Executives of the “social media risk management” firm ZeroFOX have defended an assessment the company produced for Baltimore, which labeled Black Lives Matter activists as “threat actors.” After Baltimore police killed Freddie Gray, an uprising, which included rioting, occurred. ZeroFOX offered pro bono assistance to city officials and produced a “confidential” report identifying supposed threats to the city. It recommended steps city officials could take to protect security, including keeping a close eye on protest leaders.

Late last month, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) issued a blistering report detailing millions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse in the US and coalition reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. The report, issued to Congress on July 30th, presents the results of a series of investigations conducted by SIGAR that revealed $37.4 million in “questionable costs” in the last quarter of the year — those costs lead to a total of $279.5 million in questionable costs identified by SIGAR to date.

Prison mistreatment may have given Oberist Saunders a staph infection after surgery, but under the privatized healthcare of Corizon Health Services, things got even worse, according to a lawsuit. Florida prisons have been home to some of the most horrific stories of inmate abuse and medical neglect and this lawsuit shows the harm caused by putting profit over patient health.

Boston is also one of three cities, selected in February, for the launch of a pilot program with the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the National Counterterrorism Center to “counter violent extremism.” But local advocates for civil rights worry the program is really infringing on Muslims’ rights.

To launch Shadowproof but retain Firedoglake’s history, our tech team had to transfer approximately 4 million comments — ten years worth of conversations. The first Shadowproof Mailbag. Is your letter inside?

Fraudulent paperwork, cheated counterparties, robosigning — no it’s not the housing crisis again. This time the crimes are related to the Too Big To Fail/Jail banks’ conduct with credit cards. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup have now reached settlements with the government related to their criminal credit card practices.

A lawsuit filed yesterday in Kentucky challenges the handcuffing of schoolchildren, especially those with disabilities, as a way of dealing with behavioral problems. According to the ACLU suit, two children with Attention Deficit Disorder and other disabilities, were “unlawfully restrained and handcuffed at school with excessive force and without necessity.”

An Idaho law enacted to permit the state to jail anyone, who conducts undercover investigations and secretly records animal abuse, was rejected as unconstitutional by a federal judge. The decision marked the first time a federal court had struck down a state’s “ag-gag law.”

In Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report,” the authoritarian system in place to predict crime and catch individuals before they commit crimes is dystopian fantasy. In the mind of New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton, this story is part of today’s reality, one the NYPD is fueling through experiments with predictive policing.