Crime

What the terrifying future of a drone police force would look like

Let’s face it. If you believe that Amazon can realize the awesomeness that is drone delivery, you should halfway fear a future of an overbearing police drone force monitoring us. That terrifying totalitarian future might not be as promising as Amazon’s vision for drones but what does that matter to an obsessive government? They’d just…

Participating in Anonymous DDoS Attack for One Minute = $183,000 Fine

Eric Rosol is not a big-time hacker. However, the Wisconsin man did participate in the 2011 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that Anonymous unleashed on Koch Industries—for one whole minute. And for that one minute of his life, a judge just decided, Rosol must pay a $183,000 fine. Oh, and two years probation. But…

See How Murdery Your Neighborhood Is With the NYPD’s Interactive Map

The NYPD isn’t known for its, uh, transparency. In fact, it’s mostly known for aggressively withholding information. So this new,interactive crime map released by the NYPD this weekend is a welcome surprise. The map sticks to the major New York State felonies: Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter, Rape, Robbery, Felonious Assault, Burglary, Grand Larceny and Grand…

Those Mexican Cobalt-60 Thieves Will Die of Radiation Exposure

Those Mexican thieves that stole a truckload of cobalt-60? They’re virtually sure to die, according to experts. According to The Washington Post, the cobalt-60 that they stole was found abandoned, removed from its protective casing, about 25 miles from where it was stolen. Mardonio Jimenez of Mexico’s nuclear safety commission explained to the Postwhat that…

The Los Angeles Police Department Made a Zombie PSA

The Los Angeles Police Department would like you to be prepared for the real problem with zombies—their desire to steal iPads. Yeah, this is a PSA designed to teach you to hide your valuables, which the LAPD thought would reach its audience better if it capitalized on the zombie craze. Money well spent.

The Nationwide Stolen Smartphone Database Is Complete

Last year, the FCC and the Big Four carriers announced that they were developing a national lost-and-stolen phone registry. Now, the wireless industry says that the database is complete. To refresh your memory, last year we explained the point of the new initiative: https://gizmodo.com/carriers-unite-to-track-stolen-phones-nationwide-5900534 The database, which will be maintained by each carrier, will track…

An emergency clean-up crew was dispatched to a full-size replica of the Space Shuttle Independence in Houston earlier this morning after some miscreants covered it in graffiti. “Houston We ARE the Problem” is almost a political statement, sure—but vandalizing a national treasure with racial slurs? That’s a serious problem. [KHOU]

$1 Million Heist Reminds Us That Bitcoin Is Neither Safe nor Secure

Let’s play a little game called Good Idea/Bad Idea. Round One: Saving money. That’s a good idea! Round two: Saving thousands of dollars in a Bitcoin wallet that’s highly susceptible to hackers and heists. As the customers of Bitcoin payment processor BIPS will tell you, that’s a bad idea. A bunch of cybercriminals just broke…

Considerate iPhone Thief Returns Handwritten List of Stolen Contacts

What really sucks about losing your phone—besides losing the phone—is that you also lose a whole bunch of your data. But to help ease that pain, a iPhone thief in China copied down a list of all his victim’s contacts (by hand!) and returned it to its rightful owner. All 1,000 of them. According to…

Phone Carriers Reject Anti-Theft Plan So They Can Sell More Insurance

Remember the idea to prevent cell phone theft with a so-called kill switch that would disable the device remotely after it had been stolen? Well, lawmakers are having the darnedest time getting a policy in place, in part due to carriers. Let me rephrase that: due to greedy carriers. George Gascón, San Francisco’s District Attorney,…

Sweden Is Closing Prisons Due to Lack of People to Put In Them

As the prison population spirals out of control in the United States, Sweden finds itself with an interesting and opposite predicament: it has too many prisons and not enough prisoners. For this reason, the Scandinavian country recently decided to shutter four prisons and a remand center. The issue isn’t lack of crime in Sweden—in fact,…

Mitten-shaped brand marked the hands of army deserters

It looks like an iron maiden for your palms, and this painful looking device was meant to leave the hands of criminals with a mark no one would forget. This object is part of the Science Museum collection in London, whose curators explain that the brand was made by the British Army during the English…

Anti-Abuse Crusaders Create Virtual Lolita to Trap Kiddie Porn Pervs

Child porn on the Internet is nothing new, but an international organization, Terre des Hommes, has adopted a novel method for busting the perverts who consume it. Meet Sweetie, the virtual Filipino girl who busted 1000 Humberts overseas. In an effort to raise awareness about “Webcam Child Sex Tourism,” TDH posed as a 10-year-old Filipino…

Has Anyone Ever Actually Poisoned or Put Razors in Halloween Candy?

Remember your mom sorting through your Halloween candy as a kid, looking for signs of ‘tainted’ candy laced with poison, needles or razor blades? It turns out, unless she was just using it as an excuse to steal the good candy before you got it, she was wasting her time. You are more likely to…

Start your week off right with these excellent stories from the urban world. This week: baseball economics, a ghastly smelling tour, Canadian sewers, radical policing tactics, and more. Why World Series tickets cost 81 percent more in Boston than they do in St. Louis. [Next City] “30 million people in the American West depend on…

Bullet-Stopping Cellphone Saves Gas Station Clerk Held at Gunpoint

In what’s some fantastic news for both HTC and anyone who keeps their cellphone in their shirt pocket, a Florida gas station attendant’s life was saved when his dearly departed smartphone became a martyr during a recent holdup. https://gizmodo.com/moto-razr-stops-bullet-saves-mans-life-5097093 Yesterday morning at 4:45AM in an Orlando suburb, a man entered a gas station, showed the…

The FBI Just Scooped up $28.5 Million in Bitcoin from Silk Road

As of Friday afternoon, the FBI had managed to seize 144,000 bitcoins from Silk Road’s founder. Worth some $28.5 million in current exchange rates, that’s the largest ever seizure of the cryptocurrency. But based on the Bitcoin trail uncovered in recent weeks, over $50 million could still be missing. https://gizmodo.com/silk-road-kingpin-apparently-hid-a-stash-of-80-million-1441291682 To be more specific, the…

UK Police Seize 3D-Printed Gun Parts That Are Actually 3D Printer Parts

Things are getting a little futuristic in Manchester, England, where police recently arrested a man for allegedly 3D printing gun parts. They seized said parts, but after the images made their way online, the internet fired back with a startling revelation. Those aren’t 3D-printed gun parts. Those are 3D-printed 3D printer parts. It’s a convincing…

Fraudster Busted for Selling Fake Star Trek Tricorder

What do you get when you cross Star Trek jargon, a decent knowledge of Photoshop, and Florida? Well, judging by Howard Leventhal’s attempt to secure around $3 million in funding for a fake tricorder, the answer is one impressively delusional case of fraud. Last year, Laventhal decided to tell executives at Fort Lauderdale, Florida’s Paragon…

Uh Oh, Silk Road Users Are Starting to Get Arrested

Welp, that settles that. Anybody who was wondering if authorities were going to keep going after the arrest of Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht and start targeting users don’t need to wonder anymore. Multiple arrests have now been made worldwide, and it looks like more are on the way. This new wave of arrests knows…