Tag: police state

An Explosion of Surveillance Towers is Coming to U.S. Borders, Costing Over $1 Billion

A new report from the Government Accounting Office reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along U.S. borders, from the current 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

DHS expects to expend $1 billion in taxpayer dollars for this dangerous expansion of a surveillance network indiscriminately trained on towns, school playgrounds, backyards, and vehicles—threatening the privacy and civil liberties of everyone in the border regions.

The towers are planned as part of DHS component Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Integrated Surveillance Tower (IST) program, which captures images of people and vehicles. The IST program operates autonomous surveillance towers, consisting of autonomous surveillance towers, consisting of AI-based systems using radar, thermal infrared and optical systems to track targets over long distances; integrated fixed towers, optimized for surveilling foot traffic and vehicles; and remote video surveillance systems, which can often be found very close to the border fence in Arizona, including residential neighborhoods where cameras are capable of spying on homes on both sides of the border. (For a description and photos of these technologies, see EFF’s updated guide to surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border.)

DHS expects to purchase more long-range autonomous towers and to upgrade existing towers with autonomous capabilities. The $1 billion comes from the so-called One Big Beautiful Act—a massive tax and spending law that President Trump signed in 2025, the report says.

The explosive expansion of border surveillance is a digital dumpster fire for human rights and civil liberties. It’s not just surveillance towers; drones, aerostats, surveillance vehicles, ground sensors, game cameras, and license plate readers are also part of the vast taxpayer-funded infrastructure that threatens all those who live, work, or seek refuge in the borderlands. This technology isn’t exclusive to U.S. federal agencies: it’s also deployed by state and local law enforcement, and even by governments on the Mexican side.

Since 2022, EFF has studied and mapped surveillance technology along the U.S.-Mexico border using public records research, open-source intelligence, and fact-finding trips, and created a handy interactive map to provide researchers and journalists with the tools they need to analyze the impact of U.S. border security policy. We have also documented the different types of surveillance technology in a zine, “Surveillance Technology at the U.S.-Mexico Border.” We updated the publication earlier this year to help people identify the machinery of homeland security by adding more models of surveillance towers, newly deployed military tech, and a gallery of disguised trail cams and automated license plate readers.

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IRS Threatens to Seize Tennessee Man’s Farm Over Interest Charged on Accidental Refund That He IMMEDIATELY Tried to Return

The IRS is threatening to seize a Tennessee man’s farm after charging him interest on a refund it accidentally sent him in 2022.

Wilson Perry Kirby, 76, received an accidental $20,000 refund from the IRS on May 10, 2022, and he immediately tried to return the unspent money through his accountant.

More than four years later and Kirby is still fighting the IRS!

The IRS is withholding Kirby’s $1,800 refund from 2025 and is now threatening to seize his Coopertown farm over interest charges up to $4,300.

“I’ve tried the president, governor, mayor. They don’t mind asking you to vote for them, but when you need help you can’t get a hold of nobody,” Kirby told WTVF.

Kirby said he thought the matter was resolved earlier this year when he heard from Senator Marsha Blackburn.

“Well, they called me right before I went on television this last time and said it was settled, from Marsha Blackburn’s office,” Kirby said.

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Gestapo Tactics: German State Starts Banning AfD Candidates from Running for Office Because They Might Win

While the aging dictator of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega this week announced he was suspending elections indefinitely, Europe seems to be on a similar path – as Victor Orban’s Hungarian Fidesz Party was raided Wednesday and had their servers confiscated, and Romanian Presidential elections were anulled 2024. Now, Germany seems to have discovered a new strategy – as legacy parties are simply excluding candidates from the patriotic AfD party from elections.

Local elections are set to take place in the state of Lower Saxony, home of Volkswagen and surrounding the Free City of Hamburg, on Sept. 13, where the Alternative for Germany party is currently polling at about 20% behind Christian Democrats and Social Democrats at about 25% each. Nationally, the AfD is currently the strongest party in the polls at about 29%, and may even win a majority in the East German states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which elect new state parliaments and state governments in September.

So the failing legacy parties are resorting to ever more repressive measures. Along with the ever-present threat of Antifa violence, debanking, and media slander, efforts have been underway to ban the largest opposition party outright. Since the German secret political police have not been able to prove the AfD is a danger to democracy in court, these efforts by the ruling Social Democrats seem doomed to fail.

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Ga. police supervisor arrested after Flock audit, department says

Yet another metro Atlanta law enforcement member has been arrested for allegedly misusing the department’s Flock license plate reader system.

Paige Forte, a 30-year-old supervisor with the Conyers Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center, allegedly used the system to search for her domestic partner’s car several times. The searches were flagged during an audit, according to police.

Rockdale County Jail records show Forte was arrested on Wednesday and charged with prohibited use of law enforcement-retained license plate data. The police department asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to complete its own criminal investigation.

In its own statement, the GBI said Forte allegedly accessed the system “for non-law enforcement purposes” more than 30 times between April and July this year.

Forte has been put on administrative leave following the outcome of the police department’s internal investigation.

“The integrity of our department depends on the public’s confidence that we use technology responsibly and within the law,” Conyers Police Chief Scott Freeman said in a statement. “No employee is above the law, and we will continue to hold ourselves to the highest standards of accountability.”

Several law enforcement officers in Georgia — including three Fayetteville police officers, three Cherokee County deputies, one DeKalb County deputy and one Greene County deputy — have recently been disciplined for allegedly using their departments’ Flock systems outside of official law enforcement activity.

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Our women’s rights billboard truck triggered a ‘hate crime’ investigation

Tonight on The Ezra Levant Show: police investigate our billboard truck over a hate crime complaint after it displayed a message defending women’s rights.

When a political message on a billboard truck is enough to trigger a hate-crime investigation, it raises serious questions about where public debate is heading.

In downtown Toronto, our Rebel News billboard truck carrying a message from the Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights (caWsbar) became the subject of a police investigation after a passerby complained about the advertisement.

The message was simple: women and girls deserve safety on the field, privacy and dignity in the locker room, and fairness on the podium.

The truck had been driving around Toronto for days, including during a busy downtown soccer event where the message was widely seen by passersby. But after driver Mark parked legally near St. Clair Avenue and briefly stepped away, everything changed.

When he returned and attempted to leave, an officer approached and told him the truck had to remain in place because it was being investigated for a hate crime.

Mark had not been parked illegally. He had not been accused of causing any disturbance. He was not asked for his licence or ID. He was simply told police needed to investigate a complaint about the message displayed on the truck.

A second and then third police vehicle arrived as officers dealt with the complainant, who had objected to the advertisement and claimed he felt “unsafe.”

When Rebel News reporters arrived and began filming, the complainant turned his camera toward them, questioned why they were recording him, and again told police he felt unsafe. Officers ultimately confirmed the journalists had every right to film in public.

After speaking with the complainant, police determined the billboard was a political statement, not a hate crime. No charges were laid, no ticket was issued, and Mark was allowed to drive away.

That is the real story: not just the complaint, but how quickly a political disagreement escalated into a police response.

The officers ultimately handled the situation properly. But the fact that a message about women’s safety and fairness was enough for someone to call police and trigger a hate-crime investigation should concern anyone who values free expression.

The truck will keep rolling. In fact, we will keep it on the road even longer as a reminder that free speech cannot depend on whether everyone agrees with the message.

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America’s newest jail has no walls

Americans are looking for safety in an increasingly chaotic country. Mass immigration, collapsing social trust, and weakening civic bonds have transformed many communities from places where neighbors knew one another into anonymous zones governed by suspicion.

Technology promises an escape from the consequences of those political and cultural failures. Flock Safety cameras appear to offer law and order at the push of a button. In the hands of the ruling class that manufactured the crisis, however, they are more likely to produce tyranny for citizens.

Municipalities are buying Flock’s automated license plate readers. The company did not invent plate cameras, but its artificial intelligence radically expands their reach.

Flock cameras photograph passing vehicles and record license plates, makes, colors, damage, bumper stickers, and identifiers. A single camera means little. A citywide network collecting thousands of images every day creates something powerful.

The cameras send their information to an AI database in real time. Police and other municipal employees can search for vehicles nearby. They can place cars on “hot lists” and receive alerts whenever those vehicles appear.

The system effectively places a GPS tracker on every moving car. Police ordinarily need a warrant to attach a tracker to your vehicle. Flock can reproduce the same surveillance through a network of cameras, often without probable cause, due process, or meaningful legal restraint.

The benefits are obvious. Perfect information about every vehicle makes suspects easier to find. Police can recover stolen cars, locate fleeing murderers, and respond faster to crimes.

In a high-trust town, every grandmother on the porch once knew which cars belonged and which did not. Flock offers a technological imitation of that lost social awareness.

But imitation carries a price. Grandma knew her neighbors and exercised human judgment. The database knows everyone and answers to government employees.

Flock is not alone in selling technological substitutes for social order. Cities have used gunshot-detection systems. Networks of acoustic sensors identify gunfire and triangulate its location, allowing police to respond faster.

The engineering may be impressive. The governing theory is primitive: If authorities watch and listen to everyone constantly, they can prevent more crimes and solve more cases.

A surveillance panopticon may work. People who know they are always being watched behave differently. Americans have resisted that bargain for good reason.

The Fourth Amendment exists because efficient policing is not the highest political good. Government must possess evidence and follow procedures before invading the privacy of citizens. New technology should not erase old constitutional limits.

Britain offers a warning. Closed-circuit television cameras have become ubiquitous across the United Kingdom. Some estimates suggest that the average British resident appears on camera dozens of times each day.

Britain has no written equivalent of the Fourth Amendment, and its political culture places fewer obstacles before constant public surveillance. Yet cameras did not prevent the Rotherham grooming-gang scandal or protect thousands of vulnerable girls from organized abuse.

Officials ignored or concealed the crimes for years because confronting them threatened the ruling class’s multicultural ideology. When public anger finally erupted, the surveillance state proved far more competent at identifying and punishing citizens who protested the cover-up.

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The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).

We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.

Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.

The Border Search Exception Meets Your Phone

The Fourth Amendment requires that government searches of persons or property be reasonable, which usually means obtaining a warrant based on probable cause from a judge.

But a warrantless search can still be reasonable if it falls within an exception to the warrant requirement, including the exception that allows officers to search your belongings at the border. The border search exception allows warrantless searches of persons or property crossing the U.S. border, including the functional equivalent of the border such as international airports, given the government’s interests in controlling who and what may enter the country.

Historically, courts have categorized border searches of luggage, vehicles, and personal effects as “routine” and thus reasonable even if conducted without any suspicion that the traveler has engaged in wrongdoing; courts have also held that more invasive “nonroutine” searches, such as certain body searches and searches that damage property, require reasonable suspicion.

But a person’s privacy interests in the personal data on a phone or laptop are extraordinarily different than their limited privacy interests in the contents of their suitcase.

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Metaphysical Shop Owner’s Lawsuit Over Pennsylvania Fortune Telling Ban Moves Ahead

Following a legal victory earlier this summer, a metaphysical shop owner’s lawsuit over Pennsylvania’s ban on fortune telling could go to trial next year. The compelling case dates back to October of 2023 when the Serpent’s Key Shoppe and Sanctuary in the community of Hanover received an unexpected visit from the borough’s police chief, Chad Martin. Rather than picking up some occult supplies, the lawman instead offered a rather worrisome warning to owner Beck Ravenswood about the possibility of legal trouble should they violate the state’s 165-year-old law against divination. “He informed me basically he is not here to arrest me or press charges,” the shop owner recounted at the time, “however, if he ever gets a report from anyone, he will be back on my doorstep.”

The incident understandably did not sit well with Ravenswood, who filed a civil rights lawsuit against Martin and the town of Hanover in August of 2024. Nearly two years later, the case is still winding its way through the legal system, with the shop owner recently securing a significant legal victory. “The DA’s office had been trying to dismiss my case,” Ravenswood explained to a local media outlet, “saying it wasn’t important enough for the court to rule on.” However, they received word in June that the request had been rejected. “Judge Wilson finally looked at the evidence and said there’s a compelling argument here, and we need to determine what is really at the heart of this lawsuit,” Ravenswood said, “is it about witchcraft, or is it about freedom of speech? That’s really what it is.”

In a conference call between the parties on Wednesday, a discovery deadline was set for November 30th, and what the shop owner has cleverly taken to calling the ‘Hanover Witch Trial’ was added to the court’s calendar for June of 2027. That said, Ravenswood’s attorney reportedly indicated that they intend to request a summary judgment on the constitutionality of the law, which could eliminate the soothsaying ban once and for all without the need for any further court proceedings. Meanwhile, regardless of how the case ultimately unfolds, the antiquated restriction may not be on the books for much longer, as a state legislator introduced a still-in-committee bill that would repeal the restriction last June.

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Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Case of Alaska Pilot Whose $95,000 Plane Was Seized Over a 6-Pack of Beer

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider an Alaska pilot’s challenge to the government seizure of his airplane for transporting an illicit six-pack of beer.

In an orders list, the Court granted the petition of Ken Jouppi, a retired 82-year-old Alaskan bush pilot who argues that the seizure of his $95,000 Cessna U206D is an excessive fine under the Eighth Amendment.

Jouppi was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2012 when Alaska state troopers searched his plane before takeoff and discovered that a passenger was attempting to bring several cases of beer to a “dry” village where alcohol is prohibited. (Jouppi was only culpable for a single six-pack of Budweiser that troopers said was in plain sight.)

And for the last 14 years, Jouppi has fought to stop the Alaska state government from taking his Cessna through asset forfeiture, a process which allows police and prosecutors to seize property connected to criminal activity.

The Alaska Supreme Court ruled against Jouppi last year, leading to his Supreme Court petition. Jouppi is represented by the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm.

“I’m thrilled that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case, because this case isn’t just about me or my airplane anymore,” Jouppi said in an Institute for Justice press release. “I’m in my 80s now, and I’ve been fighting this for over a decade because I see it as my duty to ensure that the Bill of Rights actually means something in protecting against government overreach.”

For the Institute for Justice, Jouppi’s case is also an opportunity to build on a landmark 2019 Supreme Court ruling that held that the Eighth Amendment applied to states. Specifically, Jouppi’s case asks the Supreme Court to rule on whether states should consider the gravity of a defendant’s specific offense, rather than take an abstract view of the general crime.

“The Excessive Fines Clause of the Constitution was built for cases like this,” said Sam Gedge, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, in the press release. “As government agencies increasingly exploit fines and forfeitures to pad their budgets, it’s vital that the Supreme Court make clear that the Excessive Fines Clause is a meaningful check on government overreach. We’re confident that it will do so here.”

In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled in response to an Institute for Justice lawsuit that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines and fees applies to states under the incorporation doctrine. In the underlying case, Indiana police had seized a Land Rover from a man named Tyson Timbs for a minor drug crime.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that states are bound by the Eighth Amendment, the justices left it up to state courts to determine what constitutes an excessive fine.

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Canadians contacted at home by gov officials over social media posts after hate speech law passes: JCCF

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms says it is receiving reports that some Canadians have been contacted at their homes by government officials over social media posts made months or even years earlier, following the passage of Canada’s new hate speech legislation.

The organization said the reports come after Parliament passed Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, which expands Canada’s hate speech laws by creating new offences, increasing penalties, and removing certain legal safeguards that previously limited prosecutions for hate-related expression. The group said Canadians who are contacted by government officials over online posts should consider recording the interaction.

“If you believe your rights have been infringed or that you have been unfairly targeted, we encourage you to submit a case application through the Justice Centre’s online portal,” the organization said.

The Justice Centre provides legal representation to Canadians who believe their constitutional rights or freedoms have been violated by federal, provincial, or municipal governments or government entities, including universities, human rights commissions, professional associations, and public school boards. It said applications for legal assistance must be submitted online.

Canada would not be the first country to begin arrests for social media posts. The Times in the UK which used freedom of information requests to examine arrests in England and Wales under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. The laws prohibit communications that are “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character,” as well as messages that are “threatening, or knowingly false.”

According to The Times, there were 12,183 arrests in 2023 and 1,119 people were sentenced. The newspaper also reported that more than 65,000 arrests have been made since 2017.

Jake Hurfurt, head of research investigations at Big Brother Watch, told The Times the trend is “seriously concerning.” “Police look to be wasting countless hours on arresting people for posting things online that, while offensive, are not illegal. Heavy-handed use of vague communications offences is a threat to everyone’s freedom to express themselves online,” Hurfurt said.

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