Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes SiliconValley.com: Bay Area ride-hailing giant Lyft is accused in a series of new lawsuits of failing to protect female passengers from rape by drivers. One plaintiff claims she was 15 when her driver raped her and then forced her to take an anti-pregnancy pill. The December legal actions are part of a “mass tort” lawsuit initiated…
Tag: rape
CNET: Police Are Using Facial Recognition For Minor Crimes, ‘Because They Can’
“Police often frame facial recognition as a necessary tool to solve the most heinous crimes, like terrorist attacks and violent assaults, but researchers have found that the technology is more frequently used for low-level offenses,” reports CNET: In a recent court filing, the New York police department noted that it’s turned to facial recognition in more than 22,000 cases in the…
How the slave trade left its mark in the DNA of people in the Americas
Genetic data from people in the Americas with African heritage hints at unusually high death rates among certain slaves, and points to systematic rape of women of African descent Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2249839-how-the-slave-trade-left-its-mark-in-the-dna-of-people-in-the-americas/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Uber Loses $1.4 Billion in Value After Acknowledging Thousands of Sexual Assaults
“Uber’s stock market value fell by $1.4 billion Friday, on the heels of the company’s release of a safety report revealing that 3,000 incidents of sexual assaults took place during its U.S. rides in 2018,” reports the Bay Area News Group: On Thursday evening, Uber released its long-awaited safety study, which revealed that the company received 3,045 reports of sexual assaults…
Sweden Drops Julian Assange Rape Investigation
Sweden has dropped an investigation into a rape allegation made against Julian Assange. From a report: The deputy chief prosecutor, Eva-Marie Persson, told a news conference: “I want to inform about my decision to discontinue the preliminary investigation.” The decision on Tuesday follows a ruling in June by a Swedish court that Assange, who denies the accusation, should not be detained….
Huge Child Porn Ring Busted As Authorities Cite Ability To Crack Bitcoin Privacy
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Federal authorities in the U.S. have unsealed charges against the South Korean operator of a child porn ring that’s been billed as the world’s “largest dark web child porn marketplace.” The child porn site, known as Welcome to Video, charged some users in Bitcoin and authorities say they successfully unmasked those Bitcoin transactions…
New Federal Rules Limit Police Searches of Family Tree DNA Databases
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released new rules yesterday governing when police can use genetic genealogy to track down suspects in serious crimes — the first-ever policy covering how these databases, popular among amateur genealogists, should be used in law enforcement attempts to balance public safety and privacy concerns. The DOJ…
Australia Plans To Block Domains That Host Terrorist Material During Crisis Situations
Australia laid out some of the country’s first concrete steps to make good on its promise of combating the spread of extremism online at this year’s G7 leader’s forum, Reuters reported Sunday. From a report: Officials said the government intends to cut off all access to any internet domain that fails to block terrorist material during a crisis event, and legislation…
Seattle Has Figured Out How To End the War On Drugs
Nicholas Kristof writes in an opinion piece for The New York Times about Seattle’s “bold approach to narcotics that should be a model for America.” Instead of being prosecuted for being caught with small amounts of drugs, that person is steered toward social services to get help. “In effect, Seattle is decriminalizing the use of hard drugs,” writes Kristof. “It is…
Advertisers Are Blacklisting News Stories That Contain Forbidden Words
Zorro shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Companies are increasingly insisting their ads do not appear near articles or videos that contain any of a long list of words. Like many advertisers, Fidelity Investments wants to avoid advertising online near controversial content. The Boston-based financial-services company has a lengthy blacklist of words it considers off-limits. If one of those…