Tag: police state

Are we being watched?

Ashadowy state agency with no statutory footing, previously used to monitor perfectly lawful yet dissenting speech during the Covid lockdowns, has been deployed by the Labour Government to monitor social media amid ongoing civil unrest across the UK.

The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), now rebranded as the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT), has been given the task just months after the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee questioned “the lack of transparency and accountability of [NSOIT] and the appropriateness of its reach”, and recommended that the Government commission an independent review of “the activities and strategy” of the unit to report back within 12 months.

Peter Kyle, Labour’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology has tasked NSOIT with monitoring online activity following the outbreak of widespread public disorder in the wake of the murder of three schoolgirls in Southport on 29th July.

David Davis, the Conservative MP who previously called for the CDU to be shut down, told the Telegraph he had no real objection to the unit being used to monitor social media during the riots because “it’s perfectly legitimate for the state to monitor things that might incite violence”. 

That’s true, of course – but the question is whether in doing so NSOIT will also be monitoring and flagging for removal online posts that fall well within the law.

Last year, a report by Big Brother Watch unmasked the scale of the digital surveillance system established during the Covid lockdowns, with the government now able to call upon at least three domestic surveillance units, all of which have previously been tasked with monitoring social media posts in the UK, flagging “misleading” content to their Whitehall paymasters who then urge tech platforms to remove them.

These units are the NSOIT in DCMS, the Intelligence and Communications Unit in the Home Office, the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit (since disbanded, according to the government) and the 77th Brigade, a combined Regular and Army reserve unit within the Ministry of Defence.

NSOIT was originally established to fight what the government calls “disinformation”. 

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The FBI Raided This Innocent Woman’s House. Will She Ever Get Justice?

On an early morning in 2017, Curtrina Martin inadvertently attended a pyrotechnic exhibit she compares to the Fourth of July. Except it was October, and it was inside her home in Georgia.

The source was considerably less joyful. The FBI detonated a flash grenade in the house and ripped the door from its hinges in a raid to arrest a man, Joseph Riley, accused of gang activity, who lived in a different house approximately one block over.

The agents would not realize their mistake until after they made their way into Martin’s bedroom, where they found her and her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, hiding in the closet, which the couple had retreated to when they were jolted awake by the commotion. An officer on the SWAT team dragged Cliatt out and handcuffed him, while another officer screamed and pointed his gun at Martin, who had reportedly fallen on a rack amid the chaos.

“I don’t know if there is a proper word that I can use” to describe her fear that night, Martin tells me. She says she initially had no idea it was law enforcement that had broken into her home. Her 7-year-old son was in a different room she couldn’t get to.

The leader of the SWAT raid, Lawrence Guerra, who was then a special agent with the FBI, noticed that Cliatt did not match the physical description of Riley, while Michael Lemoine, another FBI special agent, saw a piece of mail with a different address than the target. Guerra ultimately ended the raid. 

Almost seven years have gone by, and Martin and Cliatt are still trying to find recourse for what happened that night. A federal lawsuit they filed continues to wind its way through the judiciary, although the courts have thus far immunized the government from having to pay any damages.

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Brits Warned Merely ‘Retweeting’ Information About Riots Could Be A Criminal Offense

UK authorities have warned people that merely retweeting information about the riots could lead to criminal charges.

Yes, really.

Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told Sky News that people do not even need to personally post the content themselves to be deemed to be committing an offence.

Parkinson said social media users could be guilty of “incitement to racial hatred” if they post “insulting or abusive” content that is “likely to stir up racial hatred.”

Sky News clarified that “sharing online material of riots could be an offence.”

The public official also asserted separately that individuals who publish protest/riot locations, such as those outside immigration law firms, could be hit with terrorism charges.

“The fact that it’s organised groups that might be motivated by ideological reasons, the fact that they’re promoting potentially very serious offences – that’s the sort of instance where we might want to consider terrorism charges,” said Parkinson.

He even previously suggested that social media influencers who are currently located abroad like Tommy Robinson could be extradited and hit with terrorism charges in the UK on nebulous charges of inciting the riots.

As we highlighted earlier, numerous prominent people in the UK are now calling on the government to mimic Communist China by banning Twitter (X) altogether in the country to stop civil unrest.

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Number of illegal cigarettes in Ireland hits 10 year high as one in five packs smuggled in

The level of illegal cigarettes in Ireland was at its highest level in over a decade last year with almost 1 in 5 packs smuggled into the country, according to research by Revenue.

However, there is no evidence of any counterfeit tobacco products being sold to consumers in the Republic.

The latest annual survey commissioned by the tax authorities to assess the scale of illegal tobacco products being sold in the Republic found 19% of cigarette packs analysed last year were classified as illegal. It is the highest rate since the annual survey was introduced in 2009 and up from 17% the previous year.

Revenue has estimated the potential loss to the Exchequer from the consumption of 32.9 million illegal cigarette packs last year is approximately €422 million – up €38 million on 2022 estimates.

However, the survey found that none of the illegal packs detected last year were counterfeit cigarettes. The figure for counterfeit tobacco products had peaked at 7% in 2021.

The survey showed 99% of illegal packs analysed in 2023 were categorised as “contraband” – normal commercial brands of cigarettes which were bought either duty paid or duty-free abroad and smuggled into Ireland. The remaining 1% of illegal packs were “illicit whites” which are classified as cigarettes manufactured for the sole purpose of being sold illegally in another market.

The level of cigarettes brought into the country from abroad by smokers for personal use was also at its highest ever rate last year. The survey found 15% of cigarette packs were legal but without duty paid in Ireland which indicates they were legally purchased in another jurisdiction and brought into Ireland by the smoker.

The rate had been below 10% for most of the past decade. “The 2023 results suggest that the prevalence of both illegal and legal non-Irish duty paid packs has increased in recent years,” said Revenue.

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FBI Raids Home of Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter

On Wednesday, the FBI raided the home of Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector and outspoken critic of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Ritter told reporters outside of his New York home that the raid was related to a suspected violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), a law that requires individuals or entities engaging in lobbying or other activity on behalf of a foreign country to register as foreign agents with the US Department of Justice.

“The search warrant is related to concerns apparently the US government has about violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. I will tell you right now I am not in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act … and hopefully, by executing the search warrant and taking the information that they did, they will rapidly reach that conclusion,” Ritter said.

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UK’s Met Police Chief Threatens “Keyboard Warriors” With Terrorism Charges

Head of the Met Police Sir Mark Rowley has warned that “keyboard warriors” could be hit with terrorism charges for inciting riots online, even if they are living abroad.

Rowley made the comments in response to waves of rioting that unfolded across the UK following the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport by a 17-year-old of Rwandan migrant origin via his parents.

Asserting that the “full force of the law” would be used against offenders, Rowley made it clear that this included not just people physically involved in the riots, but those who make inflammatory comments about them on social media.

“And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” Rowley threatened.

A Sky News reporter than mentioned Elon Musk as a ‘high profile figure’ who was “whipping up hatred,” when in fact Musk merely asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer, “Why aren’t all communities protected in Britain?”.

“What are you considering when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up from behind a keyboard and maybe is in a different country,” the reporter asked Rowley.

“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law, you can be guilty of offences of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offences regarding the publishing of material, all of those offences are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are causing the problems for communities,” said Rowley.

As we highlighted yesterday, authorities have warned Brits that merely retweeting information about the riots could lead to criminal charges.

Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told Sky News that people do not even need to personally post the content themselves to be deemed to be committing an offence.

Parkinson said social media users could be guilty of “incitement to racial hatred” if they post “insulting or abusive” content that is “likely to stir up racial hatred.”

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Tim Walz Was Dead Wrong About Misinformation and Free Speech

Now that Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has become Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, it is ostensibly time for the media to scrutinize his record and past statements. (Emphasis on ostensibly.)

To say the mainstream coverage of Walz has been fawning thus far would be quite an understatement; The New York Times described him as “a one-man rejoinder to the idea that the Democrats are the party of the cultural and coastal elite.” The Atlantic‘s Charlie Warzel merrily aided media efforts to portray Walz as a lovable, folksy paternal figure, writing that “dad is on the ballot.” CNN proclaimed the Harris-Walz team as “an antidote to Trump’s American carnage.”

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz want to make America joyful again,” wrote CNN’s Stephen Collinson.

The task of scrutinizing Walz will clearly fall to other interested parties. (See Reason‘s Eric Boehm on his overall record, and this piece by me on his COVID-19 policies.)

Conservatives on social media did manage to dig up an old clip of Walz making an alarming and false claim: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.”

Walz is wrong, of course: The First Amendment, which vigorously protects Americans’ free speech rights, does not distinguish between good information and misinformation. Moreover, so-called hate speech—an arbitrary category, as different people find different sorts of speech to be hateful—is quite obviously protected.

But that clip of Walz is only eight seconds long, and I am wary of taking people out of context. So I looked for the rest of the clip, which is available here.

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Nassau County Criminalizes Masks To Counter Far-Left Mask-Wearing Activists 

Nassau County Republicans passed the “Mask Transparency Act” on Monday, making it a misdemeanor for anyone 16 and older to wear a face mask in public spaces except for health and religious reasons. This move aims to curb criminals or violent protesters who exploit mask-wearing to conceal their identities. 

Nassau County Legislator Mazi Pilip proposed the Mask Transparency Act after one of her constituents was attacked by a mask-wearing protester.

“Having them covering their faces, thinking they can do whatever they want. This is absolutely unacceptable,” Pilip told NBC New York.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman shared a similar view… 

“Unless someone has a medical condition or a religious imperative, people should not be allowed to cover their face in a manner that hides their identity when in public.” 

Violators of the bill could be slapped with a fine of up to $1,000 and even jail time. The bill had unanimous support from all 12 Republican legislators in Nassau County. 

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The Rule of Law and Property Rights

Respect for the rule of law cannot simply mean a moral obligation to obey legislation. History is replete with too many examples of tyrannical legislation for that notion to pass muster. But if the rule of law does not mean obeying whatever legislators enact, what does it mean?

Murray Rothbard argued that this question must be answered by reference to ethical guidelines, which he constructed around the concepts of self-ownership and property rights. Rothbard conceptualized property rights as inalienable and absolute natural rights. Seen in that light, eminent domain legislation is unethical and unjust. The example of New York illustrates the significance of this point, as explained by the Institute for Justice:

“In New York, eminent domain gives the government the power to take your property, even if you don’t want to sell. But under the Fifth Amendment, eminent domain must be for a ‘public use,’ which traditionally meant projects like roads or bridges. Meanwhile, the government must pay the owners ‘just compensation’ for their property.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted federal protection against unconstitutional eminent domain when it handed down its decision in Kelo v. New London in 2005. By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court dramatically expanded the definition of ‘public use’ to include private economic development. In other words, local governments can condemn homes and businesses and transfer them to new owners if government officials think that the new owners will produce more taxes or jobs with the land.

“As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned in her dissent: ‘The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.’”

South Africa has gone even further with its expropriation laws, by providing in its constitution that “public purpose” can include anti-racism, equity and protection of “vulnerable groups.”

“In terms of section 25(4)(a) of the Constitution ‘public interest includes the nation’s commitment to land reform, and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa’s natural resources.’ Section 25 (8) further states that the state may take ‘legislative steps and other measures … in order to redress the results of past racial discrimination.’”

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Walz Created ‘Snitch Line’ for COVID Mandate Violators

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate for the 2024 presidential election. 

This choice has reignited discussions around Walz’s controversial actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the establishment of a notorious “snitch line” in March 2020.

He and his family have also been under fire for their actions and revealing remarks amid the 2020 BLM riots.

The Post Millennial (TPM) reported that Walz’s administration set up the hotline to encourage Minnesotans to report their neighbors for violating COVID-19 lockdown orders. 

This initiative drew thousands of complaints, with citizens reporting on activities such as going to church, hosting birthday parties, buying nonessential items, and not enforcing mask mandates.

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