If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone or iPod touch with little to no regard for the law, maybe it’s time you reconsider your evil ways. Apparently, jailbreaking your iDevice will get the cops on your back if you’re not careful. → Read More
Here’s a fun story. Police in Australia thought they were being mighty clever when they took over an “underground hacking forum.” (The forum is r00t-y0u.org, though it seems to be down right now.) One of the hackers on the forum then retaliated by breaking into police computers using a simple SQL injection. Security fail. → Read More
This is a few days old, so apologies in advance for that. Anyway, the Washington D.C. police chief, Cathy Lanier, has chided people who use radar-detecting technology, including iPhone applications, for their “cowardly tactic.” With apps such as EyeWiki, people are able to flag known locations of traffic cameras using GPS. Then, as you approach a flagged camera, the app rings out, “Hey, slow down! There’s a traffic camera nearby.” Police say using such technology could endanger lives, but that doesn’t quite make sense. → Read More
Some privacy news to freak you out this fine Monday. A court ruling in Wisconsin means that police there can track your movements with a GPS device without a warrant. So, let’s say you’re suspected of something. The police can then slap a Garmin on your car, without any permission from the courts, and follow your car’s movements about town. Sorta scary, sure. → Read More
As weird as this apparatus looks, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that it’s actually not a bad idea. The $50 “CoolCop” is basically a length of vacuum-like hose that goes from a car’s air conditioning vent on one end and clips to a police officer’s bullet-proof vest on the other end. Those vests are hot, I tell you! Well, I don’t tell you, actually. Not much need for a blogger to wear a bullet-proof vest… yet. → Read More
The REDFLY Mobile Companion embiggens even the smallest of compatible Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. In light of this, the Memphis police department just threw down for 12,000 of the devices and deployed them in their cruisers, saying, “The REDFLYs save hardware costs while increasing productivity and also improving the quality and accuracy of the officers’ field reports.” → Read More
Poor Simon Cowell. Apparently someone on a motorcycle had been constantly following closely behind the notoriously cranky American Idol judge’s Bentley and he couldn’t figure out why. Turns out, there was a magnetic GPS tracking device stuck to the undercarriage of his car, which helped explain why the aforementioned motorcyclist kept showing up at Cowell’s private meetings. It’s unknown who this person is, but it’s been speculated that he or she may be crazy fan or a member of the paparazzi. Cowell is apparently “completely freaked out by this” and may call in the police to do a more thorough investigation. In the meantime, if YOU think someone is following you, make three right turns. Nobody makes three right turns for no reason. If they’re still following you, panic and drive straight to your house so they know where you live. [via The Raw Feed] → Read More
We can jokingly say things like “buy a cellphone jammer to silence those annoying people on the bus” but that would be irresponsible. Quite irresponsible, it turns out, as criminals are now using such devices to impede law enforcement efforts. It happened last month in Canada. Two Mounties had pulled over a car, and as they approached to car their radios went out. It turns out that the two guys inside the pulled over car had turned out one of those $200 eBay cellphone jammers, putting the officers at unnecessary risk. This is a good time to remind y’all that using cellphone jammers is illegal in the U.S and most other places. In fact, a first time offender faces up to a $1,000 fine for using a jammer in the U.S. Seems to me that an iPod is a much cheaper way to avoid hearing a fellow commuter’s conversation. And anyone who uses a cellphone at a restaurant should be promptly shown the door. → Read More
Carbon Motors, never heard of ‘em either, is working on a custom police car to catch all of Gotham’s baddies. It kind of looks as if K.I.T.T. and Robocop breed a Transformer offspring meant just for police duty. It’s dubbed the E7 and specific details about all the gadgets haven’t been released, but this short video shows off it’s bad-ass styling. Allegedly, the car can sprint up to 65 mph in under 7 seconds via a 300 HP diesel engine and brush-off small arms fire thanks to bullet proof panels. The cars price range will be $20k-$70k depending on options, but with a 250,000 durability spec, suicide rear doors, and more LED lights than a Caddy, it seems worth it. Nothing like cruising the streets in style rather than in a Crown Vic, eh? → Read More
Those wacky Israelis! Police there used a “skunk bomb” for the first time on Friday as part of a crowd control action. The bomb is actually more like super soaker water gun that sprays a vile smelling liquid on people. The liquid is so foul smelling, that people instantly recoil against it. The theory is, if people are freaking out over the horrific smell, they’ll stop doing whatever it was that upset police in the first place. The liquid, as awful as it may be, is non-lethal, which is what makes it so attractive to police forces around the world. Then, of course, you’ve got the people who are all, “violation of my rights, yada, yada.” I don’t know, I’d rather be shot with some awful smelling liquid than by rubber bullets, or worse. Then again, I’m the last person you’d find at a protest or rally of any sort. → Read More
Here’s a fun little story that ought to excite your Freedom Bone. It seems an 18-year-old was recently pulled over for speeding, with police claiming that the lad was 17 mph north of the speed limit. An on-board GPS unit disagrees. Yup, the kid had a GPS device(an RMT Rover, seen here) in his car at the time , and its data indicates that he was doing the 45 mph speed limit all the way to his destination. A police-produced expert claimed that such GPS devices are accurate within a couple of meters and within 1 mph. That certainly seems accurate enough to drag out this case for a little while longer, as both sides argue over who’s technology is more accurate, the radar gun or the GPS device. And yes, the case will drag on, at least through October, when the judge in the trial hears expert testimony from another GPS expert, presumably Ted the GPS Expert. → Read More
The camera features 300,000 pixels and records video with 640×480 VGA resolution. Photos are saved in JPEG format. The flashlight comes with a USB port (USB 1.1), 128 MB of internal memory and a small LCD display. It costs $800. → Read More
A couple from Long Island left their camera at a restaurant in Florida where two of the employees found and kept it . The camera contained an Eye-Fi card which automatically found an open wireless base station and began uploading their photos including some photos the thieves had taken of each other. When they contacted the restaurant with the evidence, the camera was returned and the couple declined to press charges, proving that even technologists have a heart. I wonder how much this is going to affect petty theft. With everything enabled for Wi-Fi and cellular, how often will we get our pockets picked when the thieves have no idea how the device is rigged. → Read More
It turns out that the lead investigator of the Pirate Bay raid from a few years ago has been working for Warner Bros. Naturally, that’s causing all sorts of commotion online, with cries “corruption,” “conflict of interest,” and whatever other insult you can think of. The Pirate Bay is already spinning the news, calling the officer’s Warner Bros. employment a “reward” for his work in the original raid. How can you work for the police, and all that entails, while simultaneously taking orders from Hollywood? That’s the issue. While I find it hard to get worked up over such scenarios&I can’t spend my days freaking out over every little anti-MPAA story—I do understand where TPB is coming from, especially since they’re supposed to be the white knight of the BitTorrent crowd. Meh, move along. Go read a book or something. → Read More
Sure, we all get a laugh at someone else’s expense when watching taser videos on YouTube, but did you know that the device may affect your heartbeat? That’s not cool, especially since Taser, Inc. says its devices are totally safe and in no way affect your biological functions. It all stems from a recent incident where a man was running from police and hid in a lake (?!) to escape them. His heart, possibly from the shock of the situation and cold water, experienced atrial fibrillation. He had an irregular heartbeat, he did. But, once he was zapped by a taser, his heartbeat returned to normal, and he began to fight and resist arrest. What could make him go from have an irregular heartbeat to fighting with the police? Doctors are now speculating that the taser “zapped” his heart back into shape. That may sound nice, but tasers aren’t supposed to affect your person quite to that extent. Taser was quick to point out that the man’s experience could be explained by any number of things, and not necessarily its device. → Read More
Since last fall, police in New York’s Orange County have been using experimental gun-mounted camera technology that begins recording the moment a police officer’s gun is pulled from its holster. The technology was adopted after a public outcry surrounding the 2006 shooting of a Newbugrh, New York man in which, “the street version of the story differs massively from the one told by the cops,” according to The Register. → Read More
Did American companies violate U.S. law by selling hi-tech police equipment to the Chinese? The Old Gray Lady asks this today, examining a recent Chinese police equipment trade show held in Beijing where several American companies, including Motorola and DuPont, were notably present. (An old law going back to Tiananmen Square prevents American companies from selling police equipment to China.) On display: Kevlar bulletproof vests, advanced police radio systems, fancy protective boots and a device that “swiftly” copies the entire contents of a hard drive without leaving any trace of having done so. That one’s developed by Intelligent Computer Solutions, which is based in California. This all comes just a few weeks after China’s crackdown on Tibet protesters, never mind the controversy surrounding the Olympic Torch relay. Of course, all companies deny any wrongdoing, stressing that they haven’t broken any laws. Be that as it may, I wonder if it’s worth sullying a company’s image just to make a few dollars from the Chinese. Not trying to pull a Jack Cafferty or anything, but selling American-developed technology to be used by Chinese authorities, that doesn’t seem like it’d be too popular with Joe Sixpack. → Read More
Attention Police: We’re really getting tired of reminding you about this stuff, bit you should really pay attention this time. MP3 players are not guns. Please quit tasing, arresting, and otherwise antagonizing those of us with them. This is Darren Nixon, and it wasn’t really the police’s fault, as a woman called them suspecting he had a gun. But the cops should have been able to tell quickly that his DAP was not a deadly weapon. He was arrested and shaken by the experience, and rightly so. Man arrested at gunpoint after police mistake his MP3 player for a gun [Daily Mail] → Read More
Police in New Carrollton, Maryland are among the first in the state to use the magic of modern technology to issue tickets to motorists. Information about the driver in question is pulled from the Maryland motor vehicle database and then printed out in the squad car. Sounds very simple, no? Before this system, "officers would write out 5 copies of each citation by hand" and about 10-15 percent of tickets (nationwide) have to be thrown out because of legibility issues. One of the officers says that the time it takes him to write a ticket is about three minutes, down from over ten minutes. Police Use High-Tech Ticket Technology [WJLA] → Read More
