Proposed bill would punish ‘gun free zone’ businesses if shooting occurs

Missouri lawmakers heard a bill Monday to make some business owners liable for shootings on their property.

The House General Laws Committee was packed with gun control activists and business leaders for testimony on House BIll 96. Testimony was limited to just two minutes per speaker.

Last year, Missouri became a constitutional carry state, meaning anyone who is legally allowed to have a gun can carry it without a permit.

However, guns are still banned in places like schools and churches, and businesses with signs indicating they do not allow guns on the property.

Companies start implanting microchips into workers' bodies

The small implants use near-field communication technology, or NFC, the same as in contactless credit cards or mobile payments. When activated by a reader a few inches away, a small amount of data flows between the two devices via electromagnetic waves. The implants are “passive,” meaning they contain information that other devices can read, but cannot read information themselves.

Ben Libberton, a microbiologist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, says hackers could conceivably gain huge swaths of information from embedded microchips. The ethical dilemmas will become bigger the more sophisticated the microchips become.

This State Really Doesn't Want Its Residents to Know the Law

Just weeks ago in Florida, a father spending spring break on the beach with his family was fined $25 dollars for using metal sand tools on Panama City Beach, a law he had no idea he was breaking.

When this long-time resident of Panama City Beach asked law enforcement if he could see the actual text of the statute he was breaking, the officer on the scene immediately called for backup and threatened the father with jail time.

The Other Side of Legalized Theft

During a meeting with county sheriffs in February, Donald Trump was puzzled by criticism of civil asset forfeiture, which all the cops in the room viewed as an indispensable and unobjectionable law enforcement tool. "Do you even understand the other side of it?" the president asked. "No," one sheriff said, and that was that.

Justice Thomas's Doubts About Civil Forfeiture

The U.S. Supreme Court receives thousands of appeals from the nation’s lower courts each year. It declines to hear almost all of them. But for Justice Clarence Thomas, one of those rejected cases earlier this month gave him the chance to challenge a widely criticized police practice: civil forfeiture.

Wilmington officer demoted after lying about law during traffic stop

A Wilmington police officer who was filmed lying to an Uber driver about a state law that allows people to film police was demoted after an internal investigation.

Sgt. Kenneth Becker was filmed by Uber driver Jesse Bright, who is also a defense attorney, during a traffic stop in late February. Becker told Bright that he could not film police under a new state law.

There is no such law in North Carolina.

Facial recognition database used by FBI: 'Out of Control'

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.

Travel forward in time

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.

Ex-LA County sheriff Baca guilty of obstructing FBI probe

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 limits law enforcement data access for surveillance

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. 

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