The surveillance state is now entering sewers.

Two police officers in Georgia are on administrative leave after using a coin toss app to determine whether to arrest a woman for allegedly speeding. Body camera footage obtained by WXIA-TV shows officers Courtney Brown and Kristee Wilson questioning, and ultimately detaining the woman. Brown admits in the recording…

Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, called for federal regulation of face recognition in a new blog post on Friday. Half of all adults already have their face in a federal database, and vendors are supplying face recognition technology to schools, airports, and baseball stadiums. Federal…

MLB and Clear announced a partnership on Thursday that will soon let baseball fans enter stadiums using fingerprints, and eventually, just their face, instead of tickets.

An Ohio school district is gearing up for a surprising security upgrade for the new year: smart pepper spray. Beginning in the fall, schools in the Columbiana Exempted Village School District in Ohio will begin using devices called ‘Threat Extinguishers.’ Modeled after fire extinguishers, these are pepper spray…

Facebook is apologizing after its algorithms tagged 65,000 Russian users as “interested in treason.” Facebook algorithmically tags users based on their behavior, making it easier for advertisers to target people interested in specific topics. In this case, however, the tag “treason” may have put users under the threat…

Contrary to earlier reports, Orlando police confirmed Monday they will renew a contract with Amazon to pilot its controversial face recognition software, Rekognition—a move that is sure to reignite concerns of privacy and civil liberties advocates who have pushed back against law enforcement’s use of the technology.

Facebook disclosed a new “bug” on Monday that temporarily let some users who’d been blocked on the service send messages to the people who had blocked them. The bug also let some previously-blocked users view posts that were shared “to a wider audience,” such as publicly or with friends of friends, Facebook said.

The UK government’s Home Office released a report this week announcing plans for a forthcoming centralized biometric database of its citizens, compiling DNA, fingerprint, face, and possibly even voice data for law enforcement to access and share, according to the Telegraph. In addition to helping local police solve…

Amazon has a new side hustle. The company confirmed on Thursday that it’s buying its way into the pharmacy industry by snapping up PillPack, a service that sells prescription drugs online.

Reading The Ringer’s recent review of Hereditary’s Wikipedia page, I thought I’d found another opportunity to do my favorite thing. Everyone’s favorite thing. The activity that the internet seems to have been designed for: acting self-righteous.

The Orlando Police Department announced today it has ended its pilot of Amazon’s Rekognition face recognition software. Last month, the ACLU released hundreds of pages of documents from the Orlando Police Department and Oregon’s Washington County Sheriff’s Office detailing their use of the software, prompting backlash…

Face recognition will be used to harm citizens if given to governments or police, writes Brian Brackeen, CEO of the face recognition and AI startup Kairos, in an op-ed published by TechCrunch today. Last week, news broke that bodycam maker Axon requested a partnership with Kairos to explore face recognition. Brackeen…

Body camera manufacturer Axon requested a contract for face recognition software from an artificial intelligence startup, the Wall Street Journal reports, which stands to further fears from privacy advocates about the state of surveillance in America.

Facebook debuted a host of new efforts Thursday in its fight against fake news.

An Arizona man who once styled himself as a hacktivist “Bitcoin Baron” has been sentenced to prison for a distributed denial-of-service attack against the city of Madison, Wisconsin’s computer networks. According to the Department of Justice, the attack “crippled” the city’s emergency communication system, causing…

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon say they won’t provide their customers’ location data to third-party data brokers, AP reported on Tuesday. A New York Times report in May touched off a major scandal by describing the ways location data, which all four major carriers in the U.S. share with data brokers like…