law

Schoolgirl tries science experiment, arrested for felony

Who among us hasn't -- just once in our lives -- put a couple of things in a test tube, a bottle, or our mouths and wondered what might happen?

Occasionally, this might have difficult consequences. But rarely does someone try to arrest us for it.

16-year-old Kiera Wilmot wasn't so lucky.

This student at Bartow High School in Florida allegedly thought she'd put a couple of household chemicals in an 8-ounce water bottle, just to see the reaction.

The reaction was that she was expelled and marched off in handcuffs, accused of felony possession/discharge of a dangerous weapon.… Read more

Man allegedly put GPS on woman's car before burglary

Planning a burglary always seems to take so much time in the movies.

Joints must be cased. Hoods must be bought. Cars must be tuned to perfection and driven by people who aren't terribly clever.

One man, though, allegedly used technology to bypass some of these irritants.

As the Kansas City Star reports, Steven Alva Glaze stands accused of 14 counts of criminal damage, attempted burglary and real, actual burglary.

The owner of one of the homes believes that Glaze found a simple way of discovering if she and her son were home. He allegedly placed a GPS device … Read more

Undercover cops' devious new method to stop iPhone theft

If a man in a bar offers you a laptop for $70, you know it's probably stolen.

Yes, he might be wearing glasses and look a little like Bill Gates, but, please think, it's probably stolen.

Similarly, if someone tries to sell you an iPhone for a radically reduced amount, suspicion should surely be your guide.

Police in San Francisco are now using a slightly suspicious method to test your suspicions to the full.

Officers in plain clothes (which presumably means plaid shirts and 7 For Mankind jeans) are wandering around areas known to be popular for stolen … Read more

Coming soon: A Breathalyzer for pot and cocaine?

Some people drive high.

They shouldn't, but they're high, so they don't really know what's good for them and what isn't.

Should they get stopped by police, the long nose of the law can sometimes sniff the presence of marijuana in their car.

Should they happen to have nosed their way into some cocaine, there might be traces of white powder around their nostrils.

As yet, though, there hasn't been a machine that can detect the presence of such drugs on one's breath, as there is for alcohol.

Scientists in Sweden, however, believe they have made some progress in creating such a device.… Read more

Boston bombings: How facial recognition can cut investigation time to seconds

After the Boston Marathon bombings, police in the city made a plea for people with cell phone video and pictures to turn over their footage, adding to the hours of surveillance video from nearby businesses. But what would normally take investigators hundreds of hours to review can now take minutes or even seconds, thanks to technology like facial recognition. The software, which can help pick a person out of crowd, looks for differentiating features -- from the shape of a mouth to the ridge on a nose to the distance between a pair of eyes.

3VR in San Francisco has … Read more

How Facebook and Twitter mess with DUI checkpoints

The police are sometimes accused of linear thinking, especially when it comes to DUI checkpoints.

They set them up on Friday and Saturday nights. They redouble their efforts on New Year's Eve.

Perhaps the finest example would was one police force in the wine country of Northern California that decided to put a DUI checkpoint at the bottom of a winery's driveway. Yes, on barrel-tasting day.

The police now have a stronger enemy in the people -- the people who are using social media to warn others that this particular Friday or Saturday night has been selected for … Read more

Soft-porn TV star refuses to wear electronic tag, says career-threatening

I have never presented a pornographic show on television, but I imagine it's quite stressful.

The normal scrutiny afforded TV personalities is surely doubled when your show has carnality at its core.

It is, then, understandable why a 19-year-old adult TV presenter, Sophie Dalzell, was mortified on being told by a judge that she must wear an electronic tag on her ankle.… Read more

Jodi Arias dictating Twitter feed from jail

When a murder trial becomes a televisual happening, somehow the public aspects become almost as significant as the legal ones.

We're always told the jurors don't know what's happening in the media, but we wonder that they may have known more than they let on before being selected.

Then there are the defendants and the prosecutors. Each tries to gain some sort of sway in the public eye -- perhaps on a just-in-case basis.

There now, though, seems to be an usual twist in the trial that is currently capturing popular eyes -- that of Jodi Arias.… Read more

In 'Futurama,' robots follow 'Bender's Law,' not Asimov's

STANFORD, Calif.--Issac Asimov's famous laws of robotics say machines may never harm humans. In Matt Groening's "Futurama" universe that takes place a millennium later, however, robots have become a bit less literal-minded.

"The three laws of robotics are actually built into many of the robots," said Patric Verrone, co-executive producer of "Futurama." "Some of them just choose to ignore them."

The best known example of "Futurama's" robot taxonomy is Bender, a foul-mouthed, alcoholic, cigar-smoking kleptomaniac who dreams about killing all the humans. But the universe of &… Read more

Cops allegedly get violent at sight of Samsung Galaxy

Cell phones have that certain power to record events that are occurring in the public sphere.

Sometimes, though, those who wield power aren't so keen to be filmed when they are exercising their might.

Here, for example, is one police officer who seems to believe that the Samsung Galaxy is a weapon.

I hadn't been aware that a slight increase in gadget-size could send it into the same category as, say, a machete.

However, in this footage a member of the San Diego Police Department seems to take great objection to being filmed on a Galaxy while writing … Read more