The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.
posted by Trurl
on Jun 13, 2011 -
46 comments
A mechanic noticed a strange device under the hood of a customer's car and offered to remove it for him. The customer, an Egyptian-American student named Yasir Afifi, shows his roommate, who posts pictures of it on Reddit to find out what the heck it is. Turns out it's an
FBI GPS tracking device, and the agency turned up quickly demanding he give it back. The ACLU is reportedly getting involved.
[more inside]
posted by richyoung
on Oct 8, 2010 -
121 comments
Slate
goes meta on Balloon Boy. Some good questions here about the accuracy of law enforcement in determining veracity.
posted by Jimmy Havok
on Nov 2, 2009 -
30 comments
High speed chase in which the pursuing cop shoots out the back window of the fleeing vehicle, leaps out of his own car onto the target car, climbs through the shotgunned window pane, and finally throws the driver out of the car, Terminator style.
posted by lilbrudder
on Jun 23, 2006 -
40 comments
One of Ashcroft's "credible sources" from last week's terror warning came from
Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a group that has also claimed responsibility for the blackout in the Northeast last year, the power outage in London, the Madrid bombing and has been called
"notoriously unreliable" by U.S. officials. “The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington". Ashcroft blames the FBI who have admitted that claims that terrorists were 90 percent ready to attack came not from al-Qaida, but from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades’ statements.
posted by gfrobe
on May 29, 2004 -
12 comments
Thank God for Police hypocrisy for keeping me so amused. Seriously though, this is one of the best articles I've read in a long time. It's a five part series regarding the controversy of redlight cameras, and the evidence that those that administer them are in it for the $$$. For one, they seem to be placed on high-traffic / short yellow light intersections instead of the high-accident intersections. Oh, and it's made D.C. alone over $15 million in two years. Read it to find out how the researchers stretched numbers to get " tiny 3 percent increase in rear-enders" from a 767% increase.
posted by LuxFX
on Apr 9, 2002 -
35 comments
The new COINTELPRO? In an age of massive databases, shared law enforcement intranets, and wire-taps that can collect terabytes of data, privacy may well become an antiquated notion as legislators and law enforcement work to fight the current menace.
posted by skallas
on Jan 28, 2002 -
5 comments
America's Finest! I don't know what my favorite part of this article is, the quote "their hearts were in the right place" (as well as other body parts) or the law that says police officers can have sex if they are in a dangerous or "life-threatening situation."
posted by sassone
on Sep 8, 2001 -
6 comments
More than half of all black men report that they have been the victims of racial profiling by police, according to a survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University.
Overwhelming majorities of blacks, Latinos and Asians also report they occasionally experience at least one of the following expressions of prejudice: poor service in stores or restaurants, disparaging comments, and encounters with people who clearly are frightened or suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity.
This is 2001?
posted by owillis
on Jun 22, 2001 -
62 comments
Why Cops Shoot Police columnist Fred Reed gives practical examples of simulated situations that provoke gunplay. "Test yourself in a dark alley." Maybe the men in blue aren't as brutal as you think.
posted by Erendadus
on May 19, 2001 -
15 comments
