted to the pandemic by purchasing firearms and ammunition in massive numbers. Andrew R. Morral and Jeremy Travis write in USA Today (republished by RAND) that eventually, the pandemic will recede, scientific rigor will lead to treatments or a vaccine, and life will start to return to a new normal—but those new firearms aren’t going anywhere. They ask: “What does this mean for public safety? And what can policymakers do to ensure that a spike in sales doesn’t result in more injuries or deaths?”

  • Flight Tests Show B61-12 Compatible with F-15E Strike Eagle

    Dropped from above 25,000 feet, the mock B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb was in the air for approximately 55 seconds before hitting and embedding in the lakebed, splashing a 40- to 50-foot puff of desert dust from the designated impact area at Sandia National Laboratories’ Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. That strike was the last in a series of flight tests designed to demonstrate the refurbished B61-12’s compatibility with the U.S. Air Force’s F-15E Strike Eagle jet fighter.

  • Yes, Big Brother IS Watching: Russian Schools Installing Surveillance Systems Called “Orwell”

    You might think governments seeking digital oversight of their citizens would avoid invoking the author who coined the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” and implanted the nightmare of total state surveillance in the imaginations of millions of readers. Think again, because Russian officials appear to disagree. In the first phase of the project, the “total surveillance” system will be installed in 43,000 schools across Russia.

  • “Black Box” Study: Testing the Accuracy of Computer, Mobile Phone Forensics

    Digital forensics experts often extract data from computers and mobile phones that may contain evidence of a crime. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will conduct the first large-scale study to measure how well those experts do their job. But rather than testing the proficiency of individual experts, the study aims to measure the performance of the digital forensics community overall.

  • Forensics Laser Technology Can Detect Crime Scene Smokers

    Raman spectroscopy is a technique that shines a monochromatic light (i.e. from a laser) on a sample and measures the intensity of scattered light. No two samples will produce the same Raman spectrum, offering a unique measurement that is similar to a fingerprint. Results are instantaneous and nondestructive, preserving the sample for future testing. Researchers developed a laser-light technology which allows investigators to determine if a smoker was at the crime scene based on biological evidence.

  • As Trump Warns of Leftist Violence, a Dangerous Threat Emerges from the Right-Wing Boogaloo Movement

    A far-right extremist movement born on social media and fueled by anti-government rhetoric has emerged as a real-world threat in recent weeks, with federal authorities accusing some of its adherents of working to spark violence at largely peaceful protests roiling the nation. Craig Timberg writes that at a time when President Trump and other top U.S. officials have claimed — with little evidence — that leftist groups were fomenting violence, federal prosecutors have charged various supporters of a right-wing movement called the “boogaloo bois” with using the protests as cover for killing, or plotting to kill, police officers and other government officials. “The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.

  • Settling the Debate over Whether the Modern World Is Less Violent

    While the first half of the twentieth century marked a period of extraordinary violence, the world has become more peaceful in the past thirty years, a new statistical analysis of the global death toll from war suggests. The study, by mathematicians at the University of York, used new techniques to address the long-running debate over whether battle deaths have been declining globally since the end of the Second World War.

  • Trial of Two Neo-Nazi Suspects in Killing of German Politician Begins

    A German court on Tuesday began hearing the legal case against two neo-Nazis accused of killing a regional German politician last year – the first political assassination by the far-right in Germany since the Second World War (there were several assassinations of leading businesspeople in the 1970s, carried out by left-wing terrorists). The crime shocked Germany and highlighted the steadily growing threat of far-right violent extremism in the country.

  • Blind Networks in the Extreme-Right

    A potent combination of technology and a fractured extreme-right is producing innovative organizations that are harder to police. Anonymous networks can draw on a pool of ready-politicized recruits and offer internet-bound activists an opportunity to get involved in physical activism at minimal cost and seemingly with little risk. The scope for more coordinated forms of direct action seems limited under this organizational arrangement, but this type of activity is a good opportunity for those looking to make the leap from digital-only to real-world activism.

  • Firearm Use, Storage Restrictions Associated with Reduction in Firearm Deaths

    Three common types of gun laws are associated with changes in the rate of firearm deaths, with the most-restrictive combination of the laws estimated to result in an 11 percent reduction in firearm deaths, according to a new study.

  • Nuclear Weapon Modernization Continues but Outlook for Arms Control Is Bleak: Report

    The just-released annual report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) assesses the current state of armaments, disarmament, and international security. The report finds is that despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2019, all nuclear weapon-possessing states continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals.

  • European Police Services Turn to Tasers as Weapon of Choice

    On Friday, the French government announced that French police would no longer be allowed to use chokeholds on suspects. More police officers would instead be equipped with stun guns. About 15,000 French police officers, out of a force of 240,000 officers nationwide, are already equipped with stun guns. The police in Italy, the Netherlands, England, Wales and other European countries have been increasing their use of tasers to subdue suspects instead of other methods.

  • Police Unions Are One of the Biggest Obstacles to Transforming Policing

    There’s a major, and usually insurmountable, obstacle to reform: police unions. Research suggests that these unions play a critical role in thwarting the transformation of police departments. Across the United States, police are shielded from both public and departmental accountability by multiple layers of contractual and legislative protections. Nearly all of these measures reflect the political will and political might of police unions.

  • High-Tech Surveillance Amplifies Police Bias and Overreach

    Local, state and federal law enforcement organizations use an array of surveillance technologies to identify and track protesters, from facial recognition to military-grade drones. Police use of these national security-style surveillance techniques – justified as cost-effective techniques that avoid human bias and error – has grown hand-in-hand with the increased militarization of law enforcement. Extensive research, including my own, has shown that these expansive and powerful surveillance capabilities have exacerbated rather than reduced bias, overreach and abuse in policing, and they pose a growing threat to civil liberties.