Penny Dean and Your Rights

Approximately half of adult Americans’ photographs are stored in facial recognition databases that can be accessed by the FBI, without their knowledge or consent, in the hunt for suspected criminals. About 80% of photos in the FBI’s network are non-criminal entries, including pictures from driver’s licenses and passports. The algorithms used to identify matches are inaccurate about 15% of the time, and are more likely to misidentify black people than white people.

Thankfully, no, this is not Manchester, New Hampshire.

It would be reasonable to think that if someone would respond to the request to "surrender your knife" then maybe they would also respond to "don't stab people". We are waiting to see how violent criminals would answer that question.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was convicted Wednesday of obstructing an FBI investigation into corrupt and violent guards who took bribes to smuggle contraband into the jails he ran and savagely beat inmates.

Facebook announced Monday that law enforcement can no longer use data to monitor protesters and certain groups.

The Washington Post reported that Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provide developers access to users’ public feeds, which has been used in the past to monitor parades, protests, and other large events. 

Last year, the social media sites blocked Geofeedia’s access to the data after an ACLU investigation alleged Geofeedia provided data to law enforcement to track protesters. 

The controversial legal tool of asset forfeiture allows police officers and other law enforcement entities to seize money and physical property from anyone suspected of wrongdoing.

Unfortunately, as the Drug War and the War on Terror have both escalated over the last decade, national security has trumped liberty and the threshold for determining suspicious behavior has been lowered to include just about anyone.

(thanks Prager U, http://www.prageru.com )

As we depend on our cell phones more and more, the tools to peek into our phones are getting better. Local police departments across the country are investing heavily in this technology. And, with few laws governing what police can collect and store, that has a lot of privacy advocates alarmed. NPR's Robert Siegel talks to City Lab reporter George Joseph about the spread of tools that let police collect cell phone data.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Increasingly, police departments are turning to military-grade surveillance tools to help fight crime - a trend that worries privacy advocates. A new investigation by CityLab, which is part of Atlantic Media, documents the spread of tools that let police collect cellphone data. CityLab reporter George Joseph joins me in the studio now. Welcome to the program.

Ten years to the month after Jarrett Adams was released from prison for a rape he didn’t commit, the newly minted lawyer was in court this week representing another prisoner in similar straits.

Adams was featured in the ABA Journal along with two other exonorees who went to law school after their convictions were found to be wrongful.

A state trooper was justified when he shot a 76-year-old man last summer inside a home mistakenly linked to a 911 call, an investigation by New Jersey's attorney general has concluded.

Gerald Sykes thought he was defending his Upper Deerfield home from intruders late on July 29. In reality, he was confronting two troopers who went to the home when a disconnected 911 call was mistakenly traced to Sykes' address.

A disabled vet with PTSD accidentally called a suicide prevention hotline when intending to dial the Veterans Crisis Line. Within hours, he was dealing with DC Metro's finest, dispatched to handle an attempted suicide. This brief quote from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals opinion [PDF] -- part of veteran Matthew Corrigan's first conversation with responding officers -- sets the tone for the next several hours of Constitutional violations.