• Local police not required to detain illegals for ICE

    Internal DHS documents reveal local law enforcement agencies are not required to hold undocumented immigrants when requested by the federal government; a coalition of groups against the controversial Secure Communities program obtained a total of three documents under a Freedom of Information request that clarified the policy of detainers for local law enforcement agencies

  • Mathematicians help LAPD fight gangs

    UCLA mathematicians working with the Los Angeles Police Department to analyze crime patterns have designed a mathematical algorithm to identify street gangs involved in unsolved violent crimes

  • U.K. police technology allows tracking, controlling cell phones remotely

    Civil rights groups in the United Kingdom are up in arms over the revelation that the U.K.’s largest police force, the Metropolitan Police, has acquired the technology to shut down cell phones remotely, intercept communications, and gather data on thousands of users in a targeted area

  • Law agencies want YouTube police brutality videos removed

    In Google’s latest Transparency Report, the company revealed that there has been a 70 percent increase in requests by law enforcement agencies to remove police brutality videos from YouTube; according to the report, from January to June of 2011 the “number of content removal requests we received increased by 70 percent” compared to the period from July to December of 2010

  • BVS helps U.K. prisons detect cell phones

    Berkeley Varitronics Systems (BVS) has made quite a splash in recent weeks announcing a new partnership to distribute its cell phone detection technology in the United Kingdom, adding several options to its line of multi-band transmitters, and teaming up with Los Angeles Laker Andrew Goudelock

  • Texas county police buys drone that can carry weapons

    The police in Montgomery County — and area north of Houston, Texas — is the first local police in the United States to deploy a drone that can carry weapons; the police says it will be used in chases of escaping criminals and tracking drug shipments

  • Eight NY police officers charged for gun-smuggling

    Eight police officers in New York City were charged on Tuesday for taking part in a gun-smuggling ring; the men stand accused of using their experience and authority to help illegally transport guns, slot machines, cigarettes, and counterfeit goods across state lines; among the items the men are accused of smuggling are twenty firearms including three M-16 assault rifles, a shotgun, and sixteen handguns

  • Riot police clear Oakland of Occupy Wall Street protestors

    Early Tuesday morning, police officers clad in riot-gear arrested seventy-five people in Oakland, California as they cleared city hall of Occupy Wall Street protestors; the protestors had been camped out in front of Oakland’s city hall for about two weeks, before hundreds of police officers and sheriff’s deputies from more than a dozen local law enforcement agencies descended upon them firing tear gas and beanbag launchers

  • FBI training elite deep-diving counterterrorism unit

    To bolster its counterterrorism capabilities, the FBI has created an elite group of special agents trained to track terrorism underwater

  • Detecting criminals coming back to the scene of the crime

    Law enforcement officials believe that perpetrators of certain crimes, most notably arson, do come back to the scene of the crime to witness their handiwork; similarly, U.S. military in the Middle East feel that improvised explosive device (IED) bomb makers return to see the results of their work in order to evolve their designs; scientists have developed a method to identify these individuals

  • DHS developing "pre-crime" surveillance tech

    Researchers at DHS are working to develop technology that could catch individuals before they commit a crime

  • U.S.: Iranian agents tried to kill Saudi ambassador to U.S.

    The U.S. attorney general Eric Holde rannounced yesterday that the U.S. government has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States; Iran wired $100,000 into a U.S. bank account in August as a down payment for the hit; the assassins — the Iranians thought they were members of a Mexican drug cartel — were to receive $1.5 million if the hit was successful

  • German police uses backdoor Trojan to monitor Skype calls

    A backdoor Trojan capable of monitoring online activity and recording Skype calls has been detected — and is allegedly being used by the German police force

  • TraceSpan Communications shows new interception device

    DOCSIS Phantom intercepts target communications directly from the line and collects a hundred percent of the information in both directions, to and from the ISP or communications provider; the device allows interception of all data, including peer-to-peer communication, even when it does not pass through the ISP server

  • Calif. Allows warrantless searches of cell phones

    California Governor Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill which aimed to prohibit California police from conducting warrantless searches of the cell phones of people under arrest