Law Enforcement

To reduce accidental deaths during civil disturbances, firearms manufacturer FN Herstal has developed a gun that not only fires less-than-lethal elastomer projectiles, it has a digital smart sight that can recognize human heads and refuse to fire at them.

Drones may be seeing more use by police forces, but they're still limited by short flight times, and the need for certified operators. Tech company Axon has set out to address the problem, by leveraging the existing Fotokite tethered drone.

A new study from NIST has tested how accurately commercial facial recognition algorithms can identify people wearing protective face masks, revealing some commercially used systems fail at authenticating masked faces up to 50 percent of the time.

The Epilepsy Foundation is striking back against a campaign by Twitter trolls to flood some hashtags with flashing GIFs designed to trigger seizures in vulnerable individuals. The cyber-attacks follow on from a similar attack on a journalist in 2016.

In an open letter to government officials, Facebook affirmed its commitment to rolling out end-to-end encryption across its messaging platforms. The company suggests law enforcement officials continue to misunderstand how encryption actually works.

The American Civil Liberties Union is taking several US government agencies to court claiming they have refused to comply with freedom of information requests related to the transparency of law enforcement usage of facial recognition technology.

Continuing the pushback against facial recognition technology, California has passed a law banning the tech in connection with data gathered by police body cameras.

The Acusensus system can monitor several lanes of traffic at once, auto-detecting drivers using their phones and beginning the prosecution process.

Gearheads love noisy engines, but this enthusiasm is rarely shared by the general public – hence, the UK is trialing new noise camera technology. Just like speed cameras, they'll sit by the roadside watching and listening 24/7 to identify and ticket vehicles that exceed legal noise limits.

​Oregon's Arcimoto has unveiled a new variant of its battery electric three-wheeler that's aimed squarely at emergency, security and law enforcement services. The Rapid Responder is due to be tested at two locations in the US, ahead of production next year.​

​Days after the first shots were fired in a looming UK legal battle questioning law enforcement uses of facial recognition technology, Amazon has been bombarded with a massive petition and several letters demanding it stop providing a similar technology to governments and law enforcement.

2018 is fast becoming the year that facial recognition technology finally hits the mainstream with a constant torrent of stories revealing the growing use of these systems by law enforcement agencies. But some people are now asking if they violate civil liberties.