The forthcoming U.S. Deparment of Justice pattern-and-practice investigation of the Chicago Police Department represents a milestone in Barack Obama’s presidency. The Windy City’s police department is the largest municipal law enforcement agency to be examined by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. DOJ since the Rampart Division scandal of the Los Angeles Police Department fifteen years ago. For years, Chicago […]
Ali Winston
Ali Winston is a freelance reporter, covering surveillance, privacy and criminal justice. His writing has won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the New York City Community Media Alliance, the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club and the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Originally from New York, he is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley.
Posted inCybersecurity
Post-Paris push against encryption has been long coming
The law enforcement community has long been searching for a wedge to try to change the tenor of the public debate over privacy and surveillance since Edward Snowden’s leaks about mass surveillance programs in 2013, and activity in the wake of the Paris attacks is no exception.
Posted inCybersecurity, National Security, Surveillance and Privacy
California county is nation’s wiretap ‘capitol’
Between 2013 and 2014, one Riverside County judge, the former chief narcotics prosecutor, approved almost a thousand wiretaps requested by federal, state and local law enforcement.
Posted inCybersecurity, Law Enforcement, Local Law Enforcement, Surveillance and Privacy
Transparency advocate resigns from Seattle police in frustration
Tim Clemans was featured in a recent Reveal story about the challenges confronting law enforcement agencies as they rolled out body camera programs.
Posted inCybersecurity, Local Law Enforcement, Surveillance and Privacy
California increases scrutiny of cellphone surveillance
Two laws recently signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown mandate more public input and oversight of law enforcement agencies’ purchase and use of cellphone tracking equipment.
Posted inLocal Law Enforcement, Surveillance and Privacy
East Bay cellphone surveillance plan gets attorney general’s support
The California Department of Justice supports a plan by the Alameda County district attorney and Oakland and Fremont police to obtain controversial cellphone surveillance technology, documents show.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Law Enforcement, Local Law Enforcement, Militarization of Police, Surveillance and Privacy
Chicago and Los Angeles have used ‘dirt box’ surveillance for a decade
Police departments have acquired “dirt boxes” – military surveillance technology that can intercept data, calls and text messages.
Posted inLocal Law Enforcement, Surveillance and Privacy
Predictive policing is ‘wave of the future,’ NY commissioner says
During a recent panel, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton spoke candidly about his department’s use of predictive policing, a controversial data-mining method intended to anticipate the location and participants or victims in future crimes.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Law Enforcement, Local Law Enforcement, Militarization of Police, Surveillance and Privacy
Los Angeles sheriff invests in new tech to expand biometric database
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has signed a $3.5 million contract with DataWorks Plus LLC that will allow it to equip deputies with mobile facial recognition technology in order to expand the largest biometric database outside of the FBI, according to procurement documents.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Law Enforcement, Militarization of Police
Criminal suspects challenge legality of warrantless cellphone tracking
The defense strategy in the 2013 shooting of an Oakland, California, officer could test whether police have the right to scoop up thousands of cellphone records using a controversial surveillance device without seeking court approval.