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NYPD is already replacing its Windows phones with iPhones
The NYPD is learning a hard lesson about the dangers of buying a declining smartphone platform in bulk. The New York Post understands that the police force is replacing all 36,000 of its officers' Windows phones with iPhones just two years after the rollout began. It's not exactly clear as to why, but Microsoft recently ended support for Windows Phone 8.1 -- the standard-issue Lumia 830 and 640 XL devices won't get any help if something goes wrong. The switch to iPhones also suggests that the NYPD doesn't see a long-term value in upgrading to Windows 10 Mobile.
NYPD faces lawsuit for withholding info on facial recognition
A think tank is suing the NYPD over its failure to reveal details about its secret facial recognition program. Georgetown University's Center on Privacy and Technology (CPT) alleges that the department hasn't complied with New York state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) by forking over information on the system, which the department started using to investigate crimes in 2011. When groups submitted FOIL requests for training manuals and documentation, the NYPD insisted they didn't have any, so CPT is taking the department to court.
NYPD details its body camera policy ahead of spring pilot program
After four years of legal wrangling, input from 5,000 active duty officers and 25,000 members of the public, the long-awaited NYPD body camera pilot program is set to begin at the end of the month. On Friday, the department unveiled the rules by which its officers must abide when wearing the new devices and, unlike the 2013 Stop and Frisk case that led to their implementation, these new policy guidelines are surprisingly responsible.
NYPD filmed hundreds of BLM and Occupy protests without approval
Police are frequently fond of monitoring protesters, and that includes cops in New York -- NYPD cameras have been a mainstay at large protests over the past several years. However, it's now clear that the NYPD has been skirting internal rules in the process. The Verge has obtained documents showing that the force's video team not only captured over 400 Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street protests between 2011 and 2016, but doesn't appear to have received authorizations or legal reviews.
NYPD will equip all officers with body cameras by late 2019
New York City started trying police body cameras years ago, but it hasn't had a formal agreement to roll them out across the entire force. It's not for lack of trying, though -- the city and the officers' union have been locked in contract negotiations for ages. An agreement is finally in place, however. As part of a new contract, the NYPD will equip every officer with a body camera by the end of 2019. When there are over 34,000 officers patrolling the streets, this could easily be one of the most ambitious body camera projects to date.
Giuliani as Trump's cybersecurity adviser is an unfunny joke
I had just finished hacking the Gibson when I heard the news: Rudy Giuliani, the guy who said he was gonna solve cybersecurity, had just been named Trump's cyber adviser. I hopped onto our hacker mafia's government-proof encrypted chat app to make sure everyone knew that we were in real trouble. When I got no response from Mr. Robot or Anonymous, I got my rollerblades on and got out of my mom's basement as fast as possible. I dialed our ringleader with a secret, anti-authority encrypted phone app while hacking all the traffic lights between here and his mom's basement as I raced over. When he picked up I blurted, "Stop hacking baby monitors and trying to crash the stock market!"
Rutgers professor forced to take psych evaluation over tweets
What you say online has consequences. An adjunct professor from Rutgers learned that this week after he was detained by police and forced to take a psych evaluation after asking his class a few hyperbolic questions and later posting versions of them to Twitter. According to the New York Daily News, last Wednesday Kevin Allred asked his class if conservatives would care as much about the Second Amendment if guns killed more white people. "In class, we talked about flag burning generally as a form of protest, and what does the flag mean to different people," Allred told the publication.
Who's still using Windows Phones? The NYPD.
Microsoft may have all but given up on Windows Phones, but rookies in the New York City Police Department are now getting them with their gun and badge. As CNET reports, the NYPD only started handing out department-issued smartphones and email addresses in 2015, and the official device of the largest police force in the United States are the Lumia 830 and Lumia 640 XL.
Cult classic 'Indigo Prophecy' gets a new PS4 release date
Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls developer Quantic Dream has announced that one of its earlier pseudo-cinematic games, Indigo Prophecy, will be released for PlayStation 4 via the PlayStation Store on August 9th. It will arrive as a PS2-to-PS4 game so it won't be fully remastered, but this version will still support Trophies. The game was originally supposed to come out on Sony's console in July, but was held up for unknown reasons.
The After Math: Technology to the rescue
With all the new products being showcased at Computex this past week, it's totally understandable if you happened to miss some of the actually useful things technology does for us. Besides enabling us to send pictures of our genitals anywhere in the world in an instant, I mean. Uber, for example, is being leveraged to help underserved elderly residents of a "depopulated" Japanese town get around. A new mobile app is getting the NYPD to the scene 12 percent faster. And a NASA satellite has spotted 39 previously undiscovered "major" sulphur dioxide emitters. Numbers, because how else are we going to keep score?
NYPD's smartphone program is shortening crime response times
The NYPD Mobility Initiative is paying off in spades for Gotham's police. The force's Deputy Commissioner for Information Technology Jessica Tisch recently revealed that thanks to the initiative that puts smartphones and tablets in police hands, response times to crimes in progress are down 12.6 percent. Gotham's 36,000 officers are able to arrive at crimes in progress within 4 minutes and 26 seconds. According to a report by the New York Daily News, that's the lowest the responses have been in more than half a decade. That expediency extends to 911 call responses as well. With a dedicated app, the police are able to start moving toward a crime scene before a dispatcher even contacts them.
Open data reveals dodgy NYPD parking ticket practices
Open data policies in government don't just exist for the sake of convenience -- sometimes, they can reveal serious structural problems. I Quant NY's Ben Wellington took advantage of both New York City's open data and Google Maps to determine that the NYPD was issuing thousands of tickets on streets where parking is legal. While you're allowed to park next to a pedestrian ramp as long as there's no crosswalk, the police issued five or more tickets in 1,966 of these spots over the past 2.5 years. That's over $1.7 million per year in fines against people who were obeying the law.
NYPD used Stingrays over 1,000 times since 2008
Until now, New York City's police department hadn't disclosed any information about whether or not it used so-called Stingrays to monitor cell phone activity. In response to an NYCLU (NYCLU) request, the NYPD admitted that it used the devices over 1,000 times between 2008 and May 2015. What's more, NYPD doesn't have a written policy in place that guides how the tech should be used. As a refresher, Stingrays create a fake 2G cellular network that can be used to track the locations and monitor call or text activity in a certain area. Even when a specific mobile device is targeted, information from other phones in the area is still accessible.
FBI accuses NYPD officer of scamming road accident victims
When most people are short of cash, they either sell some junk on eBay or get a second job. NYPD Auxiliary Deputy Inspector Yehuda Katz, on the other hand, decided to try something a little more audacious: a scam that involved breaking into into the FBI's database. According to the bureau's rap sheet, Katz installed a hidden camera and a remote link inside the NYPD's Traffic Safety Office. Why? Because when he could see the office wasn't occupied, he was able to fire up the compromised machine and search both the NYPD and FBI's records concerning vehicle accidents.
NYPD edited Wikipedia pages on police brutality, stop-and-frisk
Apparently it's not just politicians that are concerned about their reputation on Wikipedia -- a report by Capital found evidence of the New York Police Department digging into the crowd-sourced encyclopedia. IP addresses registered to the NYPD have been linked to edits and/or requests to delete the Wikipedia pages for well-known police shooting cases like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell. In the hours after a grand jury decided not to indict an officer for the death of Eric Garner, someone logged on via an NYPD IP address to make several changes to the corresponding article.
NYPD dispersing body cameras amidst police brutality uproar
New York City's brass hasn't fully committed to tricking out its nearly 35,000 person police force with body cameras yet, but Mayor Bill DiBlasio is eager to give them a shot. That's why the NYPD is testing the waters with a pilot program that'll see select officers from six commands throughout the city go about their daily duties while wearing matchbook-sized cameras on their chests. According to the New York Times, that first batch of 54 camera-equipped cops could be on the streets in certain sections of the city as early this weekend.
NYPD is getting equipped with over 40,000 mobile devices
Thanks to a massive $160 million investment, the New York City Police Department is on its way to receive a combination of up to 41,000 smartphones and tablets. Known as the NYPD Mobility Initiative, which will be mostly financed by criminal asset funds provided by the Manhattan DA's Office, the goal is to provide the the city's law enforcement with tools that can improve and streamline their overall workflow. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said there are a few key elements to this plan, such as offering better case support for detectives, providing features including real-time 911 data, enhanced database access for patrol staff, quick entry points to info like Amber Alerts and email accounts for every officer.
NYPD's cruiser of the future knows if you're on the lam, can detect radiation
New York City's Police Department is one of the most well-financed in the world, and the prototype for its next-generation patrol car clearly reflects that. A rear-mounted infrared sensor scans, records and checks license plates against a database (yes, in real-time), not too far from a new radiation detector in the rear window. An in-car, dashboard-mounted surveillance camera captures video, which can be livestreamed to headquarters via a modem and power supply sitting in the trunk. If this all sounds spookily like Demolition Man's future police (pictured above), that's because it's very similar. Only one such prototype is cruising the streets thus far (in Brooklyn Heights), though the Wall Street Journal's report says the data it gathers is being implemented city-wide. It's unclear how much (all?) of this tech will make its way to the rest of the NYPD's vehicle force, though a variety of components are already in place on other cars. It's all part of a 13-page report prepared for exiting New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly centered on the concept of "NYPD2020" -- the NYPD in 10 years' time. A variety of other projects from that report are also in the works, though many are distinctly less exciting (an online, public database of incident reports, for instance).
NYPD handing out flyers asking people to upgrade to iOS 7
If you're in New York City the next time a cop stops you, he may want you to...update your iPhone to iOS 7. According to a flurry of reports on Twitter, NYC police are handing out fliers (one pictured above from @jimrosenberg and another pictured below from @Hoffm) asking people to upgrade to iOS 7. From first glance, the fact that New York City's finest are handing out fliers promoting Apple's latest iOS might seem like a huge marketing win (and / or brainwashing initiative) by Apple. But because mobile phones are now the number one item stolen in large cities, taking a proactive approach to helping users know about the security advantages of the latest iOS is actually in the police's favor. As AllThingsD points out, iOS 7 features a new tool called Activation Lock that requires the phone's Apple ID and password to be entered before it can be erased or before Find My iPhone has been deactivated. So if you haven't upgraded to iOS 7, do it now -- police's orders.
NYPD now has Android smartphone arsenal to pull up records, identify perps
Thanks to an NYPD pilot program, over 400 officers have special Android smartphones that allow them to pull up suspect data on the spot, according to the New York Times. Patrol car-mounted laptops can be slow and cumbersome, while the call-disabled handsets (which look like Samsung's Rugby Smart in the image above) let patrolmen see a suspect's criminal record on the spot and even know if a felon hides drugs "in his left sock," according to one cop. The custom app can also dig up info like open warrants, arrest and incident records, orders of protection and photos of everyone who's been arrested in a particular building, for instance. They can even drum up the location of every video camera pointed at a particular spot -- so, watch where you spit that gum, scofflaw. [Image credit: New York Times]
