Tag: police state

Jury Convicts Blogger After Ohio Senator Reports Crude Political Joke

An Ohio jury has found a blogger guilty of sending a crude, but clearly political joke to a state senator who had just dropped out of a Senate president race – and who chose to call the police instead of simply blocking the number.

All it took was for Senator Jerry Cirino to personally call the police chief in his hometown of Kirtland and ask that charges be filed against D.J. Byrnes, who writes under the pen name “The Rooster.”

The image that was sent to the senator depicted the cartoon ogre Shrek holding his genitals, and the accompanying text was a joke at the politician’s expense.

The judge who signed the arrest warrant had received campaign contributions from Cirino and had been endorsed by him.

Cirino also emailed the local police chief, saying he was “officially filing a complaint” and asking the police to “take appropriate actions” – and to make sure the “harassment” stops.

The Shrek image sent by Byrnes was described in the arrest affidavit as “fully nude with an exposed and erect humanlike penis engaged in an act of masturbation.”

Byrnes’ attorneys argued that the image, accompanied by a text that called Cirino “Young Mussolini,” was simply a political statement.

“The image made the exact same point he texted. Cirino had exposed himself,” said defense attorney William Livingston.

“One message and a meme and one reply, all about a single subject: the Senate race that Cirino had just lost,” Livingston said.

Another attorney, J. Michael Murray, told the court that the image of Shrek was meant to show that Cirino was “exposing himself, as he couldn’t win the presidency.”

Murray said that Byrnes, who was arrested in public at the Statehouse in June and held for 23 hours, “spent a night in jail because he offended a powerful politician.”

Prosecutor Matthew Lallo asked the jury: “Tell me how that is not a harassing message.”

Byrnes was found guilty and ordered to pay $200 in fines and court costs. His attorneys plan to appeal.

Cirino, meanwhile, maintained that he was not trying to stifle free speech, saying, “This was about protecting my rights as an individual.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) said in June that the government “generally cannot punish people for saying things to or about public officials, even if some find the speech offensive, insulting or vulgar.”

FIRE also rejected the notion that the image of Shrek was obscene, saying it was “protected political mockery, not obscenity.”

FIRE’s advice to Cirino at the time was: “Block the number.”

The real punishment was the arrest, the night in jail, and the trial, all courtesy of a powerful politician who chose to “pursue” a critic instead of blocking them on his phone.

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Pakistan Declares State of Emergency, Arrests Leaders of Former PM Imran Khan’s Party

Pakistan on Monday declared a state of emergency in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the stronghold of former prime minister Imran Khan’s PTI party, and suspended the PTI-dominated government.

The central government claimed these drastic measures were necessary because provincial leaders were not doing enough to contain an Islamist insurgency leaking over the border from neighboring Afghanistan.

PTI officials dismissed the official government explanation as merely an excuse to arrest opposition leaders and prevent Khan supporters from marching on Islamabad.

Khan, 74, was ejected from the prime minister’s office in 2022 by a vote of no confidence and has been jailed since 2023 on numerous corruption charges – all of which his supporters denounce as political fabrications created by the administration of current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to prevent Khan from making a political comeback.

PTI members have been rallying in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for days to prepare for the march on Islamabad, while government forces in the Pakistani capital have been blocking off roads and bracing for a siege.

Sharif asked PTI to postpone the march, due to the ongoing terrorist threat from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban – a violent insurgency that wants to overthrow Pakistan’s secular government and replace it with an Islamist caliphate modeled on the Afghan Taliban.

Just as the marchers were preparing to embark from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for their week-long journey to Islamabad, President Asif Ali Zardari declared a state of emergency in the province and suspended the government. Zardari’s office said he signed the orders after the “failure of negotiations” between provincial representatives and emissaries from Islamabad.

Police arrested several high-ranking PTI members, including the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a Khan ally named Sohail Afridi. The police said some would only be detained temporarily, while others could face serious criminal charges. India’s The Hindu quoted two anonymous Pakistani police officials who said a total of 278 PTI members were detained.

The Hindu also said schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were closed on Monday, and “major disruptions to Internet connectivity” were detected in the province.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar said a provincial governor would be appointed for at least six months, or until the state of emergency is lifted.

PTI leaders and spokesmen sneered at Zardari’s order as an “ambush on democracy” and “a coup disguised as an emergency.”

The provincial governor, Faisal Karim Kundi, posted a video message saying that residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would welcome President Zardari’s order, because they want “peace, stability, development and prosperity rather than unrest and insecurity.”

Kundi urged the people of the province to “refrain from violating the law, inciting violence or engaging in rioting.”

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“Full-On Truman Show”: Former State Dept. Official Exposes USAID’s Censorship Machine In Brazil

Former State Department official Mike Benz laid out USAID’s sweeping involvement in Brazil’s political and institutional landscape, detailing a network of American funding that reached media organizations, universities, activist groups and organizations involved with the country’s election system.

Benz, who serves as executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, broke down the extent of USAID’s footprint during an appearance on “The Benny Show” with host Benny Johnson.

“What’s happening in Brazil was a full-on Truman show. You had the media funded by USAID. You had the universities funded by USAID. You had the staffers of the Supreme Court and the TSE (Superior Electoral Court), the election court, USAID. You had all the constitutional law advocates funded by USAID. You had the LGBT activists funded by USAID,” Benz explained.

“It’s full spectrum. If you were to walk down a city block in Sao Paulo or, I don’t know, Brasilia, you would have a 360 vision of institutions funded and puppeteered by USAID without ever knowing it,” the former State Department official added. “In fact, USAID, knowing what they were doing, and I need to be careful about what I can and can’t say here, let’s just say, would anyone be surprised, for example, if USAID was going around and telling its grantees in Brazil to remove the USAID logo so that it doesn’t get out that grantee’s connection to USAID?”

Benz said USAID’s influence could continue even after its funding disappeared because institutional and legal changes remained in place.

“They knew what they were doing. They knew how sensitive it was. Would you be surprised, for example, if USAID, which basically set up the censorship state in Brazil, and this is actually something, let me quickly pivot to say, it is true that this is the first Brazilian election since the 2020 municipal elections in Brazil that does not have USAID money slushing around Lula and his allies, but is still an election that is in many ways under the thumb of the ghost of USAID,” he said. “There is something I call kind of the clockmaker’s dilemma, which is USAID, even when you remove it, the institutional and legal changes that a country goes through can live on even if you cut USAID funding down to zero.”

Benz then zeroed in on two of Brazil’s most powerful institutions, the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and Superior Electoral Court (TSE): “For example, in Brazil, you have this apparatus through the STF and TSE, the Supreme Court and the basically election court that determines all things around elections, and basically after Bolsonaro won in 2018, the TSE court with Alexandre de Moraes, the famous Voldemort judge, they declared disinformation a threat to free and fair elections, not just disinformation during an election season, but disinformation any time, misinformation, disinformation any time about anything because it could pollute people’s, I don’t know, sense of what’s true or false in the information ecosystem, and so it could have an impact on an election three years away if this false information is allowed to circulate online.”

Benz also went into detail about USAID’s connections to Brazil’s election and judicial establishment.

“That was set up by USAID, USAID flooded the zone, USAID had contact at every level with the TSE court, with the Alexandre de Moraes court,” he said. “I testified to the Brazilian Senate Relations Committee and put pictures from USAID’s website of Alexandre de Moraes being trained by CEPS (Competitive Economy Program), the USAID grantee, by NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the USAID grantee has gotten $3 billion from USAID and was created by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Benz’s remarks come just days after Brazil’s conservatives delivered a powerful showing at the ballot box. Flávio Bolsonaro finished first in the opening round of the presidential election, taking 47.03% of the vote to left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s 45.16%, setting up an October 25 runoff.

Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party emerged as the largest party in both houses of Congress, winning 121 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and expanding its Senate delegation from 15 to 28 seats.

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Canadian YouTuber builds ‘Flock-like’ camera to exclusively track police vehicles, gets a visit from police — officers visit his home to express privacy concerns

A YouTuber has received an unexpected visit from the police over an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) camera he built to specifically track police cars, using the same technology law enforcement has infamously used to track ordinary citizens. In a video posted to his channel on October 7, Anthony Sistilli says two police officers showed up at his doorstep on September 20th to ask questions about the device, asking what his intentions were with the project.

Sistilli, a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber, pointed out the irony of the officers’ concerns, explaining that they mirror the privacy concerns of ordinary citizens who are growing increasingly weary of the recent spike in blanket surveillance brought about by a mass installation of ALPR cameras. Flock Safety, a U.S. public safety technology company, recently scaled its centralized national surveillance network to over 120,000 cameras operating across 49 states, according to the company, capturing billions of vehicle scans every month.

The development sparked widespread public backlash, with critics arguing that Flock has quietly built a massive government surveillance dragnet without a public vote or federal oversight, since any police department on the network can search across state lines. Security researchers later discovered the network included 335,701 Flock cameras and created a “Flock Surveillance Map,” exposing their locations.

Similar ALPR camera surveillance networks exist in Canada, where Sistilli resides, prompting him to build his own device, but this time, encoded to exclusively track police cars. He detailed the build in several TikTok videos, describing it as “a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers.” He then posted a video of himself using the device in real life. The video brought Peel Regional Police, the local law enforcement serving Sistilli’s city, Brampton, Ontario, to his doorstep two weeks later.

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What the UK Terror Law Really Protects

That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those past, her nature and name is chang’d; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
~ John Donne, Satire III

Seven activists smashed their way into an engineering plant at Sandwich, Kent, before dawn on 17 June 2024. Instro Precision, the firm there, manufactures targeting gear for drones. It is a subsidiary of the better-known Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. The prosecution alleges that, once inside, the defendants threw stock to the floor, smashing computers with a crowbar – and puts the damage done inside the factory that morning at more than £1 million. Two days later, a British export licence (Instro Precision Ltd) to Israel was stopped. No one was injured in the raid.

The trial of those seven, plus two more (ten in total were originally charged), is now under way at the Old Bailey. The youngest of the nine is twenty-one, while the oldest is fifty-two, and they are: Nasser Akhtar, Elliot Wilson, Maximillian Dixon, Nirad Abrol, Seirol Davies, Xavi Davies, Eoin O’Meara, Hannah Davidson and Julija Brigadirova. The Crown has charged them with criminal damage, burglary and violent disorder, and the hearing will run for eight weeks. Prosecutors dropped aggravated burglary – the one charge based on intent to injure – before the case reached court. Indeed, over five years and hundreds of actions, Palestine Action has injured no one; MI5’s own Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre found that the group “does not advocate for violence against persons”.

In a report on this on October 1, The Grayzone discussed a secret meeting between the Crown Prosecution Service and senior UK counter-terrorism officers which took place just ten days following the Instro raid. Those heavily redacted documents showed the existence of a so-called “threat matrix” and how authorities are categorising political activity in the UK. For example, “high level aggravated activism” is defined as involving “unlawful behaviour that has… a significant negative impact on UK businesses”. Declassified UK separately reported that when the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre recommended Palestine Action’s proscription in March 2025, it turned its case on a mere three incidents, each said to have caused damage “in excess of £1m”, and actually presented that figure to ministers as evidence of “terrorism”. No mention of violence against a person there.

Instro Precision’s CEO is Dagan Yogev, and he served as a major in the 2006 Israeli assault on Lebanon, after which he held senior posts at Elbit’s headquarters before being appointed head of its Sandwich plant. Palestine Action raided Sandwich because it manufactures the targeting units fitted to drones used in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as its illegal incursions into southern Lebanon.

Palestine Action’s offensive against Elbit has paid off since it closed an Elbit factory at Oldham for good in the years before any terror charge. The same campaign saw the firm retreat from its London headquarters. The state noticed this was biting in 2022, after some £280 million in Ministry of Defence contracts with Elbit had gone up in smoke, and domestic and European suppliers had begun to pull out. Come the Sandwich raid, Elbit was reeling – its factories closing and contracts lost to a movement that the courts had so far been unable to restrain.

The gravest part of all of this is that – as in the earlier Elbit trial – the British press cannot tell you the most sensitive bits, since a reporting restriction has been imposed on the trial, preventing the newspapers – and the jury deciding the case – from knowing that a conviction on any charge could lead to a terrorism sentence. The jurors decide on damage to property, and yet the matter that will determine the nine’s punishment is kept from them. So the UK media are covering the trial this week, but not one of them can report, under the restriction, what a conviction could mean for the defendants.

If section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 defines “serious (damage to property)” as terrorism – then on that one word hinges a world of nuance. Section 69 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is the mechanism that enables a judge to attach such a “terrorist connection”. So is a broken window just minor criminal damage and a matter for a magistrates’ court, or does it become a “serious” matter and possibly an act of terror to be tried at Crown Court? We have seen this playbook before, in the Filton case, in June of this year. The machinery ran all the way to sentence when a Woolwich jury convicted four Palestine Action activists of criminal damage for the raid on Elbit’s Bristol factory, and Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson then ruled under section 69 that the damage carried that “terrorist connection” – making legal history as the first occasion on which such a finding has been attached to the breaking of property.

Once that unprecedented, some would say authoritarian ruling stood, the sentences rose as high as eight years, with fifteen-year notification requirements imposed. The nine Instro defendants are currently facing that same finding, despite it having been declined in an earlier case by a judge who found the circumstances of a wrecked Barclays branch in Burnley “significant” but short of “serious”; though crucially the principle itself survived his decision.

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UK Airports Begin Replacing Passport Checks With Facial Recognition

In the UK, the government is now selling a switch to contactless facial recognition at airports as a time-saving measure for travelers.

And a major time-saving it is not – five seconds shaved off the previous 20 to 25 seconds it took to use an eGate.

The process of scanning your face instead of your passport is now in place at East Midlands Airport, and will be expanded to 13 airports by early 2027, the Home Office has announced.

The way it works is that your face is photographed as you approach the gate, and this is then compared to a gallery of passport photographs that the airlines have sent to border control.

But don’t think you can leave your passport at home – the government has made sure to inform citizens that they should keep it with them at all times.

This new “convenience” is available to British citizens first, with other nationalities to be onboarded in the coming months.

And what a win it is – for the government, that is. “This is a win for travelers coming to our brilliant country,” said Phil Douglas, Director General of Border Force.

He added, “Our digital transformation also builds on our work this summer to extend eGates to children aged eight and above, making life a little easier for families.”

The eGates are now available to children as young as eight, provided they are at least 120cm tall, and are traveling with an adult who is using the automated gates.

The government’s announcement was met with enthusiasm by the airports, with East Midlands Airport Managing Director Steve Griffiths declaring his facility to be “delighted” to be the first to introduce contactless eGates.

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The Law Can’t Keep Up with Flock’s AI Surveillance

It’s a windy day on the shore of Lake Michigan, and Maria is headed downtown from her home in Dolton, Illinois. As she has done several times this year, Maria plans to attend a peaceful protest at Grant Park against federal immigration policies. She has never been arrested and has even chatted cordially with police officers and federal agents stationed at previous events.

Agents working this protest have been instructed by their supervisors to be on the lookout for possible illegal immigrants and anti-government agitators. The agents activate a surveillance plan. Maria first encounters it shortly after pulling out of her driveway. As her red Honda Accord passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), it captures an image of one of her bumper stickers with a pro-immigration slogan: “No human being is illegal.” The ALPR has been trained to recognize text such as bumper stickers, sending an automatic alert to a central computer. In turn, the computer sends signals to nearby artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced “smart” street cameras to monitor the car’s movements.

A camera hanging from the W 71st St. overpass zooms in and captures an image of Maria’s face. The camera sends another ping to the computer, which identifies the driver as Maria (with, say, 91 percent confidence) based on her driver’s license photo and recordings of her at past rallies from officers’ body-worn cameras. The computer collects other data known about Maria from public records, including her registered nursing license. From the license, it pulls Maria’s home address. Next, the computer connects that information with recent police reports from the area. Nothing serious, but the report includes several mentions of pro-immigration graffiti on an abandoned building three blocks from where Maria lives. Possibly more significantly, the computer uncovers court records from 20 years ago, referring to a family dispute after Maria’s father was deported from the United States.

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Outrage over plan to livestream US military firing squad execution

The Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of a convicted military base mass shooter has met widespread condemnation, with the UN saying it would amount to torture and US lawmakers from both parties slamming the move.

Nidal Hasan’s execution – which is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, where he gunned down 13 people in 2009 – is set to be the first by US military firing squad since 1945.

Representative Austin Scott, a member of US President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, said he supported executing Hasan but that “livestreaming executions is what jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said broadcasting the execution would be “a barbaric spectacle” that would give Hasan “more attention and more control” and “a global platform to amplify his hateful, anti-American message”.

Reed added: “This is a gift to anti-American terrorist recruiters.”

Trump on Friday backed the execution – saying Hasan “deserves it” and branding him a “maniac” – but did not comment on the livestreaming.

A Pentagon official told AFP the previous day that the execution would be streamed live, after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public”.

Later, Hegseth wrote “correct” when retweeting a media report about the planned livestream.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the move, telling AFP yesterday that “the livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.

Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said it was a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered”.

Hegseth said it would be the military’s first firing squad execution since World War II – a reference to Eddie Slovik, who was put to death for desertion in 1945.

Hegseth said: “People need to understand that … there’s serious consequence for these types of things.

“I kind of like the mentality we had in World War II, which was win, which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you need to stand your ground.”

The last US military execution was in 1961, when John Bennett was hanged for rape and attempted murder.

The Death Penalty Information Centre says that 135 soldiers have been executed by the US military since 1916.

According to rights group Amnesty International, at least 17 public executions are known to have been carried out in 2025 – six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran.

Amnesty’s Justin Mazzola said on Friday that the death penalty is “a violation of human rights”, and that streaming Hasan’s execution “would only compound the cruelty”.

Twelve of the 13 people Hasan killed and 30 of those he wounded were soldiers. He was shot and partially paralysed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

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Outrage As Police ATTACK Teenage Girls

A video of South Yorkshire Police officers using aggressive force against a group of teenage girls on a Rotherham street has triggered widespread outrage. 

The footage shows shoves, a baton drawn and swung, girls knocked to the ground, a punch, and Tasers pointed at the group. 

What began as a dispersal order for breach of the peace escalated rapidly into scenes that many viewers describe as excessive and unnecessary.

The short clip, shared widely over the weekend, captures an officer telling the girls: “You are being dispersed for a breach of the peace.” Moments later, physical confrontations erupt. 

One officer shoves the girls forcefully. Another draws his baton and launches it toward the group. Two of the girls attempt to wrestle it away; one falls onto the road. 

A second officer punches a girl who had pushed him, sending her backward to the ground. Additional officers then arrive and point Tasers while ordering people back.

South Yorkshire Police issued a statement acknowledging the public reaction. “The short clip on social media of the police response to an incident in Rotherham over the weekend appears nothing short of shocking,” the force said. 

Their Professional Standards Department is reviewing all available footage, including body-worn video, from the full response to a 999 call. The assessment will determine next steps. The force added that officers are expected to act in a “lawful, proportionate, and fair” manner.

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DOJ Says Flock Camera Data Is Not Protected By Fourth Amendment

The US government has told a federal appeals court that data collected by Flock Safety cameras is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, because being watched on the road is “a reality of modern life” – and therefore, nobody can expect privacy there.

The argument was made by Justice Department attorney Michael Weisbuch during oral argument in the Fifth Circuit in the case US v. Brownlee. The panel of judges – Chief Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge Irma Carrillo Ramirez, and Judge Priscilla Richman – heard the case on October 5.

Weisbuch said there is a “general rule that publicly observable movements are not protected” – and that Flock cameras only enable “episodic” monitoring of cars as they pass by, as opposed to tracking them continuously.

Chief Judge Elrod asked if that rule still makes sense today, when there are cameras everywhere, and the data they collect can be easily analyzed. “Is that really the right rule in this day and age where everything is observed and it all can be analyzed instantaneously?” she asked.

Weisbuch maintained that “it’s the pervasive regulation of cars when they’re in plain view on public thoroughfares that diminishes any expectation of privacy.”

He sought to differentiate between that and tracking people’s phones, saying, “We all expect to be subject to intermittent surveillance when we’re driving around. It’s a reality of modern life. We don’t necessarily expect our phone, which is essentially part of our body, to be tracked as we move in both public and private places.”

Elrod kept asking if the rule that allows this type of surveillance is still valid when it becomes so pervasive. “What if it becomes not spread out and it’s on every corner, which it’s soon to be?” she asked. “Is it really episodic when it so permeates everything?” she also asked, and noted that finding in the defendant’s favor would be “a big ask.”

The defendant, Charles Brownlee, was convicted of a series of armed robberies of cash stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and his lawyers are now trying to get his conviction overturned, arguing that police used Flock and another company, Vigilant Solutions, to track him down without a warrant.

Brownlee’s lawyers argue that this is unconstitutional, while Weisbuch said that the technology is not “capable of following people into constitutionally protected areas” and that is why it is different from phones, which are tracked as people move “in both public and private places.”

Weisbuch also dismissed the idea that the government could use the data collected by Flock and other companies to track people all the time, saying, “The political process is a serious check on that [hypothetical] ever coming to fruition, and I think a better check than an erroneous extension of Fourth Amendment.”

Assistant Federal Public Defender Matthew Wright, who represents Brownlee, argued that the way the police used the databases in this case constitutes a search and that the data collected by Flock and Vigilant is “stunningly comprehensive.”

He said that the initial collection of data is indiscriminate, and that it is collected from everybody, and that it can be used to “reconstruct your pattern of life.”

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