Tag: police state

Telegram Will Now Share Users’ IP Addresses and Phone Numbers With Governments in Response to Legal Requests

Telegram, the messaging app that once positioned itself as the rebel’s answer to Big Tech surveillance, has made a sharp U-turn on the “we protect your data at all costs” highway. On Monday, the company quietly updated its privacy policy to allow for the disclosure of user information—like those precious IP addresses and phone numbers—to law enforcement, but only, of course, if they present a valid legal request.

As we all know, no one has ever stretched the definition of “valid” to fit their agenda, right?

This revelation comes hot on the heels of a little incident back in August, when Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov found himself in handcuffs, detained by French authorities. What was the crime? Well, it appears Telegram was accused of playing hardball with French law enforcement, refusing to hand over data, leading to Durov’s arrest. It seems law enforcement didn’t take kindly to that level of noncompliance, especially after making 2,460 unanswered requests for information.

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Don’t Trust the Government. Not with Your Privacy, Property or Your Freedoms

Public trust in the government to “do what is right” understandably remains at an all-time low.

After all, how do you trust a government that continuously sidesteps the Constitution and undermines our rights? You can’t.

When you consider all the ways “we the people” are being bullied, beaten, bamboozled, targeted, tracked, repressed, robbed, impoverished, imprisoned and killed by the government, one can only conclude that you shouldn’t trust the government with your privacy, your property, your life, or your freedoms.

Consider for yourself.

Don’t trust the government with your privacy, digital or otherwise. In the more than two decades since 9/11, the military-security industrial complex has operated under a permanent state of emergency that, in turn, has given rise to a digital prison that grows more confining and inescapable by the day. Wall-to wall surveillance, monitored by AI software and fed to a growing network of fusion centers, render the twin concepts of privacy and anonymity almost void. By conspiring with corporations, the Department of Homeland Security “fueled a massive influx of money into surveillance and policing in our cities, under a banner of emergency response and counterterrorism.”

Don’t trust the government with your property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have allegedly been associated with some criminal scheme.

Don’t trust the government with your finances. The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity. The national debt is $35 trillion and growing, yet there seems to be no end in sight when it comes to the government’s fiscal insanity. According to Forbes, Congress has raised, extended or revised the definition of the debt limit 78 times since 1960 in order to allow the government to essentially fund its existence with a credit card.

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Critics Say IDF Shutdown of Al Jazeera’s West Bank Bureau Is ‘Aimed at Erasing the Truth’

“Why would Israel shut Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah?” asked one human rights defender. “Because it has been the center of Al Jazeera’s reporting on Israeli repression – the apartheid – in the occupied West Bank.”by Brett Wilkins Posted on

Press freedom advocates accused Israel of “trying to erase the truth” after heavily armed soldiers raided Al Jazeera‘s bureau in the West Bank of Palestine early Sunday morning and ordered the outlet – which has been the world’s sole media window on the Gaza genocide – to shut down for 45 days.

Al Jazeera – which is owned by the Qatari government – said Israel Defense Forces troops stormed its bureau in Ramallah, the capital of the illegally occupied West Bank, at 3:00 am Sunday during a live broadcast. IDF troops confiscated documents and equipment and took the microphone from the hand of bureau chief Walid al-Omari as he reported on the raid.

The network – which was ordered to cease operations for 45 days – said the soldiers tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead by Israeli troops in May 2022 while covering an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp.

“This is part of a larger campaign against the Palestinian outlets and media in general aimed at erasing the truth,” al-Omari said in an interview with Al Araby Al Jadeed. “We’ve been under increasing incitement since the beginning of the war.”

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Israeli Army Raids, Shuts Down Al Jazeera’s West Bank News Room

Back in May, Israel’s Knesset voted unanimously to ban the Al Jazeera broadcast network. The Israeli order effectively shut down all Al Jazeera broadcasts in Israel.

Authorities soon after raided its offices and confiscated equipment at the channel’s Jerusalem HQ inside the Ambassador Hotel. The Qatar-based news network has said it was unfairly targeted for the ‘crime’ of mere journalism, as it tends to given in-depth coverage to the plight of Palestinians. But West Bank offices remained open, until this weekend.

Israeli officials have long accused the channel of showing sympathies with and support for Hamas and Palestinian militants. Al Jazeera correspondents have remained among the few in the world to continue reporting from on the ground in war-ravaged Gaza, despite the extreme dangers. And some have been killed during their live coverage.

The Israel vs. Al Jazeera rivalry has continued as on Sunday the network confirmed that Israeli soldiers (IDF) raided its offices in the central West Bank city of Ramallah. 

The bureau chief Walid Omary and other staff members were reportedly briefly detained while live on air while a military court order was presented to them. The IDF action appears to be part of the ongoing enforcement of the Al Jazeera ban by Israel which began in May.

CNN writes, “During the video broadcast by Al Jazeera, a soldier can be heard informing Omar of a military order to close Al Jazeera’s office for 45 days.”

“Reading the military order given to him on air, Omary said staff members had only ten minutes to take their personal belongings and cameras and vacate the office,” the report continues.

The Ramallah office has been in operation for decades, and had since the spring become a focal point of Al Jazeera’s regional operations and coverage following the May closure of its Jerusalem HQ. Much equipment had also been moved there.

Al Jazeera has long had offices in the West Bank and Gaza, and has provided 24-hour news coverage in English and Arabic of the Gaza war going back to Oct.7. The network’s website also carries frequent, round-the-clock updates of regional developments. Its camera crews have also been capturing Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip in real time, sometimes with buildings coming down in the very moments live shots are rolling.

Watch the moment Israeli soldiers enter AJ’s Ramallah newsroom while live on the air…

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The Australian Government Reboots the Misinformation Bill

This week Australia’s Labor Party reintroduced its misinformation and disinformation bill. I did a deep dive into the bill last May. Among its many flaws, the biggest is its very origins.

As Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in Parliament on September 12, “This bill seeks to strengthen the voluntary code by providing a regulatory backstop.” That code was co-written by First Draft, participants in the Aspen Institute’s coordinated effort to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

If that story is new to you, the Twitter Files revealed that in August 2020 the Aspen Institute organised a “table-top” exercise with Twitter, Facebook, First Draft, and a host of media organisations including the New York Times and Washington Post, that ran through a day-by-day playbook of how they would respond to the release of a Hunter Biden laptop. The story didn’t break publicly until October, so how did the Aspen Institute know two months in advance?

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Woman Sues After Being Arrested, Jailed, Tortured with Death-Metal Recordings Over Clerical Paperwork Blunder

Police refused to accept her own identification even though description didn’t match up.

A woman is suing Broward County, Florida, after law enforcement officers there arrested her for something someone else did, refusing to accept her own identification and ignoring the fact that the description of the wanted woman didn’t match.

The Institute for Justice reports the complaint against the county is on behalf of Jennifer Heath Box.

She charges authorities violated her constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as well as due process.

The IJ explained the background:

In December 2022, Jennifer went on a cruise with family members to celebrate the news that her younger brother, Mark, had beat cancer for the second time. After a fun week aboard the Harmony of the Seas, the cruise ship returned to Port Everglades on the morning of Christmas Eve, giving Jennifer enough time to spend Christmas with her three adult children. But when Jennifer scanned her ID to get off the ship, police surrounded her and told her there was a warrant for her arrest for child endangerment out of Harris County, Texas.

The IJ reported the warrant did seek a woman named Jennifer, but it wasn’t this Jennifer. And she documented that her own children already all were adults.

“It was a really scary and confusing experience, because I’ve never had run-ins with law enforcement and I have no criminal record,” she explained. “I couldn’t believe that I could be stopped, arrested, and jailed, just because my name was similar to someone they were looking for.”

She knew the officers were wrong, so she cooperated calmly and provided police with her license and date of birth, as well as information about her children.

It didn’t matter to officers.

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Nebraska Court Weighs Legal Challenge That Could Prevent Medical Marijuana Ballot Votes From Being Counted After Election

A Lancaster County District Court judge said Friday she intends to issue “narrowly” at the end of next week whether to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to invalidate Nebraska’s medical cannabis petitions.

Judge Susan Strong made the announcement during a 20-minute initial briefing on the lawsuit filed by John Kuehn, a veterinarian, rancher, former state senator and former member of the Nebraska State Board of Health. The lawsuit seeks to either remove the two certified marijuana measures from the November 5 ballot or prevent counting of votes and void the election results.

“Hopefully we can all work together and resolve these claims as expeditiously as possible, hopefully before the election, though I understand we don’t have to,” Strong said at the initial hearing. “I think that would be the best course.”

Under state law, challenges to ballot measures can come before or after the election at issue, but Strong and attorneys for Secretary of State Bob Evnen (R) and Kuehn said they were inclined to move quickly so voters know the impact before November’s election.

Attorneys for Evnen and the campaign sponsors each asked for all or part of the lawsuit to be dismissed. The sponsors’ attorneys derided the lawsuit as the “equivalent of a recount.”

Kuehn alleges too many invalid signatures

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TYRANNY: Biden-Harris Regime to Sanction Elon Musk in Their Baseless ‘Investigation’ Over His Lawful Purchase of X/Twitter

As Jim Hoft previously reported, Biden-Harris’s Securities and Exchange Commission has been baselessly investigating Elon Musk’s lawful purchase of X/Twitter since 2022 and is suing him. Now, the Biden-Harris regime intends to levy the full force of the ‘law’ in an effort to punish one of their most formidable enemies.

Reuters reported Friday that the SEC said they would sanction Elon Musk after he refused to appear in court for testimony regarding his acquisition of X/Twitter. To make matters worse, they are making this decision even though his testimony had already been rescheduled for early October, demonstrating the Regime was looking for an excuse to harm the world’s richest man.

From Reuters:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Friday it intends to seek sanctions against Elon Musk after he failed to appear for court-ordered testimony for the regulator’s probe into his $44 billion takeover of X/Twitter.

In a court filing, the SEC said the sanctions motion would seek an order to show cause for why Musk should not be held in civil contempt for waiting until just three hours before the scheduled Sept. 10 testimony to advise he would not appear.

Lawyers for Musk called sanctions “drastic” and unnecessary, saying his testimony has already been rescheduled for Oct. 3.

A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment.

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G20 Embraces Digital ID Dream While Critics Warn of Surveillance Nightmare

The G20 organization, currently chaired by Brazil and recently holding a ministerial meeting there, is wasting no time falling in line with all the key policies advanced by many governments, and globalist elites.

After promising to do its bit in the “war on disinformation” (to the delight of the host, Brazil, whose present government is accused of censorship), G20 member countries “pledged allegiance” to the digital ID and the overall scheme that incorporates it – namely, the digital public infrastructure (DPI).

Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

DPI already counts the UN, the EU, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Gates Foundation as policy backers and vocal promoters. Now G20 ministers with digital economy portfolios have issued a joint declaration to express their “commitment” to both DPI and “combating disinformation”, and there is also inevitably the talk of “AI.”

On the digital ID/DPI front, the ministers speak of “inclusive” DPI, and the same attribute is attached to AI. The declaration “acknowledges” the importance of things like innovation and competition in a digital economy, among other things, at the same time “reaffirming” the importance of digital transformation based on DPI.

Boilerplate remarks are made about transparency and protection of privacy and personal data – but these are the major concerns cited by opponents of this type of scheme, along with the overall fear that they facilitate new, more dangerous forms of mass surveillance through centralization of personal information and tracking of people’s activities.

Referring to digital ID as “a basic DPI,” the declaration further speaks of the Sustainable Development Goals (a UN agenda) and one of its targets to be achieved by 2030 by using digital ID (as a tool of “inclusion”) to provide “legal identity for all.”

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German Citizens’ Forum Proposes Criminalizing “Disinformation”

A citizens’ council – established by Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser to help combat what she sees as “fake news,” has come up with a number of recommendations, including criminalizing whatever the authorities decide to consider to be the “spread of disinformation.”

The proposal is in line with Faeser’s own policies, which opponents see as strongly pro-censorship (and that includes trying to ban a magazine critical of the government).

No surprise also that Faeser’s ministry is open to the suggestions – a statement said it would be “analyzed.” Furthermore, the Interior Ministry will “examine the extent to which (the recommendations)” can be incorporated into its work.

All this is already being interpreted in the context of the previous conduct of Germany’s government, which critics say is not only free speech and media freedom-unfriendly – but is also, while declaratively fighting disinformation, giving a leg up to those media outlets that actually spread disinformation (the implication being, the kind of disinformation that suits the government.)

In a world where war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc., Faeser’s council’s full name is, “Forum against Fakes—Together for a Strong Democracy.” But it’s questionable how German democracy could benefit from an even more draconian clampdown on speech than what is currently happening.

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