police

A man who was part of a hacking gang that stole medical records and tried to blackmail an accounting company has been sentenced to five years in prison. Nathan Wyatt was a member of a group calling themselves The Dark Overlord. British-born Wyatt ... had previously been extradited to the United States. He was charged with conspiracy against the US, threatening damage to a protected computer, and aggravated identify theft. Originally Wyatt pleaded not guilty. He later changed his plea to guilty on the conspiracy charge and received a five year prison sentence and ordered to pay $1,467,048 in ... (view more)

A judge says police can't force a suspect to unlock a phone with a fingerprint or other biometric measure, including a suspect's face . It's the latest step in the way privacy laws interact with technological changes. This ruling came from a federal ... judge in a court in California and involved a review of a search warrant request. The case involved two suspects allegedly using Facebook Messenger to trying to extort a victim by threatening to publish an embarrassing video. (Source: gizmodo.com ) The police wanted permission to not only search a location where they believed they would find the ... (view more)

New York and Los Angeles cops may be among the first to use a hybrid electric car that is specifically designed for police pursuits. The Ford Police Responder Hybrid Sedan (pic) aims to meet the twin needs of police vehicles: an occasional ... high-speed pursuit mixed in with a whole load of waiting around. A hybrid car uses both an ordinary gas engine and an electric motor. The balance of the two varies between models but one common set-up is to use the electricity when the car is starting up or driving at low speeds, where the electricity is the more efficient option. Another common feature is ... (view more)

Facebook is to issue missing child alerts in user news feeds to US citizens. The alerts will be based on the user's location and will tie in with existing alert systems. The updates will be based on the AMBER Alert program that has been run for 20 ... years in the United States. AMBER Alert updates already go out via a range of media including: radio and television, highway electronic billboards, electronic signs outside participating retailers, and text alerts to users who have chosen to receive such messages. Whether and when to send an alert is the decision of local police, using their own ... (view more)

A case in New Hampshire has raised an important question in an age when just about everyone has a smartphone equipped with a digital video camera: should people be allowed to video or audio record the actions of on duty police officers? The case in ... question involves New Hampshire woman Carla Gericke, who was arrested and charged with wiretapping in 2010. Gericke was caught recording her friend being questioned by the Weare Police Department during a late-night traffic stop. Woman Never Ordered to Stop Recording Traffic Stop Gericke was actually in a car behind her friend and announced to ... (view more)