by way of Russia Today, but... " Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” "

" The controversial cap that took effect January 1 says only 3,000 people, including elected officials and statehouse staff, are allowed to be in the capitol building at any given time. Opponents of the new rule say it was put in place to keep protestors out of the statehouse during the new session, when right-to-work is set to come up for discussion. State officials say the cap is necessary for security requirements, including updated fire safety standards. "

" Abowd said the small-area product could prevent espionage photography in government buildings, industrial settings or trade shows. It could also be used in business settings -- for instance, to stop amateur photography where shopping-mall-Santa pictures are being taken. "
...
" Moreover, movie theaters are likely to be a good setting for camera-blocking technology, said Jay Summet, a research assistant who is also working on the prototype. A camera’s image sensor -- called a CCD -- is “retroreflective,” which means it sends light back directly to its origin rather than scattering it. Retroreflections would probably make it relatively easy to detect and identify video cameras in a darkened theater. "

" The almost nine-minute video shows that the UC Davis campus police were encircled by the demonstrators, who tell the police to free some of their arrested comrades. “If you let them go,” the protesters say, “we will let you leave.” Later, the protesters can be heard chanting, “F— the police.” "

" What history demonstrates is that police officers often use their powers, with or without federal prompting, as instruments of larger political purpose. The danger of cooperation between federal agencies and local police is not that the former will conscript the latter into repressive programs the latter would not otherwise pursue, but that it allows the police to apply the legitimizing gloss of national security to their own pet projects of repression. "

You can't dox an idea: Pepper spraying cop is a policing model, not a bad apple.

" Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association of the NYPD and a 30-year veteran of the force, finds the mixed messages from above frustrating. "At times we don't have to - or they don't want us to - do things, and at times they do want us to do things. There's no real clear message as to what right and wrong is," he said. "In many ways we are almost the pawns in this situation." "

" A Police Department program that allows officers to moonlight in uniform — providing security for stores, neighborhood associations and even private citizens - has skyrocketed in popularity.

" Nearly half the NYPD's 22,272 street cops have registered with the paid detail unit, which pays off-duty officers $30 an hour for shifts that can range from four to 12 hours. "

" The letters that the four faculty members received telling them that they had been suspended immediately did not say why. But the letters referenced (by number) a section of California's penal code that bars people from "willfully disrupting the orderly operation of the campus." "