Tag: police state

The UK passes massive online safety bill

The UK’s Online Safety Bill is ready to become law. The bill, which aims to make the UK “the safest place in the world to be online,” passed through the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday and imposes strict requirements on large social platforms to remove illegal content. It will be enforced by UK telecom regulatory agency Ofcom.

Additionally, the Online Safety Bill mandates new age-checking measures to prevent underage children from seeing harmful content. It also pushes large social media platforms to become more transparent about the dangers they pose to children, while also giving parents and kids the ability to report issues online. Potential penalties are also harsh: up to 10 percent of a company’s global annual revenue. The bill has been reworked several times in a multiyear journey through Parliament.

But not only does online age verification raise serious privacy concerns — the bill could also put encrypted messaging services, like WhatsApp, at risk. Under the terms of the bill, encrypted messaging apps would be obligated to check users’ messages for child sexual abuse material.

Depending on how the rule is enforced, this could essentially break apps’ end-to-end encryption promise, which prevents third parties — including the app itself — from viewing users’ messages. In March, WhatsApp refused to comply with the bill and threatened to leave the UK rather than change its encryption policies. It joined Signal and other encrypted messaging services in protesting the bill, leading UK regulators to attempt to assuage their concerns by promising to only require “technically feasible” measures.

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FBI lost count of how many paid informants were at Capitol on Jan. 6, and later performed audit to figure out exact number: ex-official

The FBI had so many paid informants at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that it lost track of the number and had to perform a later audit to determine exactly how many “Confidential Human Sources” run by different FBI field offices were present that day, a former assistant director of the bureau has told lawmakers.

At least one informant was communicating with his FBI handler as he entered the Capitol, according to Steven D’Antuono, formerly in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office.

D’Antuono has testified behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee that his office was aware before the riot that some of their informants would attend a “Stop the Steal” rally thrown by former President Donald Trump, but he only learned after the fact that informants run by other field offices also were present, along with others who had participated of their own accord.

The Washington field office had to ask FBI headquarters “to do a poll or put out something to people saying w[ere] any CHSs involved,” he said, so they could get a handle on the scale of the FBI’s spying operations at the Capitol that day.

“We started getting responses back” from FBI headquarters, added D’Antuono, which helped identify which field offices had planted confidential informants in the crowd. 

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Video shows high school band director shocked with stun gun, arrested after refusing to stop music

Police body camera video shows an Alabama high school band director being shocked with a stun gun and arrested by officers in front of screaming students, in a chaotic scuffle that broke out after he refused to immediately stop the band as it played in the bleachers following a football game.

State Rep. Juandalynn Givan, who is representing band director Johnny Mims as his attorney, said Tuesday that the incident is an “alarming abuse of power” that instead “should have been should have been deescalated.”

The Birmingham Police Department said it remains under investigation but the band director resisted arrest and allegedly pushed an officer.

The altercation erupted after the game last Thursday between Minor and Jackson-Olin high schools.

In the body camera video released by police Monday night, officers are seen approaching Mims, the band director at Minor, as the band plays in the stands. They ask him several times to stop the band and clear the stadium. Mims continues to direct the band and replies to the officer, “Get out of my face.”

“We’re fixing to go,” he continues. “This is their last song.”

As the music continues, an officer tells Mims he will go to jail. and another says she will contact the school. Mims flashes two thumbs up and says, “That’s cool.”

“Put him in handcuffs,” an officer is later heard saying.

The video shows that the band played for about two minutes after officers approached Mims.

After the music stops, officers are seen on the video apparently trying to arrest him, in a scrum of bodies. One says Mims swung at an officer and must go to jail, and Mims denies doing so. An officer then shocks Mims with a stun gun.

Students — more than 140 were present, according to Givan — are heard screaming in the night as the arrest plays out.

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What Could Go Wrong When Governments Take Control of Food? We’re About to Find Out.

In another episode of “Have We Learned Nothing from History?” two governments in the past couple of days have decided to take the high prices of food into their own hands.

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, wants to heap more taxes on grocery stores to punish them for high prices. And Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, has proposed city-owned grocery stores.

Some other times the government has taken control of the food supply

Historically, it’s the beginning of the end for people when the government begins to interfere with food pricing, production, and distribution. Just look at some of the rules that were established in Venezuela that led to widespread hunger.  The government took control of food production facilities. They began forcing farmers to produce food for less than the cost of growing or raising it. They rationed food to families. They even began to track people who were growing their own food. In short, every terrible decision it was possible to make, they made. And the people suffered for it.

There’s an article by a friend of mine, Scott Terry, that I always cite when talking about the collectivization of food. He wrote a concerning history of this troubling phenomenon right here in America and it’s well worth a read. His article is specifically about agriculture but the same principles hold true of other governmental controls on food.

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Opponents of Measure 114 gun laws say case is about “individual rights” in trial opening

In opening statements Monday, lawyers for two people suing over Oregon’s new gun laws said Ballot Measure 114′s provisions are the “most significant threat to [the right to bear arms] Oregonians have faced in nearly 165 years.”

“This case is not about public health, public safety or public concern,” plaintiffs’ attorney Tony Aiello told Judge Robert Rascio. “This is about individual rights. This is about the individual right to self defense and the right to bear arms to secure that right.”

Aiello said plaintiffs in the state trial plan to show that Measure 114, approved by voters last year, effectively limits Oregonians to owning only antique firearms. He said Measure 114 regulates firearms that were plentiful prior to 1859, the year Article I, Section 27 of the Oregon constitution — the section protecting the right to bear arms — was ratified.

The new laws would ban high capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, require a completed background check to buy or transfer a firearm and require a person to take training and receive a permit to purchase a firearm. Raschio, an Oregon Circuit Court judge based in Harney County, blocked the new laws from taking effect in December pending this week’s trial.

In their opening statement, lawyers defending the new rules for the Oregon Department of Justice said the court must determine if large capacity magazines are considered “arms” under the state constitution, and thus protected, a question they said had already been resolved by the Oregon State Court of Appeals.

“The Court of Appeals rejected the idea that semiautomatic firearms are protected arms,” attorney Anit Jindal said. “Indeed, evidence at trial will confirm that large capacity magazines were not commonly used for self defense in 1859.”

In his opening statement in defense of Measure 114, Jindal said the new restrictions are a reasonable public safety response to the risk posed by large capacity magazines. They plan to call witnesses who will show how those magazines allow shooters to continue firing without reloading and have increased the lethality of mass shootings.

“Taken together, the testimony of defendant’s experts will demonstrate to the court, that large capacity magazines increase the number of firearms homicides and the frequency and fatality of mass shootings,” Jindal said.

He added that they will also show that large capacity magazines are rarely used in self defense, that the permit-to-purchase system is a reasonable public safety measure and that time restrictions in that requirement are consistent with the history of the right to bear arms.

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Probe launched after video shows Ohio cops threaten to arrest 11-year-old grooming victim

Two police officer in Ohio are under scrutiny after a viral video of them responding to a call about a minor being groomed shows them blaming the child, The New York Post reported.

The video shows two Columbus police officers on a porch talking to the father of an 11-year-old girl — six hours after he called them to report that a man had coerced his daughter to send pictures of herself.

The female officer can be heard telling the father that his daughter “could probably get charged with child porn.”

“Who? She can? She’s 11 years old,” he responds.

“She’s creating it, right?” the officer says.

“She’s 11 years old,” the father says in disbelief.

“Doesn’t matter. She’s still making porn,” the female officer replies.

“No. She’s being manipulated by a grown adult on the internet,” the father counters.

“Is she taking pictures, though?” she asks.

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Pro-life activists convicted of ‘felony conspiracy’ for protesting in front of abortion clinics, face 11 years in prison

A federal jury today found three defendants guilty of a two-count indictment charging them with federal civil rights offenses after an occurrence on October 22, 2020 at an abortion clinic in Washington, DC. 

The news came from a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release, with an announcement from US Attorney Matthew M. Graves, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, and Assistant Director David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office.

Due to convictions of a felony conspiracy against rights as well as a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), defendants Jonathan Darnel, 41, of Arlington, Virginia, Jean Marshall, 73, of Kingston, Massachusetts, and Joan Bell, 74, of Montague, New Jersey all face up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine that could go as high as $350,000.

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He told on ‘badge bending’ and was fired. Now, former Vallejo cop will get nearly $1 million

A former police captain who alleges in a lawsuit that he was fired for whistleblowing on his colleagues and exposing corruption within the Vallejo Police Department will receive nearly $1 million in a settlement with the city.

John Whitney and his attorney, Jayme Walker, agreed to the settlement last week, in which the city will be required to pay Whitney $900,000 as well as all costs, liens and attorney fees.

“I feel vindicated by the settlement agreement because of the amount,” Whitney told The Times in an interview Monday. “You don’t settle for nearly $1 million if you did everything correct.”

Whitney alleges in a lawsuit filed against the city and his former employers in 2020 that he was fired after he told Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, Mayor Bob Sampayan and then-City Atty. Claudia Quintana that members of the Police Department were bending the corners of their badges to commemorate every time an officer killed a civilian.

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A Nation of Snitches: DHS Is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

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JPMorgan CEO suggests government seize private property to quicken climate initiatives

In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon suggested that the U.S. government and climate conscious corporations may have to seize citizen’s private property to enact climate initiatives while there still time to stave off climate disasters.

Dimon declared Tuesday that “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” may need to invoke “eminent domain” in order to get the “adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”

“Eminent domain” is a legal term that describes the government using its power to expropriate private property for public use, provided the government provides private owners proper compensation.

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