Tag: police state

Economic Reconstruction and the Police State

One of the most common justifications for increasing state police and military power is that it guarantees the security of citizens. Without basic security, it is impossible for people to devote themselves to the pursuit of their social and economic goals. In the US there are proposals to send in the military to help enforce a crackdown on illegal immigration. In the UK, some police stations have proposed to send armed police patrols to Christmas markets, to keep traders and shoppers safe from terrorists. Yet it is less often recognized that the police state, which may be defined as “an enormous government apparatus of prisons, prosecutors, police, and bureaucrats,” is inimical to economic liberty.

Debates on the role of the police state are also pertinent in understanding the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) in the American South. One of the main justifications given for the presence of federal militia in the South was that this was necessary to maintain law and order. It is too often presumed that social and political upheaval in the Reconstruction South was entirely explained by the fact that “racists” did not like the idea of black people being armed or enfranchised. The federal militia was said to be required to protect black people from such racism.

This reduction of Reconstruction history to a tale of racism disregards all the other factors involved, including a phenomenal rise in the role of state militia in daily life. It overlooks the fact that the presence of federal and state troops across the South was an ever-present sign of living under occupation, one that was greatly resented by Southerners.

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Operation Choke Point 2.0: How The Feds Are Seeking To ‘Debank’ Targeted Industries

A federal initiative that began during the Obama administration with the goal of debanking certain industries disfavored by federal officials has apparently been resurrected and is taking aim at cryptocurrencies.

Operation Choke Point was started by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in 2013 as a way to put pressure on banks to sever their ties, without due process, with legal businesses like gun dealers, cannabis dispensaries and payday lenders which the administration found objectionable.

That initiative was ended by President Trump in 2017 but under the Biden administration, it appears that Operation Choke Point 2.0 has begun with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) sending letters to U.S. banks in 2022, urging them to “pause all crypto-related activity.”

Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) told Fox Business that the regulatory abuse is real and that President-elect Trump will put an end to this type of regulatory abuse.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently described the practice of debanking as “a privatized sanctions regime” on The Joe Rogan Experience, saying, “There’s no rules, there’s no court, there’s no decision process, there’s no appeal. Who do you go to to get your bank account back?”

And if the tune of Operation Choke Point 2.0 sounds familiar, there are also familiar faces as well.

Palmetto State News reports that Michael Eakes is the founder of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) and Self-Help Credit Union, which operates five credit unions in South Carolina and was also an inaugural member of the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion when it was started in 2006.

Another member of the advisory committee is Michael Calhoun who is president of the Center for Responsible Lending and a former employee of Self-Help Credit Union.

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‘Cop City’ Leads US Buildup in Police-Training Bases

After years of intense opposition that left one protester riddled by police bullets, Atlanta’s so-called Cop City is set to begin operations in the next few weeks. The city’s police chief hosted a tour of the campus last week and training programs are expected to start during the first quarter of 2025.

The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, as it is officially known, is an 85-acre campus with a price tag of at least $110 million and another $1.7 million recently approved by Atlanta’s City Council for its security. 

Most infamously, it includes a mock city, for which the site gained its Cop City nickname, for “real-world” training that includes a convenience store, two-story house, apartment and commercial-style building. 

There is also a military vet training center, leadership institute,  lab to develop and test technological innovations, training field, 12-acre emergency vehicle operations course.

It also comes with burn towers, a shooting range, horse stalls, police-dog kennels and training grounds, and 40 acres of horse pasture, according to a video published by the Atlanta Police Foundation and the Foundation’s website. 

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New Jersey Mom Targeted by Military and Homeland Security for Questioning LGBTQ+ Poster at Elementary School

Within the spectrum of overreactions, few can rival what unfolded in New Jersey when Angela Reading, a mother and former school board member, dared to question a poster at her daughter’s elementary school.

The poster, innocuously crafted during a “Week of Respect” event, celebrated “LGBTQ+” themes, including the term “polysexuality.”

That’s a term describing an attraction to multiple genders — though the seven-year-olds likely gleaned little understanding of this.

What they did glean, however, was enough for Reading’s daughter to come home curious, which set off a chain reaction of Facebook posts, military involvement, and, yes, counter-terrorism reports.

Angela Reading’s ordeal is a cautionary tale of how questioning the wisdom of mixing elementary school art projects with complex identity politics can snowball into government surveillance, a federal lawsuit, and a First Amendment debate that feels like it was pulled from the pages of Orwell.

The Poster That Launched a Thousand Emails

It all started with a simple question. During the North Hanover Township school’s celebration of acceptance and respect, students created posters featuring LGBTQ+ flags and terms, one of which included the word “polysexual.” When Reading’s daughter innocently asked what it meant, Reading did what many parents might: she turned to Facebook to vent her frustrations.

Describing the content as “inappropriate for young children,” Reading argued that elementary school wasn’t the place for discussions about sexuality. Her post, written as a private citizen, quickly gained traction. And like clockwork, the backlash began.

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FBI, DEA Deployment of AI Raises Privacy, Civil Rights Concerns

A required audit of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) efforts to integrate AI such as biometric facial recognition and other emerging technology raises significant privacy and civil rights concerns that necessitate a careful examination of the two agencies’ initiatives.

The 34-page audit report – which was mandated by the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to be carried out by the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) – found that the FBI and DEA’s integration of AI is fraught with ethical dilemmas, regulatory inadequacies, and potential impacts on individual liberties.

The IG said the integration of AI into the DEA and FBI’s operations holds promise for enhancing intelligence capabilities, but it also brings unprecedented risks to privacy and civil rights.

The two agencies’ nascent AI initiatives, as described in the IG’s audit, illustrate the tension between technological advancement and the safeguarding of individual liberties. As the FBI and DEA navigate these challenges, they must prioritize transparency, accountability, and ethical governance to ensure that AI serves the public good without compromising fundamental rights.

While the DEA and FBI have begun to integrate AI and biometric identification into their intelligence collection and analysis processes, the IG report underscores that both agencies are in the nascent stages of this integration and face administrative, technical, and policy-related challenges. These difficulties not only slow down the integration of AI, but they also exacerbate concerns about ensuring the ethical use of AI, particularly regarding privacy and civil liberties.

One of the foremost challenges is the lack of transparency associated with commercially available AI products. The IG report noted that vendors often embed AI capabilities within their software, creating a black-box scenario where users, including the FBI, lack visibility into how the algorithms function or make decisions. The absence of a software bill of materials (SBOM) — a comprehensive list of software components — compounds the problem, raising significant privacy concerns as sensitive data could be processed by opaque algorithms, potentially leading to misuse or unauthorized surveillance.

“FBI personnel … stated that most commercially available AI products do not have adequate transparency of their software components,” the IG said, noting that “there is no way for the FBI to know with certainty whether such AI capabilities are in a product unless the FBI receives a SBOM.”

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Israel Keeps Emergency Biometrics Measures in Place, More than a Year into Gaza War

Last year, on October 7th, a Hamas attack on Israel plunged the country into a war against Gaza that would bring chaos to the region. But aside from death and destruction, the war has also brought unprecedented access to biometric data to the Israeli government, sparking fears over privacy violations for Israelis.

Just one month after the attacks, the Knesset approved full access to the National Biometric Database for Israeli security forces using expedited legislation. The new access was not to be monitored by other government agencies. Since then, the Ministry of National Security has been regularly extending the temporary order despite the country’s regulators, legal experts and rights organizations arguing against its necessity.

“This legislation was enacted under difficult conditions, time pressure, and uncertainty,” the country’s Biometric Commissioner Naama Ben Zvi told Israeli media outlet Calcalist.

The database holds fingerprint and facial data of approximately 7 million Israelis. In the beginning, authorities argued that the biometric data was critical for identifying the deceased, kidnapped and missing during Hamas’s attack. Alongside the data access, the government also started mandating that citizens applying for an ID card or passport also submit fingerprint and facial biometrics.

According to data from the Biometric Commissioner, however, the fingerprint data was not indispensable. The biometric database helped identify 106 people out of 1,205 casualties, around 11 percent. The individuals were also identified using methods such as DNA, dental records and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) biometric databases which hold records from military conscripts.

“From a national perspective, fingerprints are not a significant game changer,” says Ben Zvi, who also heads the Identity and Biometric Applications Unit at the Israeli National Cyber Directorate. Citizens should be given a choice when submitting biometric data, she adds.

“Taking fingerprints from the entire population infringes on privacy.”

The Biometrics Commissioner is not the only one criticizing the government over privacy.

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Elon Musk’s AfD Endorsement Triggers EU Push for Stricter Censorship Under Digital Services Act

Elon Musk’s endorsement of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has sparked significant controversy, particularly among European political figures concerned about the potential for what they call “foreign interference” in Germany’s upcoming elections.

Musk, the CEO of X, voiced his support for some of AfD’s policies following a deadly terror attack in Germany. His comments have raised alarm among EU officials, prompting calls for increased scrutiny of the X app and its compliance with the EU’s stringent censorship laws.

Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former Commissioner, took to X to express his outrage over Musk’s support for AfD. In a tweet posted on December 21, Breton accused Musk of being involved in “foreign interference” in Germany’s electoral process, especially given the timing of his comments around the tragic attack in Magdeburg.

Breton, who has been an advocate for strict censorship of social media platforms, and even threatened Elon Musk for over his interview with President Donald Trump, also called for the immediate application of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) to combat what he described as “double standards” when it comes to regulating speech online.

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Cellphone Seizures & the Courts

After years of conflicting decisions by federal district courts across the country on whether Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents can search your cell phone and laptop at ports of entry, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that, “the routine inspection and search of a traveler’s electronics, or for that matter, any other type of property, at the border may be conducted without a warrant, probable cause, or even individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.”  

In reaching the decision, the court agreed with several other circuit courts, but put itself at odds with others and many (lower) federal district courts around the country. 

The issue moved quickly to the Supreme Court, which upheld the Seventh Circuit’s decision this month.  This is, sadly, despite the fact that the Fourth Circuit ruled earlier this year that “CBP agents need at least reasonable suspicion of a crime to search cell phones” and the Ninth Circuit agreed with that ruling.  

The present case stems from the 2016 arrest of Marcos Mendez at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.  Mendez is most certainly not the poster boy for protection of Americans’ civil liberties, but this is the hand that civil libertarians have been dealt in the case. 

Mendez arrived at O’Hare following a trip to Ecuador.  Along with his luggage, he carried a personal cellphone, a work cellphone and a work iPad.  

Because Mendez had been convicted in 2010 on a charge of indecent solicitation of a child, and because he had a history of international travel to countries where there are weak protections for children, CBP agents pulled him aside and searched his belongings. 

Agents used a technology called DOMEX to extract the contents of his phone, where they found thousands of images of child pornography.

Mendez was promptly arrested and charged with multiple counts of possession of child pornography.  His attorneys moved to suppress the photos, arguing that they were illegally obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment. 

The federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois denied the motion and, in the end, Mendez pleaded guilty to one count of producing child pornography and was sentenced to six years in prison, but he preserved his right to appeal.  The Seventh Circuit now has denied that appeal and the Supreme Court has upheld the conviction.

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‘Wildly Off-Base’: New Push for Supreme Court to Reverse Case That Allows Property Confiscation

Ruling denied ‘the core protections of individual citizens.’

The U.S. Supreme Court bizarrely ruled in 2005, in the Kelo case, that a government could take privately owned property from one owner to give it to another, just, well, just because.

That original ruling came down to dollars and cents, when the city of New London, New York, used eminent domain to confiscate a home belonging to Susan Kelo to give it to Pfizer for one of its business operations.

She sued, but the Supreme Court said a procedure to use eminent domain “to transfer land from private owner to another private owner” did not violate the Constitution.

Actually, the authority vested in eminent domain would be for purposes of taking property to build a highway, or some similar public benefit.

That New London scheme actually failed, as the company was unable to obtain financing for its plans, and the site remained an undeveloped empty lot.

The move already has prompted 47 states to strengthen their own eminent domain laws, and now it’s time for the national precedent to be reversed, according to constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, who not only has testified before Congress as an expert on the Constitution, but has represented members in court.

He said that one case, Kelo, “has long stood out for me as wildly off-base and wrongly decided.”

He explained, “There is now a petition before the Supreme Court that would allow it to reconsider this pernicious precedent. The court should grant review in Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency precisely for that purpose,” he explained.

“Many of us expressed outrage at the actions of the city leaders of New London, Connecticut, when they used eminent domain to seize the property of citizens against their will to give it to the Pfizer corporation,” he said. “This anger grew with the inexplicable decision of the Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London to uphold the abusive action. After all the pain that the city caused its own residents and the $80 million it spent to buy and bulldoze the property, it came to nothing. Pfizer later announced that it was closing the facility — leaving the city worse off than when it began.”

He said the new case involves New York developer Bryan Bowers who challenged the decision of a county redevelopment agency to condemn his property and then give it to another developer to use as a private parking lot.

Turley noted that Justice Chase, shortly after the Bill of Rights was written, explained the injustice.

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Syria’s new leader says all weapons to come under ‘state control’

Two weeks after seizing power in a sweeping offensive, Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday said weapons in the country, including those held by Kurdish-led forces, would come under state control.

Sharaa spoke alongside Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, after earlier meeting with Lebanese Druze leaders and vowing to end “negative interference” in the neighboring country.

Ankara-backed rebels played a key role in supporting Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which headed a rebel alliance that seized Damascus on Dec. 8, toppling longtime ruler Bashar Assad.

During a press conference with Fidan, Sharaa said Syria’s armed “factions will begin to announce their dissolution and enter” the army.

“We will absolutely not allow there to be weapons in the country outside state control, whether from the revolutionary factions or the factions present in the SDF area,” he added, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Sharaa traded in the olive-green military shirt he sported just days ago for a suit and tie during his meetings on Sunday at the presidential palace.

He also said “we are working on protecting sects and minorities from any attacks that occur between them” and from “external” actors exploiting the situation “to cause sectarian discord.”

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