Tribune News Service

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore and department officials have decided to shutter Operation LASER, started roughly eight years ago to increase police presence in crime hot spots and identify offenders. A civilian oversight panel recently questioned the effectiveness of such data-driven strategies.

In a little over two weeks, Marin County will conduct what is hoped to be the final test of the new system using payroll data from March, simultaneously running the data through its new and existing systems — the 11th time it will have conducted such a parallel run.

The California Department of Technology faced personnel clashes, technological hurdles and internal political suspicions as it tried to roll out the fated Motor Voter program. The main problem — a looming deadline — is still hanging over the agency as it works to reform itself.

At a kickoff event in Sacramento for Distracted Driving Awareness Month and California Teen Safe Driving Week, the head of safety recommendations for the National Transportation Safety Board urged the Golden State's lawmakers to pass just such a groundbreaking ban.

Business groups and startups will be asked to brainstorm ideas for ways to use technology to solve a trio of urban challenges. Winners will advance to an accelerator program.

Police departments in Fairfax, San Rafael and Novato are moving forward with text-to-911, and the Marin County Sheriff's Office Communications Center, which handles dispatch for most police and fire agencies in the county, could have it available as soon as June.

Santa Clara County Courts has halted online payments after identifying inconsistencies between fees indicated on its website and actual fees owed to Superior Court and shown in traffic court courtesy notices. The issue dates to a problem discovered in December.

Having learned from previous historic wildfires, California utilities are updating their technological capabilities in hopes of making their networks more resilient and proactive when flames approach, representatives said at the inaugural 2019 Wildfire Technology Innovation Summit.

As electric scooters have become more common, injuries and even deaths have followed the new form of transportation, prompting safety concerns. On Tuesday, the Sacramento City Council will consider regulating electric scooter companies.

As part of a nationwide pilot program, Chula Vista's police drones were first on scene 139 times, and their deployment negated the need for patrol to respond to calls 37 times. The average response time was about 1 minute and 56 seconds. Calls to which drones responded resulted in 44 arrests.

The nonprofit group's software examines criminal data in a matter of minutes and, under Proposition 47, automatically changes those felony convictions when eligible.

The PredPol software relies on data, ranging from crime victim reports to arrests to individuals' histories of police interaction. Data is then fed into machine-learning algorithms, which generate predictions about where and when particular types of crime are likely to occur, and in some cases, who might be expected to break the law.

Silicon Valley's technology industries during 2017 set the pace for employment growth nationwide and outpaced Seattle, Southern California, Boston and New York City, and was equaled only by the Texas city of Austin, a report from the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project showed.

Under SB561, unveiled Monday, consumers would be able to take a business to court for sharing or selling their personal information without permission. The attorney general's office also would be allowed to take action against a company without first giving it a chance to correct violations of the data privacy law.

Tech companies, including Microsoft and Salesforce, have faced pressure to end their business with federal immigration agencies, and criticism over contracts that provide data processing powered by artificial intelligence, face recognition technology and software to scrub data across social media platforms.

Before she leaves office in four years, State Controller Betty Yee wants to make progress on an elusive task in California state government: overhauling the state's outdated and dysfunctional payroll system.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has named a new acting director. Kathleen Webb, who has been with the state Government Operations Agency (GovOps) and CalPERS, has replaced acting director Bill Davidson, who had replaced permanent director Jean Shiomoto on Dec. 31.

Waymo and Cruise, the leaders in the race to make robot cars a widespread reality, saw their vehicles improve at handling themselves on the road in 2018, according to reports that they submitted to California regulators. But auto industry leaders — even ones at self-driving companies — have started walking back their rosy forecasts.

Governor, mayors of Fresno, Merced and Bakersfield meet to talk about controversial project's future.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposal to let Californians share the wealth generated by their data hasn't been publicly fleshed out yet.

This session of Congress may be the best chance in years to pass meaningful data privacy legislation — one motivated by California lawmakers' passage last year of a data privacy law, paired with a similar measure enacted by the European Union.

In settling a federal lawsuit, the Secretary of State's office agreed to examine whether some votes from residents registered through California's Motor Voter program may have been wrongly rejected, and whether that could have affected the outcomes of state or local races.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has had discussions with Elon Musk's Boring Company about creating a tunnel connecting Diridon Station, the city's transit hub, with Mineta San Jose International Airport, in an effort to stimulate timely conversation about a critical link to the nation's fastest-growing airport.

As Jump prepares to expand on the Sacramento success of its rental bikes, city officials will contemplate an ordinance this spring in hopes of avoiding controversies San Francisco and other cities experienced when e-scooters caught them by surprise.

The Santa Clara County-based Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) has been a leader in cracking down on so-called "SIM swapping." A Boston-area man entered a no-contest plea last month, following his arrest in July by REACT, and his conviction is believed to be one of the first in this area of crime.