Month: April 2016

(credit: Artondra Hall)

A Baltimore judge has tossed crucial evidence obtained via a stingray in a murder case—the trial was set to begin this week.

According to the Baltimore Sun, local police used the device, also known as a cell-site simulator, to locate the murder suspect in an apartment near his victim’s. In 2014, investigators used the stingray to locate the suspect, Robert Copes, who allowed them into his apartment. There, amid cleaning supplies including bleach and the phone they were looking for, police found the blood of Ina Jenkins, 34, in Copes' apartment. Jenkins' body was found “dumped across the street.”

The Baltimore police had a court-approved pen register, a legal authorization, to use the stingray. However that is not the same as a search warrant that requires probable cause.

(credit: Renzo Stanley)

Jurors who don't obey a judge's admonition to refrain from researching the Internet about a case or using social media during trial could be dinged up to $1,500 under proposed California legislation.

The first-of-its-kind measure, now before the California Assembly, would give a new weapon to judges in the Golden State, who can already hold misbehaving jurors in contempt. But under the new law, designed to combat mistrials, a judge would have an easier time issuing a rank-and-file citation under the proposed law instead of having to go through all of the legal fuss to charge somebody with contempt.

Judges routinely warn jurors not to research their case or discuss it on social media. Normally, errant jurors are dismissed without any penalty, and sometimes a mistrial ensues. Under the new law, levying a fine would be as easy as issuing a traffic ticket.

The cars in question are tiny Japanese-market "Kei" cars. (credit: Wikimedia)

We've written extensively about Volkswagen Group and its attempt to pull a fast one with regard to diesel emissions here in the US and elsewhere. But VW isn't the only car maker to play fast and loose with regulators when it comes to emissions. VW's diesel scandal has resulted in increased scrutiny abroad; French authorities raided Renault in January and PSA Peugeot Citroen in April as part of ongoing investigations into diesel emissions. But the most breathtaking example must belong to Mitsubishi.

On April 21, we learned that the Japanese car maker had been falsifying fuel economy tests in its home market. This came to light after Nissan (which rebadges some Mitsubishi cars) discovered the engines couldn't match Mitsubishi's numbers. That alone would have been bad enough—indeed, it wiped out a third of Mitsubishi's share price—but it seems it was just the tip of the iceberg.

On Tuesday, Mitsubishi revealed it had been using the wrong fuel economy tests for "Kei" cars—small 0.6L cars made just for the Japanese domestic market—since 1991. More than 600,000 affected cars have been sold in Japan during that time.

(credit: Ron Amadeo)

BlackBerry recently dumped its in-house operating system—Blackberry 10—and became one of the newest Android OEMs. It launched the BlackBerry Priv with Android 5.1 in November last year, and today we're getting an idea of what the company's major update process looks like. The Priv is being updated to Android 6.0.

The initial launch of the Blackberry Priv gave us good reason to worry about BlackBerry's software acumen. It launched with Android 5.1 a month after Android 6.0 came out. What, we asked, would happen when it came time to update the Priv? If BlackBerry can't even launch with an up-to-date version of Android, how long would a big update take? The answer seems to be "six months." Marshmallow for the unlocked BlackBerry Priv is rolling out six months after the OS' release and five months after the release of the Priv.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow brings support for user-controllable app permissions—an ironic omission from the Priv given that the name stands for "Privacy." Adoptable storage will be great for the Priv's MicroSD—if BlackBerry doesn't disable it. This feature turns removable storage and internal storage into a single unified pool, allowing you to install apps, media, or whatever else you want on the SD card. Standby battery life should improve with the new "Doze" feature, too.

One of the two JLENS aerostats on the ground at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Two aerostats make up a JLENS "orbit."

The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) system program has been savaged by the House Armed Services Committee in its markup of the Defense Department's 2017 budget. The proposed cut in funding—from the $45 million requested by the Army to a mere $2.5 million—may signal the end of a program that was a source of controversy well before one of the program's radar aerostats broke loose and drifted hundreds of miles. But that incident, which caused power outages and property damage as the wayward blimp dragged its broken tether from Aberdeen, Maryland, into central Pennsylvania, was likely responsible for the program finally being brought to heel.

JLENS was originally intended to be a collection of paired radar dirigibles, tethered to the ground while floating at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet. Of each pair, one aerostat would be equipped with a sensitive "look-down" phased array search radar; the other would have a targeting radar for tracking targets and guiding weapons to them.

The system was intended, as the program's name suggests, to defend against submarine-launched and ship-launched cruise missiles, but it was also advertised as a way to spot low-flying aircraft, drones, swarms of small boats, and even some ground vehicles. Raytheon, the prime contractor for JLENS, and the Army tried to dispel concerns that JLENS could be used for domestic surveillance.