by Michael Dean Thompson
Social media has revolutionized connectivity, allowing people to develop and maintain relationships well beyond what was possible just a generation earlier. The revolution has, however, enabled the joint planning, execution, and documentation of crimes. It is therefore no surprise that law enforcement wants to access social ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
With every breath you take, you shed DNA. It is in the skin cells that flake off your body by the millions, the hair that floats off as you walk, and the oil you leave behind on many of the things you touch. And scientists are ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The U.S. has a dark carceral history that has led to its maintenance of one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Advocates for electronic monitoring (“EM”) have often made the claim that it could reduce incarceration rates and their associated financial and human costs. ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Don’t ask Google this simple question: “Are Bengal cats legal in Australia?” That is the gist of an urgent warning on cybersecurity firm Sophos’ website. People who have clicked on the resulting links have had their personal information stolen. It is a simple enough hacker tactic ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Police body cameras were full of promise. After several high-profile police killings, people turned to body cams for a solution. It makes sense. Cameras were already recording an increasing number of incidents as civilians witnessed events that poorly matched police reports. If the cops were wearing ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The federal government has again discovered that its use of facial recognition technology (“FRT”) harms Americans. The agencies using the technology are often doing so with little oversight or training, which is what the Government Accountability Office told us in 2023. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
Modern computing systems constantly record when a specific event occurs. A common example of this is the timestamp applied to a document file that indicates when the file was last updated. But the timestamps can be more pernicious. Within the files can be more timestamps that ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
It should come as no surprise that anything you delete on your device is not necessarily gone. Cops using forensic software can often look into a device’s primary storage (as well as cloud storage) and pull up information that the user may have believed was permanently ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The majority of states across the U.S. now allow people who have been convicted of some felonies to have the record of their conviction removed. The complete expungement of felony records allows the convicted person to live as if the conviction never occurred. However, very few ...
by Michael Dean Thompson
The cell-site simulator (“CSS”) is a powerful and largely unregulated device once designed for military intelligence use that has found its way onto the streets of the U.S. Today, in fact, it is even being offered to policing agencies pre-installed on unmarked police vehicles. The system ...
