Tag: police state

Utah first state to hold websites liable for users who mask their location with VPNs — law goes into effect, designed to prevent bypassing age checks

Utah’s Online Age Verification Amendments, formally Senate Bill 73, take effect on May 6, making the state the first in the U.S. to explicitly target VPN use as part of age verification legislation.

Signed by Governor Spencer Cox on March 19, the controversial law establishes that a user is considered to be accessing a website from Utah if they are physically located there, regardless of whether they use a VPN or proxy to mask their IP address. It also prohibits covered websites from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass age checks.

NordVPN has called the law an “unresolvable compliance paradox” and a “liability trap,” arguing that it holds websites responsible for identifying users whose tools are specifically designed to be unidentifiable. The EFF warned that the legal risk could push sites to either ban all known VPN IPs or mandate age verification for every visitor globally.

The law is also technically flawed, given that it assumes that a web provider can reliably detect VPN traffic and determine a user’s true physical location — they can’t. IP reputation databases such as MaxMind and IP2Proxy can flag traffic from known datacenter IP ranges, but commercial VPN providers rotate addresses constantly, and residential VPN endpoints are largely indistinguishable from standard home connections. Autonomous System Number analysis can catch traffic originating from datacenter networks, but can’t identify a personal WireGuard tunnel running on a cloud VPS, for example, which routes through the same infrastructure as ordinary web hosting.

The only detection method that reliably identifies VPN protocol signatures is deep packet inspection, which analyzes traffic at the network level, not system- or app-level. China’s Great Firewall and Russia’s TSPU system deploy DPI via ISPs, but a website operator can’t because it requires access to network infrastructure that sits between the user and the server, not on the server itself.

Meanwhile, setting up a personal WireGuard instance on any major cloud provider takes minutes, meaning the law will be more likely to negatively impact non-technical users who rely on commercial VPN services for legitimate privacy: journalists, people living under authoritarian regimes, political dissidents, and abuse survivors, among others.

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Anti-boycott laws run afoul of the free press

The First Amendment is under attack. The formidable frontal assault came quietly, stealthily into state legislatures across the nation. The attackers wielded pens proving mightier than swords and signed laws that punish the refusal to sign a pledge of allegiance — not the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States; rather, a pledge of deference to a foreign government and a promise not to boycott the nation that government represents.

What’s more American than a boycott, Alan Leveritt pondered when he spoke with Editor & Publisher during a vodcast with E&P Publisher Mike Blinder back in December 2021. Leveritt had penned a Nov. 22, 2021, op-ed for The New York Times about a legal case he’s been waging against an obscure Arkansas state law that suppresses free speech and requires people and businesses who contract with the state to sign away their rights to “boycott,” a subjective term.

Leveritt cited the Boston Tea Party and the centuries-old tradition of boycotts, using rhetoric and the power of the purse strings to influence people, companies and even government.

Leveritt comes from a family of Arkansas farmers. “We’re just white-trash farmers. I mean, that’s where we come from,” he explains in the new documentary film, “Boycott,” by Director Julia Bacha and the team at Just Vision, an award-winning production company.

Leveritt carries on that farming tradition today; in the film, he’s seen tending gardens and gathering eggs. But his day job — one that he’s held for nearly 50 years — is serving as publisher of the Arkansas Times, a free, local news source he co-founded in his 20s. Since the beginning, the venture has been entirely advertising-supported, and a significant amount of it comes from state agencies, including the state university system.

“I was raised conservative, and I started moving to the left over the years. As a recovering conservative, I want to be left alone, you know? Do your job. You get your business on merit, and you get paid for it, and you don’t pass some political litmus test. This is America,” he says in the film.

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West Virginia Supreme Court Considers Whether Smell Of Marijuana Can Be Basis For Police To Search Homes

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia is considering a case that questions whether the odor of marijuana alone is enough for law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search a person’s home.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on an appeal of Berkeley County Circuit Court’s decision to throw out evidence Martinsburg police officers found in a home after detecting the “strong odor” of the drug. Excluding the evidence effectively stopped the state from prosecuting a man on drug charges, an attorney told justices last week.

Aaron Lewis was arrested in 2020 on three counts of drug possession with intent to deliver and being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, according to reporting by the Herald-Mail.

Court documents say Martinsburg police were answering another man’s call about a suicidal woman who had reportedly stabbed herself when they came across Lewis while searching the caller’s backyard. Officers were unable to locate the woman so they started going door-to-door looking for her.

The officers went to Lewis’s home where his son, Aaron Lewis Jr. answered the door. The officers detected the “strong odor of marijuana,” according to court documents. The younger Lewis refused to give officers permission to search the home.

Before they obtained a search warrant, they entered the home to conduct a “protective sweep,” during which they found a bundle of money and two clear bowls with a leafy substance on the kitchen stove, court documents say. Two officers then left to obtain the search warrant while other officers stayed on scene to secure the apartment.

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The Elites And Their Contempt

Last week, I was unexpectedly hit with a post-lockdown trauma response. While driving to a baseball game days before the NFL Draft came to Pittsburgh, I passed a digital highway sign instructing me to avoid nonessential travel.

Suddenly, memories of empty highways with signs instructing drivers to “Stay Safe and Stay Home” came flooding back to me.

As the week developed, it began to occur to me that the parallels were deeper than my subjective emotional response. Road closures intensified, rendering my beloved city of Pittsburgh less and less functional. Even sidewalks were closed. 

Entire parking garages were emptied and abandoned. Pittsburgh’s “most visited museum,” the Kamin Science Center, has been closed to the public for weeks because it was within the footprint of the upcoming event. For the actual days of the draft, Pittsburgh Public Schools were shuttered as if a blizzard had rendered travel impossible.

The attempt by local officials to trigger hysteria in the populace worked, maybe too well. People traveling to Pittsburgh for the event heeded the instructions to use the special free public transit to make their way in. Parking operators, expecting a huge windfall, saw themselves lower their exorbitant prices midday. For example, the Rivers Casino quickly abandoned their plan to charge $250 per day, lowering their rate to $100 for the first day of the draft and then abandoning charging altogether for subsequent days.

Local businesses outside the official footprint of the event were told to prepare for heavy crowds, but instead experienced a weekend worse than anything they had seen since the Covid hysteria. Those who didn’t want to go to the draft were terrified to go anywhere near the city.

In summary, children were deprived of education, small business owners were drastically harmed, public spaces which exist for the common good were shuttered, and normal life ceased for those who actually live in the City of Pittsburgh. While all of this was happening, local politicians were patting themselves on the back for how well everything was pulled off, taking pride that this draft broke attendance records for the NFL and that their plans of getting people in and out of the city were effective. It was our own personal Operation Warp Speed.

I think there’s a lesson here that applies not merely to Pittsburgh politics but also to the wider dysfunction we see in elected officials throughout what used to be Western Civilization.

Our political leaders view their own constituents with a sort of boredom or indifference. In the leadup to the draft, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania engaged in a number of public works projects designed to improve the area in preparation for the draft. 

Suddenly, our governments remembered that potholes aren’t supposed to be allowed to exist and that crime isn’t supposed to be allowed to happen. For three days, Pittsburgh had a heavily subsidized and highly functional public transit system, something that hasn’t existed the entirety of my lifetime.

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She Refused A Smart Meter For Health Reasons — So New Jersey Water Company Shut Off Her Water

A New Jersey water company shut off a woman’s water for six days after she refused a smart meter due to health concerns, even though the state has no regulation requiring residents to accept smart meters.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Alla Goldman described how New Jersey American Water (NJAW) employees “harassed” her and her husband for over a year, threatening to shut off her water if she refused to let them install a smart water meter.

On March 5, the water company made good on its threats by sending a technician — escorted by two police officers — to her home to shut off her water.

For six days, Goldman, who was sick with the flu, and her husband went without water at their home. Goldman took shelter in a hotel and bought gallons of drinking water.

“I want to sue them for their literal threats,” Goldman said.

While staying at a hotel, Goldman filed a complaint with the state’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) about the water company’s action.

The BPU informed her that the water company had no legal basis for shutting off her water because there is no BPU regulation requiring people to accept smart meter upgrades.

Goldman said, “A BPU supervisor told me that if we do not want a smart meter, we do not have to have one.”

When the BPU informed the water company of Goldman’s complaint, the company changed its tune by offering to restore services and install an analog meter that would not emit wireless radiation.

‘Few people know that water companies do the same thing’

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Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Fails: 73% Ignore It

Australia’s under-16 social media ban has been in force for four months and the headline finding from a new working paper out of the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute is that around three-quarters of the teenagers it targets are ignoring it.

The paper, “Why Bans Fail: Tipping Points and Australia’s Social Media Ban,” surveyed 746 Australian teenagers between March and April 2026. Among 14- and 15-year-olds covered by the ban, only about 27% are complying. The other 73% are still using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, or Kick, the ten platforms the law designates off-limits to anyone under 16.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took effect on 10 December 2025, making Australia the first country to outlaw teenage social media accounts at the federal level.

More than a dozen other countries and numerous US states are now considering versions of the same approach. The Australian model places enforcement entirely on the platforms, which face penalties of up to A$49.5 million for failing to take “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their services. Teenagers themselves face no legal sanction.

The teenagers know this. According to the survey, only 22% of banned teens believe they personally face any consequence for using a banned platform.

47% correctly understand that the consequences fall on the companies. Awareness of the ban is near-universal at 86%. The teens aren’t confused about what the law says. They’ve simply concluded, accurately, that the law isn’t aimed at them.

Getting around the restrictions takes minimal effort. 75% of banned teens describe circumvention as easy or very easy.

The most common workarounds are the obvious ones: lying about age on verification prompts (57%), entering false birthdates at sign-up (44%), borrowing a parent’s or older sibling’s account (42%), and routing through a VPN (30%). 64% of 14- and 15-year-olds in the survey have not had their accounts removed at all. The platforms haven’t found them. A quarter of non-compliers report that a parent, older sibling, or other adult helped them sign up for a new account after a previous one was deactivated.

The researchers also asked teenagers a more interesting question. What share of your peers would need to stop using social media before you stopped? The average answer was 69%. Some teens placed the threshold even higher. The result holds across every way the question was framed, whether the reference group was age peers, classmates, the wider school, or “a typical person your age.” The numbers came out between 62% and 69% in every variant.

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No, Zelensky Is Not ‘The Leader of the Free World’

Just when sensible people might conclude that American or European members of Ukraine’s sycophantic fan club cannot become even more detached from reality, a prominent member of the club proves the opposite.  This time, it is conservative pundit David French, who wins the prize in his April 26, 2026, New York Times column, “Meet the New Leader of the Free World.”   That leader is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

French contends that “A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine – a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion – has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process.  It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran.”

But according to French, such military resilience barely begins to measure the extent of Volodymyr Zelensky’s achievements. He also “is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence.” French then delves into well-worn episodes in which Donald Trump’s administration has alienated, antagonized, and berated America’s longtime NATO allies, thereby provoking Europe to become more self-reliant, as one manifestation of the “post-American” free world.

French seems downright awestruck at Ukraine’s alleged military prowess. “This might be difficult for many readers to grasp – given our nation’s longstanding military supremacy – but the largest and most battle-hardened land force in the Western world may well be the Ukrainian Army.”  He adds that “It’s also worth noting that the U.S. forces have much less combat experience than Ukraine forces – especially when it comes to combat with a great power.”

But there’s more!  Ukraine’s military “is the only Western force that has fully adapted to modern drone warfare.  Indeed, Ukraine is arguably the world’s leader in drone warfare.”

Observers who recall the Western news media’s hyped propaganda offensive during the prelude to the Persian Gulf War may be experiencing a sense of déjà vu.  Prominent news correspondents insisted (while maintaining sober expressions) that Iraq was a borderline military superpower.  Of course, in that case the purpose of the propaganda was to generate fear of Iraq as a military threat.  In this case, the propaganda is an attempt to convince a skeptical global audience that Ukraine is a surprisingly capable military bulwark against Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian threats.  The current disinformation is nearly as flagrant, however, as during the earlier episode.

Russia continues to make gains on the battlefield, slowly conquering additional Ukrainian territory. The bloodied Ukrainian forces appear increasingly beleaguered, and Russia (because of its much larger population and military reserves) is better positioned for a continuing war of attrition.  Western officials and their media allies have gone to great lengths to obscure the fundamental reality that Russia is winning the war, albeit in a costlier and more grinding fashion than the Kremlin had assumed.  The credibility of arguments that Moscow cannot continue to sustain the drain on its manpower is not enhanced by the continuing refusal of Western analysts to provide even a rough estimate of Ukrainian casualties.  Such clumsy attempts at concealment suggest that the actual news about that issue is not good.

If the battlefield situation were not worrisome enough for Ukraine, major domestic political fractures have occurred over the past year.  Zelensky’s latest moves also alienated some of his most reliable supporters and apologists in the West.  When prominent establishment media outlets such as the Financial Times, the Spectator, and Politico all began to publish stories critical of the Ukrainian leader’s undemocratic moves in late 2025, there was a sense that attitudes even among pro-Ukraine Western elites were shifting.  That trend has quietly continued in 2026.

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The Trump Surveillance State

The Fourth Amendment protects all persons from warrantless government searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. It requires that warrants be supported by probable cause of crime and specifically describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Last week, for the first time in the modern era, the government argued to the Supreme Court of the United States that the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution did not outlaw general warrants. General warrants were issued in the colonial era by a secret court in London. They were not based on probable cause of crime or even on articulable suspicion about a potential defendant. They did not identify a target or state what crime was being investigated.

Rather, general warrants were based on governmental need; a meaningless standard as whatever the government wants it will tell a court it needs. The warrants authorized the bearer of the warrant to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found.

The stated motivation for the general warrants was the British government’s enforcement of the Stamp Act. That legislation required all colonists to have stamps affixed to all papers, books and newspapers in their possession. The enforcement of the Stamp Act was the government’s fig leaf for spying.

We know that the true reason for the Stamp Act was to conduct surreptitious searches for revolutionary materials. We know this because during the one-year existence of the Stamp Act — 1765 — a group of enterprising students at the College of New Jersey, now known as Princeton University, calculated that more revenue was spent to enforce the act than was collected by the sale of the stamps.

Historians believe that the use of general warrants for the enforcement of the Stamp Act pushed many colonists into the independence camp 10 years later in 1775. The use of general warrants also motivated James Madison and his colleagues in 1791 to craft the Fourth Amendment whose specificity requirement “particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized” poignantly did away with search where you wish and seize whatever you find.

Until now.

Now, in one week on Capitol Hill, the right to privacy is facing its gravest challenges since pre-colonial days, in Congress and the Supreme Court. Congress will wrestle with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires in just days, and the court will hear a claim that general warrants are still viable.

Sec. 702 permits warrantless surveillance on Americans by permitting federal agents to use software that allows them to conduct surveillance of all fiber optic means of communication — mobile phones, message texting, emails — based on the lawful communications of some Americans to foreign persons and then their subsequent lawful communications to other Americans. The “other Americans” can include all 340 million of us.

Theoretically, the data gathered from these warrantless searches cannot be used for criminal prosecutions, since even the feds who do this spying have told members of Congress that they recognize the need for search warrants to access the content of the data. There are at least two reasons that no one should believe what the feds have said. The first is the feds lie. In 2023, they accessed the content of the data thousands of times without warrants. The second reason is that Madison and the Fourth Amendment’s ratifiers did not believe the government would restrain itself, hence the specificity requirement.

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House Renews FISA Section 702, Rejects Warrant Requirement

The House voted 235 to 191 on Wednesday to keep Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act running for another three years, declining once more to require federal agents to get a warrant before searching Americans’ communications scooped up under the program.

Around twenty Republican privacy hawks broke with leadership and joined Democrats in opposition, but the bill cleared the chamber with hours to spare before the Thursday midnight expiration.

Section 702, first authorized in 2008, lets intelligence agencies intercept the electronic communications of foreign nationals outside the United States without a warrant.

The catch, and the part that has driven nearly two decades of reform fights, is that those intercepts routinely sweep up the texts, calls, and emails of Americans who happen to be in contact with the roughly 350,000 foreign targets surveilled each year. That data sits in a federal database, and the FBI can search it for Americans’ information without going to a judge first.

The reforms attached to the renewal do not change that. They tinker around the edges. Federal agents will need an attorney’s sign-off before targeted reviews of Americans’ data, each query will require written justification submitted to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and misuse can now carry up to five years in prison.

The FBI will also have to file monthly reports to oversight officials defending searches involving Americans.

None of this requires a judge or forces the government to articulate probable cause before reading what an American wrote or said.

A bipartisan bloc has pushed for almost twenty years to require specific court approval before agents can pull up an American’s communications from the 702 trove, arguing that anything less is a Fourth Amendment workaround.

The bill that passed Wednesday explicitly references the Fourth Amendment in its text. It just does not require a warrant to honor it.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

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Biden admin ‘zealously’ probed ‘traditional’ Christians — even keeping tabs on priests: DOJ report

The Biden administration “zealously” investigated, penalized, and engaged in “aggressive prosecutions” of Christians “with traditional biblical views” — ignoring their conscientious objections and even secretly keeping tabs on Catholic priests, a Department of Justice task force found.

The DOJ-led Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias released 14 findings Thursday, confirming the 46th president’s officials “forc[ed] Christians with traditional biblical views to choose whether to live in accordance with their faith or risk violating federal law.”

In a 200-page report, the task force concluded: “The Biden Administration generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held but zealously pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith.”

That included prosecutions of pro-life Christians who were given longer sentences than their pro-abortion peers for violations of a federal law protecting access to abortion clinics or pregnancy resource centers.

The report also unearthed new details about a January 2023 FBI memo sent to multiple field offices that called for the targeting of “radical-traditionalist” Catholics as a result of “baseless allegations” from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center.

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