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An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: In response to Amazon packages being stolen from people's doorsteps, police departments around the country have set up sting operations that use fake packages bugged with GPS trackers to find and arrest people who steal packages. Internal emails and documents obtained by Motherboard via a public records request show how Amazon and one police department partnered to set up one of these operations.

The documents obtained by Motherboard -- which include an operations plan and internal emails between Amazon and the Hayward, California Police Department -- show that Amazon's "national package theft team" made several calls to the Hayward Police Department and sent the department packages, tape, and stickers that allowed the department to set up a "porch pirate" operation in November and December of 2018... Several other cities around the country -- including Aurora, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Hayward, California -- have also conducted porch pirate sting operations aided by Amazon. Jersey City, New Jersey -- like Hayward, California -- put GPS-tracking devices inside the dummy packages. Aurora and Albuquerque, meanwhile, used doorbell cameras from Ring -- which is owned by Amazon -- to capture video footage and surveil for theft.

According to a new study reported by The Wall Street Journal, Google's search results tend to lean liberal. "An analysis by online-search marketer CanIRank.com found that 50 recent searches for political terms on Google surfaced more liberal-leaning webpages than conservative ones, as rated by a panel of four people." The Denver Channel reports: "Minimum wage" tended to yield more liberal results, while "does gun control reduce crime" resulted in more conservative ones. Searches for "financial regulation" and "federal reserve" found mostly nonpartisan links. CanIRank used the opinions of four people to determine how liberal or conservative each website was. For 16 percent of the political search terms studied, no right-leaning results showed up at all on the first page of results. CanIRank noted this could be a problem for democracy. A different study found most people click on one of the first five search results. Users rarely move on to the second page. A Google spokesperson said in an email to the WSJ: "From the beginning, our approach to search has been to provide the most relevant answers and results to our users, and it would undermine people's trust in our results, and our company, if we were to change course." According to Google, their results are "determined by algorithms using hundreds of factors" and "reflect the content and information that is available on the internet."

New submitter ciotog writes "The town of Deer Trail, Colorado (population approximately 550) will be voting next month on whether to offer licenses for drone hunting. Furthermore, a bounty of $100 for each drone shot down will be offered (upon offering proof that the drone was potentially owned by the U.S. government). Is this just a fun gimmick, or a serious commentary on an increasingly surveillance based society?"

SocietyoftheFist writes "William R. Jordan was robbed of his iPad right after he bought it and worse yet he lost part of his finger in the process. He was holding on to the bag so tightly that when the thief ripped the bag free he took the skin off the tip of his pinky finger. Doctors had to amputate more than half the finger because he had lost so much tissue."

7-Vodka writes "Xcel Energy customers who have their own solar panels are worried about a new fee being proposed by the company. A monthly fee to pay for transmission and distribution of energy would be charged to customers who have solar panels, irrespective of their energy use for the month. An Xcel Energy spokesman said the fee is to ensure that regular customers don't subsidize the 'connectivity fees' for the solar panel customers who don't pay when they generate as much as they use. When pressed, the spokesman admitted that nobody actually pays a 'connectivity fee,' yet they wanted to prevent the mooching from occurring in the future (presumably when they hit everyone with such a fee). He also called the absence of a connectivity fee for solar customers a 'double subsidy' because many solar customers receive rebates to install the panels."

It should be pretty easy for The Boulder Police Department to find the perpetrator of a liquor store robbery last Saturday. The male robber was wearing red and white face makeup, a red and purple wig, a fake nose and a denim dress. A clerk says the clown asked for help in a feminine voice, saying, "Will you help me? My husband is out of work." The employees ignored his pleas and the jilted suspect pulled a gun and robbed the store. After collecting an undisclosed amount of cash, the clown unexpectedly fled on foot and not on a unicycle or in a tiny car full of other transvestite clowns.

A Pueblo County High School history teacher was surprised that people would think giving 110 freshmen an assignment to come up with a plot for an act of terrorism was a bad idea. The teacher says the assignment was to illustrate an act of terrorism on American soil, and that she just learned places and dates in college, and not common sense. Gini Fischer, a mother of one of the students, says, "To ask them to use their creative energies to come up with a plot for an act of terrorism is very ludicrous".

mnovotny writes "Colorado Springs police are looking for a man who hit two 7-Eleven convenience stores, armed with a Klingon 'Batleth' sword inspired by the Star Trek science fiction series. They did appear more human in the original series."

mnovotny writes "Colorado Springs police are looking for a man who hit two 7-Eleven convenience stores, armed with a Klingon 'Batleth' sword inspired by the Star Trek science fiction series. They did appear more human in the original series."

mamer-retrogamer writes "On December 17, Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified election equipment used by 64 Colorado counties, including machines made by Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems. A report issued by the Secretary of State's office details a myriad of problems such as lack of password protection on the systems, controls that could give voters unauthorized access, and the absence of any way to track or detect security violations. Manufacturers have 30 days to appeal the decertification."

An anonymous reader writes "The Denver Channel 7 News reports that federal air marshals are operating under a quota for reporting a minimum number of suspicious travelers which is resulting in innocent people being placed on a secret government watch list. From the article: 'These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR.'"

miguelitof writes "According to the TheDenverChannel.com, Colorado cities may soon be able to provide wireless internet service to their citizens. The state Senate will vote today (April 5th) on Colorado Senate Bill 152, which would allow cities to provide wireless internet access. The only proviso would be that cities would have to get approval from voters to use tax dollars. The cost to provide internet access to a 16 square mile area is about $600k. A city could charge as little as $16 a month and cover expenses."

g00set writes "Alek's Christmas lights story was previously covered on Slashdot here, however the Denver Channel is now reporting that it was all a hoax: 'The Lafayette man said he accomplished the trickery by taking 12 "base" photographs of the house with lights on and off and then constructed a Web page that appeared to show lights going on and off when the Web visitor clicked.'"

luv_jeeps writes "Ball Aerospace is going to test fire a laser beam on Sunday night, as part of the CALIPSO project. If you live in the Colorado/Wyoming area, chances are good that you could see it. The article, a little light on details, says that the beam could be as big around as a basketball hoop."