Tag: police state

New Jersey Wants “Accountable” Chatbots, But At What Privacy Cost?

New Jersey is moving to treat AI chatbots as products under the state’s product liability law, and make their makers strictly liable for injuries their products cause – even if the company was careful and had no direct contract with the user.

A bill to this effect, A5607, was introduced on October 5, and after passing the Assembly Public Safety and Preparedness Committee on October 19, has been sent to the Appropriations Committee.

This means that users who are harmed by violations of the bill’s provisions could sue chatbot makers for actual damages or $5,000 per violation, while the attorney general would be able to seek civil penalties of $5,000 per violation.

The New Jersey bill would also restrict the use of chat logs and personal data for advertising, profiling, and training AI. This would represent a real gain for users, who are currently often subjected to this type of data harvesting and exploitation by tech companies.

The bill would also require providers to keep users’ chat logs and allow them to download these logs. What this means is that while on the one hand, users would have more control over their data, on the other, the provider would be forced to keep a record of all conversations that take place on their platform.

That is a store of highly personal and intimate records that can be accessed by law enforcement, other litigants, and hackers.

This is not merely theoretical, as we reported in October about a Florida woman who used the Claude chatbot as a “diary” – and got arrested after the system flagged one of her entries as suspicious. The local sheriff’s office then warned people that they are “never truly anonymous” when using AI.

The New Jersey bill’s provisions that are supposed to protect users’ privacy and safety could ultimately backfire, as the strict liability standard that would be imposed on companies could lead to even more surveillance of users.

As lawyer Scott S. Christie told Law.com, the bill would “open the floodgates” and explained that, “When there’s $5,000 in statutory damages per violation and you don’t have to prove any harm, in addition to the strict liability standard, you’re talking hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of dollars per lawsuit.”

He also explained that the way the bill is written means that if a chatbot provider violates the statute with one user, “it’s probably violating as to all users.”

To avoid this, the obvious course of action for companies would be to watch their users more closely, verify their identities, and report them to the authorities when the algorithm decides that is warranted.

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‘Digital ID Checks For All’: Ofcom’s Plan For UK’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Puts Adults In The Age-Check Line Too

Privacy campaigners have argued for months that this is where an age ban ends up. In March, Big Brother Watch titled a post “A social media ban for under-16s = digital ID checks for all” and argued that because the alternatives are intrusive and unreliable, ID would be required in many millions of cases. “All of the online age verification options are highly invasive and the biometric and behavioural profiling options are highly inaccurate, meaning IDs will be required in many millions of cases regardless,” the group wrote.

Britain’s communications regulator now points the same way. Ofcom’s rapid assessment, published Oct. 29, says the face scans social media platforms use to estimate ages are too imprecise to police the government’s coming ban for under-16s on their own, and that a second check, often photo ID, will have to back them up. And the checks won’t stop at teenagers: many adults with existing accounts will be asked to prove their age as well.

Ofcom named four methods it considers capable of being highly effective at 16, Digit reported: photo ID matching, banking information, digital identity services and facial age estimation. Photo ID matching compares the photo on a passport or driving licence with a live image of the user. A bank check uses age data the bank holds, with the user’s consent. A digital ID service lets a person prove their age once with photo ID and reuse it.

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COVID-Dissident Doctor Arrested For “Insulting” Berlin Mayor

A German doctor who rose to prominence during the Covid period for his criticism of the Covid-response measures has been arrested in Berlin in connection with “insults” of Berlin’s outgoing Mayor Kai Wegner. Paul Brandenburg, who has several social media channels and a podcast, has previously been the target of numerous other German speech-crime investigations and charges. Although a native Berliner, he presently lives in Switzerland. He was arrested at Berlin’s Willy Brandt airport last Wednesday in the company of his 10 year-old child. According to his lawyer Markus Haintz, he was travelling with the child, who still lives in Berlin.

“Insults” are a crime under Section 185 of the German Criminal Code. Under Section 188 of the Criminal Code, Germany’s so-called lèse-majesté law, public officials like Wegner enjoy heightened protection against “insults” as well as against “malicious gossip” and defamation, which is treated as a crime not a tort.

According to Haintz, Brandenburg is being investigated in connection with four charges of simple “insults” of Wegner and two charges of defamation under the lèse-majesté law.

Although German speech crime charges rarely result in arrests, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office told the German alternative media outlet Apollo News that Brandenburg was arrested because he represented a “flight risk”. In addition, the prosecutor’s office noted that defamation under the lèse-majesté law carries a minimum sentence of six months in prison. It also referred to prior convictions. Brandenburg is reported to have ignored prior fines.

All of Brandenburg’s alleged “insults” of Wegner allude in one way or another to the Berlin government’s association with the Berlin-based drag queen and trans-activist who goes by the stage-name Jurassica Parka. Parka’s real name is Mario Olszinski. In September, Olszinski was convicted of the possession of child pornography by the Berlin Regional Court and sentenced to 10 months in prison with probation. He had already been convicted of distributing “child pornographic writings” in 2023.

The investigation that led to Olszinski’s latest conviction was opened following receipt of a tip on Olszinski’s online activities from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. According to numerous reports in the German press, the investigation was opened in May 2025. Nonetheless, two months later, on July 14th, none other than ‘Jurassica Parka’ hosted a gala sponsored by none other than the Berlin police! Olszinski’s home was raided by the police that very month, according to some reports before and other reports after the gala.

Be that as it may, the gala was dedicated to raising money for alleged queer victims of ‘hate crimes’, which in Germany may also include ‘hate speech’. The event was titled Gemeinsambunt, which roughly translates as ‘Diversely Together’. The official patron of the event was Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik. Deputy police chief Marco Langner posed with Olszinski. Olszinski wore a miniskirt; Langner a Scottish kilt.

According to Apollo News, Wegner was also present. Wegner is, incidentally, a member of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. One year earlier, according to Apollo News, ‘Jurassica Parka’ hosted another event sponsored by the Berlin government. This one was titled “Queens and Flowers” and included a “Drag-Queen Reading Hour” for children.

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Flock License Plate Camera Density by State, Ranked

A Reclaim The Net analysis of the locations of Flock Safety license plate readers, mapped by volunteers, shows that there is one of these devices for every 1,200 people in Georgia.

This is the highest density in the US, more than double the national rate, and higher than any other state.

The numbers are based on 116,548 Flock cameras mapped across the country, and the US Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimates of the population. At the other end of the scale, New Hampshire has 19 mapped cameras, or 1.3 per 100,000 people.

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Carney takes a swipe at Musk and Starlink, while his government writes seven speech and surveillance bills

In an interview with POLITICO in Montreal on Thursday, following the Canada-EU summit, Carney said: “If you’re connected to a satellite system that a billionaire, almost trillionaire, decides to turn off at one moment or not, that’s not a good idea either.” He did not name Elon Musk or Starlink. The interviewer raised Musk, Starlink and Ukraine, and Carney answered, “Yeah.” He added that Canada would never tie its defences to Musk’s system, “nor would we, given the track record.” POLITICO called the remark the “subtweet of the day.”

The track record includes Musk switching Starlink on for Ukraine in the first days of the war, when Russian missiles were knocking out other communications and the Ukrainian army risked fighting blind. The remark appeared aimed at the Liberal base and at Democrats in Washington who have made Musk a political villain. Had Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre sneered at a named businessman in the same terms, the CBC reaction would likely have been far harsher.

Carney’s broader point, that one powerful actor able to cut people off is dangerous, is a fair one. It also describes his own legislative agenda. At least seven government bills either govern what Canadians can say online or expand state surveillance. Four deal with speech and three with surveillance, and some are already law.

Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, received royal assent June 18 and took effect July 18. It creates new offences for displaying certain symbols, adds a stand-alone hate crime offence, writes a legal definition of “hatred” into the Criminal Code and repeals the defence for people expressing, in good faith, an opinion on a religious subject or text. The Department of Justice states that “the law repeals this specific defence,” while maintaining the change does not criminalize religious expression. The government has not explained why a defence it says changes nothing needed to go.

Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, was introduced June 10 and remains before Parliament. It would create a Digital Safety Commission of Canada with three to five cabinet-appointed commissioners empowered to issue orders, investigate, inspect and fine. The government’s fact sheet sets penalties of up to three per cent of global gross revenue or $10 million, whichever is higher, a scale that would fall hardest on the largest platforms, including Musk’s X. Alongside material that is already illegal, such as child abuse imagery and intimate images shared without consent, platforms would have to police “content that foments hatred,” a standard interpreted by commissioners the Liberal cabinet appoints. The framework closely resembles Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms Act under a new name.

Bill C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act, received royal assent June 18. It makes it a crime to knowingly spread false or misleading information about elections or voting with intent to disrupt an election or affect its results, and bans deepfakes of candidates and election officials made to mislead. Opinion and satire are exempt, but officials working for a government that is itself on the ballot will decide what was false, what a speaker knew and what he intended. The government says the rules now reach activity outside Canada, an odd position for a Prime Minister troubled by one man’s satellites crossing borders.

Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, became law the same day. Most of it targets child predators and sextortion, but it also rewrites criminal harassment. According to the Department of Justice, the prosecutor once had to show the victim feared for their safety. Now it is enough that “a reasonable person in the victim’s circumstances would fear for their safety,” including through “modern technology.” Rebel News reporters have been labelled harassers by Liberal politicians for asking questions in public, and the lower bar gives that label new legal weight.

Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, passed the House of Commons in June and is now before the Senate. It lets police demand information on “reasonable grounds to suspect,” allows the public safety minister to order providers to build in technical access for police, which critics call a backdoor, and permits metadata to be kept for up to six months.

Bill C-8, the cyber security act, received royal assent June 15. It lets the minister and cabinet issue orders to telecom companies, with secrecy orders attached, including cutting off service to an individual where “strictly necessary.” Conservative amendments on the public safety committee requiring prior judicial authorization passed, but the Speaker ruled them out of order and they were removed, so judges review such orders only after the fact.

Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, was among Carney’s first major bills and drew enough backlash over its surveillance powers that the Liberals split it. The border measures moved into Bill C-12 and passed, while C-2 stalled. Its lawful access powers returned as C-22.

Musk cannot jail anyone, levy fines worth three per cent of global revenue, secretly order a phone company to cut off a customer or strip a religious defence from a hate speech trial. The Government of Canada can now do, or soon will be able to do, each of those things. Carney’s remark leaves open who in this country really has a finger on the off switch: the billionaire with the satellites, or the Prime Minister who spent the past year writing the laws to use one.

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Explosive New Evidence Challenges Connecticut’s Supermajority Attack on Homeschoolers.

A lethal cocktail of two adult-strength psychiatric drug medications and an over-the-counter allergy medicine caused 12-year-old Eve Rogers to drown in behavioral health and drug company products, exploding the state’s calculated narrative against homeschoolers to pass overreaching state mandates.

The medical examiner’s staggering toxicology report revealed a lethal level of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) alongside toxic amounts of the prescription antidepressants Prozac (fluoxetine) and Wellbutrin (bupropion). Armed with these chemical findings, Enfield police arrested the girl’s mother, 39-year-old Melanie Federline, on October 30, 2026, charging her with risk of injury to a minor following the lethal exposure and a pattern of reckless medical neglect.

Twelve-year-old Eve Rogers did not just die; she literally drowned in a cocktail of psychiatric drugs and heavy over-the-counter sedation. This case has become historically critical because state lawmakers immediately weaponized Eve’s death to force sweeping, highly restrictive regulations onto the entire Connecticut homeschooling community.

AbleChild worked directly with prominent homeschool defense attorney, Deborah Stevenson, to alert the Country to the brutal political battle homeschoolers are fighting in Connecticut. Explosive new information coming forward following the arrest of her mother has blown apart the supermajority legislators’ narrative against homeschoolers.

According to the latest evidence, the treating psychiatrist has still not been identified, the mental health records of both the mother and child have been withheld from the public, as well as what role state agencies played with the family prior to the death of Eve. This complete lack of transparency makes it impossible to hold the treating medical professionals or the state accountable for their severe lack of clinical oversight, unless all the treatment records are released along with the name of the psychiatrist(s) or doctor(s) involved.

According to the state medical examiner’s finalized toxicology report published by the Hartford Courant, Eve was killed by acute multi-drug intoxication. Detectives discovered she had an astounding 23,000 nanograms per milliliter of the over-the-counter antihistamine diphenhydramine in her system, more than five times the lethal threshold for a child.

But it is the remainder of the lab work that has elevated this investigation into a criminal homicide track: lethal levels of Prozac and Wellbutrin were also found.  These powerful psychiatric drugs were never prescribed to Eve, but it appears other psychiatric drugs were, and Eve was currently being evaluated by an “expert”; the name of that “expert” and behavioral health company is being withheld.  Why?  When was the last time Eve’s blood work was done prior to her death?

The state has officially ruled her death an intoxication with “undetermined intent,” leaving investigators to parse whether the child swallowed the lethal cocktail voluntarily, accidentally, or if it was forced down her throat.

What is certain is that the medications a doctor did prescribe to manage her autism, pending bipolar evaluation, and severe Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a debilitating chronic cardiovascular condition that causes a rapid heart rate, lightheadedness, and fainting upon standing, sat completely untouched in a weekly pill organizer.  What were those drugs? Were therapeutic levels tested?

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French Mayor Calls for Discussing ‘Great Replacement’ to Become a Crime

A leading leftist mayor in France has called on the government to outlaw public debate of the “Great Replacement”, thereby potentially turning large sections of the native population into thought criminals.

The Moroccan-heritage mayor of the multicultural Paris suburb of Trappes, Ali Rabeh, accused the so-called “far-right” of being responsible for the shooting which occurred in his city earlier this month, claiming that discussions surrounding the “Great Replacement” had radicalised the suspected shooter, who killed one and injured five others in an alleged retaliation against ethnic and religious minorities for the previous month of riots and looting.

Appearing on France Inter on Friday, Mayor Rabeh said, according to Le Journal du Dimanche, that the 1881 law on press freedom could be amended to include penalties for “those who have presented a group of people, because of their origin, their belonging to a religion, an ethnicity or a so-called race as actors in a replacement process.”

“I think the law needs to be toughened,” he said, claiming that the “provisions preventing incitement to racial hatred” are “insufficient.”

The term was originally coined by French philosopher Renaud Camus, who argued that elites in Western societies viewed their citizens as interchangeable economic units that could be replaced by cheaper migrant labour with little consequence.

Mayor Rabeh specifically pointed to presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, complaining that despite having been convicted for inciting racial hatred, he is “still invited to almost every talk show to spew his hatred and venom without being threatened with anything other than a fine, which for him is insignificant.”

Zemmour, a leading proponent of re-migration in the country, responded: “The Gulag is on the march. Here is the project of their socialist-Islamic Republic.”

The proposal was also criticised by National Rally president Jordan Bardella — the current favourite to become the next prime minister of France — who remarked that the move would “criminalise the feelings of at least 60 per cent of the French, who observe a ‘profound demographic transformation.’ Unless it’s to celebrate it, of course.”

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Ofcom lists four age checks many adults may face to stay on social media

Ofcom, the United Kingdom’s communications regulator, on October 29 named four age-check methods it considers “highly effective” at proving a user is 16 or older. Ministers asked for the assessment to inform the regulations for their ban on under-16s using social media.

The four are photo ID matching, bank-based checks, digital ID services and facial age estimation, which The Register reports must be paired with a second check. Credit card, mobile operator and email checks, which Ofcom says work for confirming someone is 18 but not 16, did not make the list. A passport or driving licence is one route; the bank, digital ID and face checks are the others.

The practical effect falls on many adults, not only children, because a platform cannot know who is under 16 without checking. The Register reports that some adults may be spared where a platform can infer their age from past activity.

Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, said the ban “can work if social media firms do highly effective age checks properly.” According to The Register’s report of the assessment, Ofcom concedes that “the risk of circumvention cannot be entirely eliminated.”

Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties group, answered the same day. Its director, Silkie Carlo, called the plan “a national ID system by the back door” and “an Orwellian assault on free speech and privacy,” and called instead for “parental controls that genuinely protect children.”

The ban rests on a new section 214A of the Online Safety Act 2023, inserted by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. Ministers intend to lay the regulations before the end of this year, and the ban is expected to start around spring 2027. The assessment was requested in June by the Technology Secretary, Liz Kendall.

Dawes is a career civil servant whom the Ofcom board appointed chief executive in February 2020.

Canada is on the same road. The Safe Social Media Act, Bill C-34, which would set a similar limit for children 16 and under, is at second reading in the House of Commons.

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Incremental Socialism

Imagine you own an apartment building and need to sell it. The mortgage comes due, insurance premiums keep climbing, repairs cannot wait, and you have found a willing buyer. You have negotiated a price and are ready to close. Then New York City tells you to wait.

Your financial obligations do not wait. Your buyer may not wait. But under New York City’s Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, known as COPA, the government can insert a lengthy process between you and the sale of your own property. What should be a private transaction becomes subject to a timetable designed to give selected organizations an opportunity to purchase the building first.

This is the kind of incremental change worth examining. Socialism does not always announce its arrival with bullets and revolution. Sometimes it arrives as a statute that sounds reasonable, addresses a genuine concern, and changes the rules one transaction at a time.

On October 22, the New York City Council passed COPA by a vote of 38 to 9, with two members abstaining. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has championed the measure. The revised bill is narrower than earlier proposals and is expected to cover roughly 2,100 multifamily buildings meeting specified conditions involving serious housing violations, city enforcement programs, or affordability restrictions. Qualifying owner-occupied buildings with five or fewer units are exempt. The law is scheduled to take effect one year after enactment.

Under COPA, owners of covered properties are mandated by to inform the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development when they intend to sell. Qualified nonprofit organizations have 20 days to express interest and another 70 days to submit an initial offer. Additional procedures can give a qualified organization the right to match an outside buyer’s offer. A legal analysis by Cullen and Dykman estimates that the process can delay a transaction by approximately 130 days when the applicable stages are triggered. The final timetable depends on the transaction and the rights exercised. Owners may apply for an exemption based on undue financial hardship, but that exception does not eliminate the underlying process.

For an owner facing mounting expenses, those delays are not abstractions. Mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs continue regardless of what the city requires. A willing buyer may move on. A deal that could have helped an owner meet financial obligations may disappear while the government process runs its course. Ann Korchak, president of Small Property Owners of New York, has warned that COPA could contribute to the extinction of small property owners. Her concern deserves attention. A policy intended to preserve affordable housing can impose new costs and risks on the people responsible for maintaining the buildings in the first place.

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Cop Who Killed One Year Old Resigns As Body Camera Footage Released, Won’t Be Charged

Late last week, more information surfaced regarding the killing of one year old Kohen Wiley in the parking lot of a Walmart in Mississippi by Senatobia police.

As The Free Thought Project has previously reported, on June 14th of this year, in the parking lot of a Walmart in Tate County, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee at approximately 2:00 PM officers of the Senatobia Police Department and Tate County Sheriff’s Department responded to a call of a potential shoplifter. Reports allege the officers witnessed two women, identified as Vellesiya Wiley, and Latoya Ferrell, carrying a package of diapers and one year old Kohen Wiley to their vehicle, and the officers gave pursuit.

In the insuing chaos shots rang out. In the aftermath, Ferrell was critically injured, shot in the arm and the thigh. One year old Kohen lay dead in his mother’s arms.

Following the shooting, a statement from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation alleged that as the vehicle fled the scene it swerved towards officers, prompting them to discharge their weapon. A claim which until recently had remained unverified. Now video evidence of the altercation in the form of body camera footage has been leaked to the public to show the truth.

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