DC Lawmaker Wants Cop Guns to Have Mini FPS Cameras

matt buchanan — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:10:00 EDT

A lawmaker in Washington DC has intro'd a bill to the city council that would require all police service pistols to have mini cameras attached to the barrel, which would start rolling as soon as the gun is pulled out of the holster. The tech is already being tested in Orange County, NY. Ostensibly, it's to prevent bad shootings and prove officers acted in good faith, but really I can only think of how awesome an FPS cam would make Cops, like that one scene in the Doom movie, except with intoxicated perps instead of demons from Hell. If it works in DC, I could see this spreading to other police departments pretty quickly as a way to quell lawsuits and such. [NBC4 via The Register via CG]

Washington, D.C., Wall St. Brought to Their Knees by CrackBerry Outage

Matt Buchanan — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:50:14 EDT

While we reported on the BlackBerry service outage (and subsequent magical restoration) earlier, what we didn't note was that it apparently threw Washington, D.C. into sheer chaos. Reuters was on the ground: "I felt like my left arm had been amputated," said Joe Shoemaker, communications director for Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin of Illinois. It was, in a word, "crippling."

New York suffered similar end-of-the-world-like disbelief, as "one Wall Street analyst said she kept hitting her BlackBerry's version of a 'refresh' button, not believing that the system could fail." Also in New York, Charles Ross, a criminal defense lawyer, was left feeling "vulnerable and uncomfortable."

Yes, that's how we're strangely feeling right now: vulnerable and uncomfortable. – Matt Buchanan

BlackBerry e-mail outage upsets White House, Wall St [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Gizmodo: Washington DC

DC Lawmaker Wants Cop Guns to Have Mini FPS Cameras

Washington, D.C., Wall St. Brought to Their Knees by CrackBerry Outage