In August 2019, it was reported that Ring, the doorbell-camera company owned by Amazon, was partnering with hundreds of local police departments around the country. As part of this new collaboration and an increasingly extended surveillance system, Ring provides law enforcement with the video and audio that the device records outside of residents’ homes.
Posted on May 4, 2020 - 2:10pm
EVEN BEFORE the novel coronavirus struck, an urgent race was on to get migrants out of America’s overcrowded detention centers, where they were already at risk of abuse, malnutrition, a lack of medical resources, and insufficient access to legal services.
Posted on April 30, 2020 - 2:51pm
Michael Tubbs, the 29-year-old mayor of Stockton, has the kind of life that, if you squint, could convince you the American dream is alive and well. He grew up in Stockton, the son of a single mother and an incarcerated father. He spent his lunch money buying SAT prep books, studying hungry. He eventually attended Stanford and interned at the White House. In 2016, he became the city’s first black mayor.
Posted on April 30, 2020 - 10:06am
When Richard Livingston Jr. got a call from a relative in January 2015 telling him that his 20-year-old son Richard Dejion Livingston III, known as Rickey, had been murdered, he raced to the county morgue to confirm it for himself. He hadn’t heard anything from law enforcement, and he refused to believe it until he got official word. After banging desperately on a door for 45 minutes, he was told that he wouldn’t be let in and that he’d have to go to the police department for information.
Posted on February 25, 2020 - 12:49pm
In May 2019, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) implemented a program called Rapid DNA testing—subjecting families crossing the Mexican border to cheek swab tests, which produce extensive DNA profiles in less than two hours that are entered into a national criminal database. The initial pilot program, begun this summer, was ostensibly rolled out to identify “fraudulent family units”—groups of children and adults who are not blood-related but were trying to achieve special immigration status—and prosecute them for fraud.
Posted on November 20, 2019 - 2:03pm
The Christchurch mosque shooting was the clearest turning point: a mass murder that was, as the New York Times put it at the time, “of, and for, the Internet.” The gunman had teased the shooting on Twitter, announced it on the anonymous, fringe forum 8chan, a megaphone for extremist political views and hateful ideology, and it was live streamed on Facebook. On YouTube, Reddit, and elsewhere, the video of the shooting was repeatedly uploaded faster than the sites’ moderators could take it down.
Posted on October 23, 2019 - 2:28pm
Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized abortion access as a fundamental right, has been contested by conservative activists and legislators since it was passed. And while the decision remains popular 45 years later, with 71% of voters opposed to overturning Roe, Trump’s recent appointments to the Supreme Court indicate there may be an opening to do just that. The size of that opening, and the stakes involved, are being hotly debated.
Posted on March 26, 2019 - 1:10pm
Depending on how you spin it, the recent government shutdown was either an example of the Republicans cynically rolling the Democrats, or the Democrats electing to strategically fold their tents and fight for the Dreamers another day. Either way, nobody was playing chess; it was more like 52 pickup. So even though President Donald Trump contributed little to the process, other than reneging on an early compromise agreement, he somehow came out looking a trifle less inept than everyone else.
Posted on January 29, 2019 - 1:48pm
Chris Beale doesn’t call himself a photographer. Or a journalist. Or an activist. When asked his profession, the 42-year-old is quiet for a moment before replying, “Gardener. I’m a landscape gardener.”
Posted on December 24, 2018 - 7:02am
It started with a conversation. About two years ago, Claudia von Vacano, executive director of UC Berkeley’s social science D-Lab, had a chat with Brittan Heller, the then-director of technology and society for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The topic: the harassment of Jewish journalists on Twitter. Heller wanted to kick the offending trolls off the platform, and Vacano, an expert in digital research, learning, and language acquisition, wanted to develop the tools to do it. Both understood that neither humans nor computers alone were sufficient to root out the offending language.
Posted on December 18, 2018 - 6:04pm
Beneath Irwin Reyes’s desk are ten smartphones hooked up to a computer, running a dizzying number of apps to find out what user information those apps send back to their creators.
Every morning on the playa, Ally Deraps wakes up in her trailer and stumbles outside into the dust to make breakfast, joining friends climbing out of tents and teepees for a bowl of oatmeal in the shade. She chooses an outfit for the day, usually something bright or themed. Then, around 10:30, she grabs a can of coffee and her Motorola radio and hops on her playa bike (furry purple seat, powder blue frame, strung with colored lights and sparkly pipe cleaners) for the 20-minute commute across Burning Man to work.
Posted on October 23, 2018 - 10:15am
It’s Nobel Prize announcement week, and today was supposed to be Literature’s turn. That got poleaxed, however, by yet another scandal in the #MeToo chronicles. This one involved a member of the Swedish Academy who, just last Monday, was sentenced to two years in prison for rape. So, sorry booklovers, no Lit prize this time around.
Posted on October 4, 2018 - 2:49pm
Last week, as the Senate Democrats prepared to grill Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo spoke to the Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli about what to expect from the proceedings.
Posted on September 24, 2018 - 4:33pm
On a cloudy Sunday in mid-May, Raymond Weschler chose Jim McGuire (Cal professor of biology) as his opposing captain, and teams were drawn up. Ray’s booming voice announced the lineup as chatting players finished stretching and headed out to the field. On the diamond at Berkeley’s magnificent Codornices Park, players are surrounded by towering oak trees, redwoods, walnuts and, lining the left-field foul line, Ponderosa pines, which are home to rowdy crows and, when struck by a foul ball, release a cloud of pollen.
Posted on June 28, 2018 - 4:54pm
