The “Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act” would require a probable-cause warrant for cell-site simulation surveillance, like the secretive use of the Stingray.  From Ars Technica:

“The federal circuit courts of appeal and the lower courts have been all over the map when it comes to this bread-and-butter privacy issue. Even AT&T has said it was confused about the law, and it has demanded clarity on the issue. To that end, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers proposed legislation Wednesday that seeks to answer the question once and for all: the government would need probable-cause warrants to obtain geolocation data on suspects.

“Outdated laws shouldn’t be an excuse for open season on tracking Americans, and owning a smartphone or fitness tracker shouldn’t give the government a blank check to track your movements,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, said of the legislation he’s co-sponsoring.”

18,000 people have died at the hands of the police in the US since the year 2000.  Automatic escalation of a situation to the point that lethal force is justified, the selection of people prone to want to kill, and a serious lack of consequences for clearly unjustified uses of deadly force, among other reasons, are to blame. Copblock

Beatings, needless cavity searches, sexual abuse of children, harassment, and all-around automatic sadism-for-the-hell-of-it by knuckle-draggers who’ve had power over lives handed to them has been here for awhile.  People that lives within 100 miles of the US border know this. Techdirt

Over the course of 18 years.

Cops put far too much faith in surveillance tech, while neglecting to build trust with a public that could actually be of help in criminal cases. The surveillance tech ends up being an expensive, useless mess, and the police have poisoned the well by betraying the public’s trust too many times.  Baltimore Sun

Former Black Panther member makes good  use of the FBI’s massive file on him. VICE

Techdirt. It’s called an “assessment”, and they use it to spy on anyone, regardless of whether allegations of wrongdoing exist.