Tag: police state

FLOCK SAFETY: The Great Normalization (Nobody Declared Martial Law… Yet America Began Looking Like It Anyway)

There are stories that announce themselves with explosions, riots, or breaking-news headlines, and then there are stories so subtle that they quietly rewrite an entire society before anyone realizes what has happened. This is one of those stories. During the preparation of this investigation, several retired police officers, private security professionals, emergency responders, and ordinary citizens described nearly identical experiences despite living hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. None believed they were witnessing anything extraordinary at first. It was only when they looked backward—sometimes over a decade—that a disturbing pattern became impossible to ignore. Streets had not become military checkpoints overnight. Neighborhoods had not suddenly filled with surveillance towers. Instead, the changes arrived one camera, one drone, one security contract, and one “temporary” emergency measure at a time until extraordinary security became indistinguishable from ordinary life. What follows is not an argument against public safety, nor an attempt to romanticize a past that was hardly free from crime or violence. It is an examination of a transformation that has occurred quietly enough for most people to stop seeing it altogether.

There is an old saying among investigators that people rarely notice change while it is happening. They notice it only when they compare today’s reality with memories that have remained frozen in time. Memory preserves snapshots, while history moves continuously. That disconnect explains why so many citizens insist that nothing fundamental has changed even as the physical landscape around them becomes increasingly populated by surveillance cameras, armed guards, automated license plate readers, biometric scanners, drones, and predictive security technologies. No single installation appears revolutionary. No single policy seems capable of altering the character of a society. Yet history rarely advances through dramatic leaps. More often, it advances through thousands of small decisions that seem perfectly reasonable when viewed independently but become historically significant when examined collectively.

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Finnish MEP Warns Britain Is ‘Worst Example’ Of Free Speech In Europe After Entry Ban

Finnish MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen has warned that Britain is fast becoming the worst example in Europe when it comes to defending free speech after he became the latest elected European politician to be banned from entering the country ahead of his appearance at the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Great Britain.

In a video posted on social media, the conservative politician said, “I was just banned from entering the U.K. I am an elected member of the European Parliament and was invited to speak at the very first conservative CPAC conference in the U.K.

“We had the adverts out, flights and hotel booked, and I was supposed to head to the airport in just two hours.

“Then, only moments ago, I was informed that my presence wouldn’t be conducive to the public good.

“Throughout my political career, I have defended our girls and women from the threats posed by mass migration. For some, like U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, this is hate speech.

“For me, it is simply what all politicians should be doing: addressing the problem, changing the legislation and sending them home.”

Tynkkynen then warned the British people that something is “deeply wrong” with their country, and that it was “becoming the worst example in Europe of the death of freedom of speech.”

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Japan Approves Legislation That Criminalizes Desecrating the National Flag

Respect the flag – or else…

Right-wing Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi keeps charting her conservative course, implementing her agenda unconcerned with the inevitable whining from the liberal media and the leftist opposition.

Yesterday (17), it was reported that the Japanese Upper House of Parliament passed legislation ‘criminalizing the desecration of Japan’s national flag’.

The legislation counted on the support of parts of the opposition, despite ‘concerns’ that the measure would ‘infringe on freedom of expression’.

The approved law will punish anyone who ‘publicly damages, removes or defaces the flag’ in a way causes ‘extreme discomfort or disgust to others’.

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Huge Win for Second Amendment — Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down New Jersey’s Unconstitutional Semi-Automatic Rifle Ban and Magazine Limit

The anti-gun agenda suffered a major legal defeat on Friday after the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that New Jersey’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its prohibition on magazines holding more than 10 rounds violate the Second Amendment.

In a sweeping 10-5 en banc decision, the Third Circuit held that New Jersey’s so-called “assault firearm” ban cannot survive the constitutional test established by the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision. The court also struck down the state’s 10-round magazine limit.

The 192-page opinion concluded that New Jersey’s prohibition on semi-automatic rifles, including the popular AR-15 platform, and its restrictions on so-called “large-capacity magazines” infringe on the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Writing for the majority, the court declared:

“Applying the framework announced in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), we agree with the District Court that New Jersey’s ban on Colt AR-15s violates the Second Amendment. However, because the record supports the same result for all semi-automatic rifles—not only Colt AR-15s—we will MODIFY the District Court’s order so that it deems the Assault Firearm Provisions unconstitutional with respect to the full class of semi-automatic rifles.

We will AFFIRM that part of the order as modified. The LCM Provisions also violate the Second Amendment, so we will REVERSE the District Court’s order with respect to those. Because the LCM Provisions violate the Second Amendment, we need not address the Takings Clause challenge.”

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Missouri Age Verification Law Signed by Governor Mike Kehoe

Missouri wants to see your ID before you can look at legal content, and it is selling that demand as child protection. Governor Mike Kehoe signed House Bill 1839 on July 9, turning an attorney general rule into hard law and dropping the state deeper into the widening group of governments that treat online anonymity as a loophole to close.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The statute goes after websites where more than a third of the content qualifies as “sexual material harmful to minors.” Cross that line and you have to route every visitor through a third-party age check before they reach anything. Social media platforms answer to the same requirement once enough of what they host trips the threshold.

The check collects far more than a birthday. A visitor can hand over a government-issued ID, a form of digital identification tied to their legal name, or submit to what the bill calls “a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual.”

That transactional data, the text spells out, can be pulled from mortgage, education, and employment records. Confirming that someone has cleared 18 now means surfacing where they went to school, who holds their loan, and where they work.

Missouri could have asked for a birth year. It chose instead to build a system that welds a person’s real identity to the specific sites they visit, about the most sensitive browsing there is.

The law tells the companies running these checks that they cannot keep what they gather. A third party “shall not retain any identifying information of the individual,” the bill reads, and the attorney general can charge $10,000 for every instance a company hangs onto that data.

The promise reads well on the page. It also rests on trusting that a verification vendor, sitting on a database of IDs matched to porn habits, never gets breached. Age-check providers have leaked this exact kind of information before, and a no-retention clause cannot un-leak a database that has already spilled.

Catherine Hanaway, the state attorney general, enforces the rule and can stack penalties fast. A site faces $10,000 for each day it operates out of compliance, plus an added sum of up to $250,000 if a minor reaches restricted content. Hanaway, who inherited the rule from her predecessor Andrew Bailey, framed the signing as a landmark.

“Our office is proud to have promulgated and enforced Missouri’s age-verification rule, which prompted Pornhub to stop operating in Missouri- delivering one of the most significant online child-protection victories in our state’s history. House Bill 1839 builds on that success, and Missouri will continue leading the nation in standing with parents, protecting children, and holding pornography websites accountable,” she said in a statement.

Representative Sherri Gallick, who sponsored the bill, leaned on exposure figures. “The average age of first exposure is around 11. Early exposure shapes unrealistic expectations with pornography portraying sometimes violent and degrading sexual behavior. Much of the content is violent and demeaning, especially toward women and children,” Gallick wrote.

The bill does carve out news. Bona fide news and public interest content stay exempt, and the text says it cannot be read to touch the work of a news-gathering organization. Internet providers, search engines, and cloud services get their own shield, safe from liability for content they neither create nor control.

Aylo, the company that owns Pornhub, shows how compliance plays out. The site cut off Missouri users in December when the rule first landed, then reappeared as the signing drew near, now serving the state an age-verification prompt where it had gone dark. One version of that gate asked visitors to click “I am 18 or older – Enter” or “I am under 18 – Exit,” a reminder that the heaviest verification machinery tends to fall on the ordinary user while the theater of protection stays cheap.

The requirements take effect August 28.

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Video Shows Fort Worth Cop Ticketing a Preacher for ‘Offensive’ Speech at Pride Event

A Fort Worth Police officer ticketed a preacher in late June, claiming the content of his speech was offensive. This week the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division launched an inquiry into the incident to determine if the officer violated the First Amendment.

The widely circulated video of the confrontation shows an officer and a protester during the Trinity Pride Fest on June 27. “If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” said Officer Sara Stogner.

“That’s a constitutional violation of our rights,” responds David Grisham, a street preacher and retired federal law enforcement officer. The two continue to argue when Stogner asserts, “OK, then I’ll write you the ticket, and we’ll go from there.”

“Wait, you’re going to ticket us for offensive speech?” the cameraman asks incredulously. To which the officer confidently responds, “Yes, absolutely.”

Stogner continues to claim she can ticket the two men for disorderly conduct “if someone complains that your language or what you’re saying is offensive.”  

But that’s not how the First Amendment works, according to legal experts. “The First Amendment does not allow government officials to shut down speech simply on account of it being ‘offensive,'” said Brennan VanderVeen, program counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “The government can restrict certain types of conduct or restrict noise above a certain volume level,” he continued, but citing someone because people are offended by the content of protected speech is “precisely what the First Amendment does not allow.” 

Grisham was ultimately cited for misuse of a bullhorn during a protest, a citation he argues isn’t supported by the city’s noise ordinance, reports WFAA, an ABC News affiliate. Grisham’s civil rights attorneys announced on July 3 their intent to challenge the citation, arguing Stogner failed to issue a decibel check in accordance with the city’s noise ordinance and Texas code, which presumes an unreasonable noise to be in excess of 85, and instead cited Grisham for “engaging in peaceful and protected speech.” 

In response to growing online backlash, Fort Worth Police Chief Eddie Garcia told WFAA on Monday that his department takes responsibility and is currently instituting department-wide First Amendment training. “We just trained up our command staff again with refresher courses. We’re going to be training our sergeants. We’re going to be training our officers,” said Garcia. “We are not a perfect profession,” he continued, “and officers will make mistakes from time to time.” Garcia did not mention any ways in which Stogner would be held personally accountable or liable. 

“Actively training police officers around First Amendment standards would be a positive step,” said VanderVeen, who added that “government officials being unaware of basic First Amendment standards is a persistent problem.” 

So much so, it seems, the Justice Department is also looking into the incident and has asked the Fort Worth city attorney for information to help the agency determine if an investigation is necessary, reports Fox News. “The Civil Rights Division is committed to ensuring all Americans—regardless of the content or viewpoint of their speech—are protected from unlawful restrictions on expressive activity,” wrote Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon.

The City of Fort Worth, Texas, has 30 days to provide the DOJ with further information.

The Justice Department is right to ensure Grisham’s freedom of speech has not been infringed, and doing so is consistent with the agency’s core mission to protect civil rights. But the move stands out against a backdrop of the agency’s alleged First Amendment violations since President Donald Trump took office, including subpoenaing journalists, coercing social media companies to remove immigration officer tracking apps, and attempting to unmask anonymous online critics. 

But for now, Americans can rest assured that the Justice Department can still do the right thing every once in a while.

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Microsoft Confirms Windows GDID Device Identifier That Cannot Be Disabled, Documented in FBI Case Filing

Microsoft has publicly acknowledged the existence of the Global Device Identifier (GDID), a device-specific ID assigned to Windows installations, in a federal complaint filed by US prosecutors against an alleged member of the Scattered Spider hacking group.

The ID is generated when Windows is set up with a Microsoft Account, persists through Windows updates, and cannot be disabled without affecting Windows activation and Microsoft Store apps.

Microsoft briefly mentioned GDID in the Azure Monitor documentation, describing it only as “an identifier used by Microsoft internally.” The complaint cites a Microsoft representative describing GDID as “a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device, either a physical device such as a mobile phone or laptop or a virtual machine, across certain Microsoft services and scenarios.”

What the Windows Global Device Identifier Is and How the FBI Used It

The Global Device Identifier (GDID) is a permanent ID assigned when Windows provisions against a Microsoft Account. It is generated by a chain of Windows services.

The wlidsvc service requests a Device PUID from login.live.com, which is then registered into Microsoft’s Device Directory Service by the Connected Devices Platform.

Delivery Optimization reports the GDID back to Microsoft when the PC shares or downloads updates. This identifier is stored in the Windows registry under HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IdentityCRL\ExtendedProperties and formatted with a lowercase “g” prefix followed by a decimal number.

It is reported to Microsoft servers and remains persistent across Windows updates, but it is not retained after a clean reinstall. Microsoft has acknowledged that one user can have multiple GDIDs linked through their account, OneDrive, and activation history.

The FBI used the GDID to track Peter Stokes, alleged member of Scattered Spider, across VPN connections, proxy servers, and through four countries over roughly eight months.

According to the complaint, the GDID g:6755467234350028 was recorded visiting the ngrok signup page at the same time an account used in the attack was created via a Tzulo VPN proxy. Three hours later, the same GDID accessed a victim retailer’s website through the same proxy.

The device was cross-referenced with IP addresses linked to Stokes’s accounts on Snapchat, Facebook, Apple, and Ubisoft across Estonia, New York, Thailand, and other locations. Stokes’s public Snapchat photos matched hotel bookings, locations, and travel timelines associated with the GDID.

The persistent nature of the GDID across VPN sessions proved a key investigative asset. While VPN IP addresses change frequently, the underlying Windows installation continued reporting the same identifier, aiding investigators in their tracking efforts.

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You WILL NOT BELIEVE What Is Happening In This TINY English Village

Residents of the small leafy Oxfordshire village of Piddington have delivered a thunderous rebuke to Westminster’s latest asylum experiment.

With roughly 180 adults casting ballots on July 4, 175 backed holding a referendum on breaking away from the United Kingdom in protest against plans to house up to 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers at an adjacent former Ministry of Defence Site.

That works out to a 96% yes vote in a community of around 370 people where decisions about their future are being made without them.

The move comes after the Home Office announced in late June it would convert the redundant military storage facility — sitting right between Piddington and Upper Arncott — into basic accommodation for single men aged 18 to 65.

Utility companies have already received instructions to prepare power, water and sewage connections, with work eyed for late August or early September. No detailed public proposal or full impact assessment has been published. Locals say the site was never built for this purpose and sits next to a children’s play area and reserve.

Piddington resident Ian Darby captured the frustration felt by many when he spoke out against the total lack of engagement from officials.

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Jim Jordan Fights UK Plan to Force Legacy Media Into Feeds

Britain’s government has decided that a functioning adult with thumbs and a phone cannot be trusted to pick your own news. So it has drawn up a plan to pick it for you.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport published a paper on June 23 proposing that social media platforms and video sharing sites be forced to push a hand-picked list of broadcasters to the top of your feed.

The list runs BBC, ITV, STV, Channel 4, S4C and Channel 5. The government files them under “public service media.” You might file them under the channels people have spent two decades scrolling away from.

Now the argument has crossed the Atlantic. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy a letter on July 14 warning that the plan “would serve as a major threat to online speech and expression and infringe on the rights of American companies and their users.” He wants a briefing by 10 a.m. Washington time on July 28.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The platforms being ordered around are American. Their users are everywhere. A British minister rewriting how YouTube ranks video reaches straight into feeds in Ohio and Osaka.

The DCMS says the goal is to help people “discover trusted news sources” and to fight “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Translated, the state has chosen your news and would rather you stopped wandering off. Who gets to decide what counts as “trusted”? The same government running the scheme, of course.

The paper leans on real numbers. Ofcom found that social media is now the main news source for 51 percent of adults and 75 percent of people aged 16 to 24. People left. The government’s response is not to ask why they left. It is to guarantee the approved broadcasters a spot at the top while everyone else scraps for whatever attention is left over.

The trick lies in the technology. On television, “prominence” is old furniture. You can legally park BBC One near the top of the channel guide, and the Media Act 2024 dragged that habit onto smart-TV home screens. A recommendation feed works nothing like a channel list. It sorts content in real time by what you personally watch, click and share. Forcing “prominence” onto that means reaching into the ranking and hoisting chosen publishers above where your own behavior left them. Less a nudge, more a shove.

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Man jailed in Northern Ireland for burning fake mosque in bonfire

Bonfire season in Northern Ireland is a centuries-old tradition. Enormous towers of wooden pallets, decorated with the symbols of whoever you oppose, lit on fire at night. Catholics burn Union Jacks and pictures of the King. Protestants burn Irish tricolours. Politicians, royals, and foreign flags all get their turn.

Jewish symbols have appeared on bonfires. So have Israeli flags. It is, Ezra Levant noted on Monday’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, essentially a free-speech zone that has existed for hundreds of years.

This year, a bonfire in Moygashel, County Tyrone displayed a replica mosque. The words on it read: “Secure our borders. End the threat of radical Islam.” The Arabic lettering, Ezra noted, referenced fascism — a deliberate attempt to distinguish radical Islam from the broader religion.

The man who built it is now in jail.

Brian Conrad Neil, 56, was arrested, refused bail, and appeared in the dock of Dungannon Magistrates’ Court in handcuffs. He has been charged with incitement to hatred. District Judge Barney McElholm declared that those who placed the replica mosque on the bonfire had “an agenda full of hate and bigotry towards others.”

The bail refusal was particularly striking to Ezra.

“Everyone gets bail, especially in Ireland,” he said. “Accused murderers sometimes get bail — but not a lad who put a fake mosque on a bonfire.” The two reasons to deny bail, he noted, are flight risk and ongoing danger to the community. Neither applies to a man who built a parade float.

The double standard is hard to miss.

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