Tag: police state

Israeli intelligence data: Militants account for only 1 in 4 Gaza detainees

Only one in four Palestinians captured by Israeli forces in Gaza were identified by the army as militants, with civilians making up the vast majority of “unlawful combatants” detained in Israeli prisons since October 7, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.  

This is what emerges from figures obtained from a classified database managed by Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate (known by the Hebrew acronym “Aman”), in addition to official Israeli prison statistics disclosed in legal proceedings. Testimonies from former Palestinian detainees and Israeli soldiers who served in detention facilities further indicate that Israel has knowingly abducted civilians en masse and held them for long periods in appalling conditions.

Detention figures cited by the state in May in response to High Court petitions revealed that a total of 6,000 Palestinians had been arrested in Gaza during the first 19 months of the war and held in Israel under a law for incarcerating “unlawful combatants” — a legal tool that allows Israel to imprison people indefinitely, without charge or trial, if there are “reasonable grounds” to believe they participated in “hostile activities against the State of Israel” or that they are a member of a group that has.

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Ukraine Gov’t Looks to Ban Branch of Orthodox Church over Ties to Russia

The Ukrainian government has declared that a branch of the Orthodox Church has failed to sever its longstanding ties with Moscow – and could soon be banned.

The looming ban affects one of the two rival branches of Orthodoxy in the country and further underscores the turbulent role of religion as Ukraine fends off the Russian invasion. Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both Russia and Ukraine and has served as a cultural and spiritual battleground in tandem with the wider war.

The action comes a year after the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law banning the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church due to its strong support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The law also authorized banning any organization tied to the Russian church. A government investigation into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with its centuries-old ties to Moscow, soon followed.

The UOC denounced the full-blown Russian invasion from the start in 2022. It declared its independence from the Moscow church the same year and reiterated that stance in 2025.

Even so, the government says the UOC has refused to take necessary steps, such as revising its governing documents, to complete that separation.

The Aug. 27 government action, while long in the works, still requires more legal processes to take full effect.

The government has petitioned a court to ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself. The church, if it loses, would have the right to one appeal to a higher court before the case is finalized – a process that could be completed in months, its lawyer said.

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ICE Reactivates Contract With Israeli-linked Spyware Firm Paragon

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reactivated a $2 million spyware contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded firm now owned by a U.S. private equity group. The move lifts a Biden-era freeze and signals a deeper embrace of invasive surveillance tools in domestic immigration enforcement.

It is also only the latest sign of how far the federal government’s surveillance apparatus has grown under the banner of “immigration enforcement.” ICE has become one of its most powerful nodes — a conduit through which cutting-edge spyware, data analytics, and AI-driven tools are deployed inside U.S. borders.

Contract Reborn

On September 1, journalist Jack Poulson, citing the official procurement note, reported that ICE quietly lifted a stop-work order on the Paragon contract. The order had been in place since October 2024, after the Biden administration paused the deal under Executive Order 14093. That order barred agencies from buying foreign spyware tied to human rights abuses.

Paragon

Paragon is an Israeli spyware company founded in 2019 by veterans of Israel’s cyberwarfare Unit 8200, the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Among the early backers is Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a longtime political heavyweight and known associate of Jeffrey Epstein. From the start, it marketed itself as the “ethical” alternative to Pegasus, another notorious Israeli spyware.

Citizen Lab reports that by 2021 Paragon had launched a U.S. subsidiary and staffed it with former CIA, Air Force, and defense contractor officials. That gave it a foothold in Washington. Within two years, ICE had signed a $2 million contract for its spyware; U.S. Special Operations Command disclosed more than $11 million in related purchases.

In late 2024, ownership shifted. All shares in Paragon Israel were transferred to Paragon Parent Inc., a new Delaware corporation. The deal, reportedly led by Florida-based private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, was valued at $500 million up front, with another $400 million tied to performance goals. Soon after, Paragon was folded into REDLattice, a Virginia contractor already known for offensive cyber tools. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show REDLattice’s parent company then added ex-CIA and U.S. Army chiefs to its board.

Once Paragon became “American-owned,” ICE lifted the freeze on its spyware contract. In effect, the U.S. government blocked the deal when the company was Israeli but allowed it once Americans — many with intelligence and military ties — took control. The spyware itself did not change, only the ownership structure, and it is far from clear how much influence Israeli intelligence veterans still wield inside the company.

Graphite

Graphite is Paragon’s flagship spyware. Unlike Pegasus, which can take full control of a phone, Graphite focuses on breaking in to encrypted messaging apps. It can pull data from WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage without seizing the entire device.

Investigators have shown that Graphite often relies on “zero-click” exploits. These attacks require no action from the target. Once inside, the spyware extracts texts, call logs, photos, videos, and even microphone input. All of it is sent to remote servers controlled by the operator. Citizen Lab’s forensic report from this June confirmed the tool had been deployed against journalists in Europe. Their devices were fully updated yet still compromised until Apple patched the flaw in iOS 18.3.1.

This technical profile explains why Graphite is so attractive to governments. It is stealthy, precise, and hard to detect. But its use has raised alarms well beyond Israel and the United States.

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Macron’s Global Censorship Push Exposed: Leaked Files Reveal France’s Covert Speech Control Campaign

As European leaders push to shape global speech rules under the guise of trade policy, new internal records reveal that the French government quietly built a system to enforce censorship worldwide.

Leaked internal communications from Twitter, now known as X, expose a sophisticated campaign led by President Emmanuel Macron and aided by state-aligned organizations to pressure the platform into suppressing speech far beyond what French law requires.

While publicly promoting values like free expression, France’s leadership was privately demanding crackdowns on political content, anonymous users, and anything that veered from government-approved narratives.

The latest TWITTER FILES – FRANCE, published by Public, which is worth reading, documents how Paris pioneered the modern censorship-by-proxy model; using lawsuits, coordinated NGO pressure, and personal outreach at the highest levels to mold a global moderation regime in France’s image.

One of the more revealing moments in the documents comes from October 2020, when Twitter’s Public Policy Director in France noted unusual persistence from the Élysée Palace.

“President Macron’s team has been asking me (again!) Jack [Dorsey]’s number because the President wants to text him some supporting words re our new policies and functionalities on Election integrity,” the message read.

The only issue? Dorsey didn’t hand out his number, even to heads of state. Staff reminded Macron’s team that a direct message would be more appropriate, though they acknowledged the President didn’t use Twitter personally. Alternatives like Signal, Telegram, and even iMessage were considered.

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Democratic Party Official in South Korea: “If We Gather Every Opposition Voter and Bury Them in One Day, Democracy Will Advance”

A shocking development in South Korea took place recently: a senior official of the ruling Democratic Party, a former lawyer who now leads the Party’s Education and Training Institute, openly advocated for the elimination of opposition voters during a public book talk.

He referred to conservative voters as “No. 2 voters” (a derogatory label for supporters of the People Power Party, South Korea’s main opposition), and stated that if they were “all gathered in one day and buried, democracy would advance.” He also targeted the Yeongnam region (Daegu, Busan, Gyeongbuk, etc.), South Korea’s traditional conservative stronghold and home to strong support for opposition parties and President Yoon Suk-yeol, claiming residents there “lack thought and cannot judge right from wrong.”

This is not a mere slip of the tongue. It represents a disturbing call for the political elimination of South Korea’s pro-freedom electorate, undermining democratic norms and dehumanizing millions of citizens.

From The New Daily on September 4, 2025.

Full Article Translation below:

Title: Exclusive: In 2nd-victimization scandal, Choi Kang-wook — “If we gather the ‘No. 2 voters’ in one day and bury them, democracy will advance”

Choi Kang-wook, head of the Democratic Party’s Education and Training Institute—who is embroiled in a second-victimization controversy over sexual harassment—was confirmed to have made derogatory remarks about opposition voters and regional residents in a recent lecture. In a book talk format, he referred to supporters of the opposition party as “No. 2 voters,” suggesting they avoid thinking and cannot weigh right and wrong.

On September 4, political circles confirmed that Choi held a book talk for his work “Beneficial Conservatism, Righteous Progressivism” on August 30 in Naju, Jeollanam-do.

There, he said: “Lately people use the term ‘No. 2 voters’,” adding, “It’s used as a pejorative, ‘they voted #2,’ so why complain or jump down on them for it?”

(“No. 2 voters” refers to supporters of the People Power Party, the main opposition. Former DP head Lee Jae-myung once used the term in a 2024 campaign and later apologized.)

Choi continued: “When I go to Gyeongsang or the southeast, the atmosphere is intense. In Daegu and Gyeongbuk, or even Busan, Democratic Party citizens live like independence fighters. Every day is too painful—it’s maddening.”

He then mocked why people supported Park Geun-hye: “Because ‘she’s pretty.’ Or Yoon Suk-yeol—people say, ‘he speaks well, drinks well—real men are like that.’ In Naju, people can’t say that; they’d be called fools. But in Yeongnam, these people are the mainstream.”

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Germany Targets X Executives in Unprecedented Criminal Probe over Refusal to Hand Over User Data in “Hate Speech” Cases

German authorities have opened a criminal investigation targeting three managers at X, accusing them of “obstruction of justice” for refusing to directly provide user data in online speech-related cases.

Two of the employees are American, and one of them is reportedly Diego de Lima Gualda, the former head of X’s operations in Brazil, who previously faced off against legal demands in his home country before resigning in April 2024.

The alleged problem for Germany is X’s policy of forwarding German requests for user data to US authorities, following procedures established under a bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

That treaty lays out the legal framework for cross-border data sharing, requiring requests from German prosecutors to be reviewed and processed through US legal channels before X is compelled to hand over user information.

Despite this legally grounded process, prosecutors in Göttingen have decided to treat the policy as criminal interference, marking what appears to be the first time in German legal history that social media executives are being investigated for how they respond to international legal requests.

German prosecutors have reportedly been frustrated by X’s unwillingness to grant them direct access to account data, particularly in cases involving posts that include banned symbols like swastikas or comments that authorities allege may amount to defamation.

The inability to obtain data has resulted in stalled investigations and dropped cases, including one where a post containing a swastika could not be traced to its author.

Although X restricted that post within Germany, the company declined to release identifying information.

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At The FBI, The Rotten Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree

You can’t make this up.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Put these clichés together and you have the chilling saga of two FBI agents linked by blood whose conduct has forever stained the Bureau’s reputation.

One bad apple is former FBI Deputy Director Larry A. Potts. He was in a supervisory role during the Waco raid and demoted in the 1990s following the Ruby Ridge fallout, two of the bloodiest incidents in FBI history.

The other is Walter Giardina, who was among several senior FBI officials terminated by Director Kash Patel in August 2025. His firing came after months of Senate Oversight letters citing whistleblower allegations about his role in Trump-related investigations.

As I recount in my new book “I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To,” Giardina was also the FBI agent who put handcuffs and leg irons on me after orchestrating my circus-style arrest at Reagan National Airport, an ambush that dragged my fiancée into the spectacle as collateral damage.

Here’s the you can’t make this up kicker: Potts is Giardina’s father-in-law.

Potts: A Study in Bad Apple FBI Culture

In the early 1990s, Larry A. Potts rose quickly at FBI headquarters, eventually becoming the Bureau’s second-in-command as deputy director. His ascent coincided with the Ruby Ridge tragedy of 1992. Potts was in the Washington oversight chain when the Bureau abandoned its standard deadly-force policy and adopted special “rules of engagement” for that operation.

Under normal FBI policy, agents were authorized to use lethal force only when facing an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm. At Ruby Ridge, however, the rules were rewritten. The order declared that “any armed adult male observed in the vicinity of the Weaver cabin could and should be shot.”

This was not the restrained standard of constitutional policing. It was a license to kill. Within 24 hours, Randy Weaver’’ 14-year-old son was dead, as was Vicki Weaver, killed while holding her infant daughter in her arms. Barely a year later came Waco. After a 51-day standoff, the FBI’s siege — armored vehicles, CS gas, aggressive psychological tactics — ended in a fire that killed 76 men, women, and children.

Under intense scrutiny, FBI Director Louis Freeh demoted Potts; he then retired in 1997.

But not before “Pottsgate.”

To justify billing the Bureau for Potts’ lavish retirement dinner, senior managers created paperwork for an ironically named “ethics conference” at Quantico. When exposed, letters of censure followed. Rank-and-file agents fumed: falsify records as a line agent and you’re fired; do it for a boss’s party and you get a slap on the wrist. (DOJ OIG—Potts retirement; GAO).

Potts would later sit at the family table with his daughter and son-in-law Walter Giardina. Giardina is not just the FBI thug who put me in handcuffs; he also tried, in my view, to take down Donald John Trump.

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Here Are Three Ways Americans Can Fight The U.K.’s Orwellian Attempts To Suppress Free Speech

Yesterday, the news came that Graham Linehan was arrested by five police officers the moment he stepped off a plane at Heathrow. Though he’s less well-known in America, Linehan is an Irish comic genius who created two of the most beloved U.K. sitcoms of the last 30 years — Father Ted and The I.T. Crowd. Linehan’s supposed crime is that he has been a persistent online critic of the transgender movement, and his arrest was over three tweets, which you can read here. Nothing about his tweets are debatable as a matter of free speech or incitement. In a sane society, they would all be protected.

For a while now, people have been screaming that the U.K. has transformed itself into an Orwellian police state. The U.K. now arrests as many as 30 people a day for online speech, and like what happened to Linehan, much of what is punished is benign by First Amendment standards.

Yet, the punishments handed down are quite severe, and there are numerous examples of how political U.K. courts operate according two a two-tiered system of justice. One woman got a 31-month sentence for an offensive tweet that was deleted after four hours; the same judge gave a 21-month sentence to someone who participated in a violent mob that tried to kick down the door of a pub looking to possibly attack the people inside.

Still, arresting someone as high profile as Linehan marks a significant escalation. Not because Linehan’s rights deserve more deference than any normal U.K. citizen that’s been arrested for speech, but because the U.K. government is openly inviting the enormous amount of criticism that will come with such a high profile arrest. Just last year, persistent transgender critic J.K. Rowling dared the Scottish police to arrest her under the country’s new and laughably expansive hate crime law. Scottish authorities demurred, not because they couldn’t punish her under the law, but because presumably they realized the blowback that came with arresting one of the most beloved authors of the last century would be too great.

Still, I hope the Linehan arrest shines a harsh spotlight on the U.K.’s increasingly draconian speech laws and leads to much needed reforms — here is a good primer on where the U.K. should start. But for now, the incident should lead those of us in America to act on some inescapable conclusions to help restore freedom of speech in the U.K. and elsewhere.

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More Age Verification Fallout: Artist Blogs Blocked, Porn Data Leaked, Traffic Boosts for Noncompliant Sites

As more places around the world—including U.S. states—pass laws requiring age checks around the internet, we’re continuing to see a slew of unintended (but entirely predictable) consequences. The latest round includes some U.S. residents being blocked from a blogging platform, French folks in dangers of their porn viewing habits being leaked, and porn websites that violate the law in the U.K. being rewarded with big boosts in web traffic.

Let’s start closest to home.

Another website is blocking access to Mississippi residents in response to the state’s age verification and online harm prevention law taking effect.

We’ve already seen some fallout from this law, including the social media platform Bluesky beginning to block Mississippi residents.

Now, Dreamwidth Studios—a blogging platform meant for artists (and one of the parties represented by tech trade group NetChoice in a challenge to the Mississippi law)—is also blocking access for people in Mississippi, as well as preventing minors in Tennessee from opening new accounts.

“People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we’ll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential,” Dreamwidth says on its website.

The company announced its new Mississippi policy on August 26, saying, “Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don’t want to do this.” But “the Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who’s under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users’ parents to allow them to finish creating an account.””

Dreamwidth goes on:

[The Mississippi law] also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn’t like it — which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn’t like, you’re absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don’t want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can’t: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity.”

Mississippi users of Dreamwidth aren’t the only ones with restricted access. The platform will also “prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk,” it said. “The judge in our challenge to Tennessee’s social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds,” Dreamwidth posted. “The Tennessee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it’s still a risk to us.”

Dreamwidth’s moves further highlight how age verification laws like the ones enacted by Mississippi and Tennessee will come down harder on small and niche platforms than on big tech companies.

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Starmer’s Regime Just Lit The Fuse On The U.K.’s Free Speech Crisis

Robin Wright, longtime member of the Hollywood glitterati, tells The Times that she feels “liberated” in fleeing the United States for the “freedom” of England. 

“America is a s—show,” the leftist House of Cards star told the London publication, declining to fully go into what she believes to be the present state of American politics.  

Wright, who says she’s found Mr. Right after three failed marriages, including her ill-fated union with “Marxist moron” Sean Penn, loves the “freedom of self” she has found in the United Kingdom. 

The Times’ gushing profile was published on Saturday, just two days before five Metropolitan Police officers arrested Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan at London’s Heathrow Airport on charges of expressing an opinion.

Linehan, co-creator of the popular sitcom Father Ted, was returning from the U.S. to the land of “freedom of self” when the speech police grabbed him “on suspicion of inciting violence via his posts on X.” What violence did he incite? The violence of thought, which in no small part has effectively become outlawed in leftist Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Jolly Old England. 

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