Tag: police state

Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks To Search Customers’ ‘Religious Texts’ Purchases

Faith leaders and religious liberty advocates are up in arms over news that the federal government encouraged banks and other financial institutions to search customers’ private accounts using the search term “religious texts.”

The “religious texts” search term was among those federal officials asked financial institutions to use following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, a congressional source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Epoch Times on Jan. 18.

Other terms that banks, credit card companies, and financial firms were asked to use in the searches included “MAGA” and “Trump,” according to the House Judiciary Committee. Federal officials at the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department sought the data from such searches as part of their investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Religious liberty advocates interviewed by The Epoch Times were unanimous in condemning the searches, which were conducted without judicially authorized search warrants.

“This is beyond alarming,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times. “If we did a word search in history of the type of activities the Biden administration is engaged in, it would return words like ‘KGB,’ ’totalitarian,‘ ’repressive,’ ‘anti-democratic,’ and ‘grave threat to freedom.’”

Family Research Council is a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of traditional values, including and especially defense of the family and religious freedom.

“The last place you would anticipate this kind of government intrusion into freedom of speech is America and yet it is rife with this administration and with the ‘deep state,’” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times.

“It is a very serious concern and it should be a serious concern, no matter your political beliefs because if this is permitted, then it just depends on who is in power. This is what despotic governments do to suppress people that they don’t agree with,” he said.

Mr. Staver’s organization, Liberty Counsel, is an Orlando, Florida-based nonprofit religious liberty defense foundation.

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Miami Police Used Clearview AI Facial Recognition in Arrest of Homeless Man

Facial recognition technology is increasingly being deployed by police officers across the country, but the scope of its use has been hard to pin down.

In Miami, it’s used for cases big and exceedingly small, as one case Reason recently reviewed showed: Miami police used facial recognition technology to identify a homeless man who refused to give his name to an officer. That man was arrested, but prosecutors quickly dropped the case after determining the officer lacked probable cause for the arrest. 

The case was barely a blip in the daily churn of Miami’s criminal justice system, but it shows the spread of facial recognition technology and the use of retaliatory charges against those who annoy the police.

Lisa Femia, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which advocates for digital privacy rights, calls the case “a particularly egregious example of mission creep with facial recognition technology.”

“It’s often advertised as a way for law enforcement to solve the worst of the worst crimes,” Femia says. “And instead we have law enforcement here using it to harass the homeless.”

According to a police incident report, a man, who Reason is not identifying because he was ultimately not prosecuted, was sleeping on a bench in a parking garage at Miami International Airport on the morning of November 13, 2023, when he was approached by a Miami-Dade County police officer.

“While on routine patrol at the Miami International Airport I observed defendant sleeping on a bench in the Dolphin garage, covered with a blanket and unbagged personal items on airport luggage cart,” the officer wrote in his report. “The bench is provided for passengers waiting for vehicles to and from the airport. It is not designated for housing.”

The report notes that Miami-Dade police have been directed to address homelessness at the airport and that the officer initiated contact to see if the man had been previously issued a trespass warning.

The man didn’t have an ID, and he gave the officer a fake name and 2010 date of birth.

“Defendant was obviously not a 13-year-old juvenile,” the report says. “I provided defendant several opportunities to provide correct information and he refused.”

Under Florida law, police can demand identification from a pedestrian only when there is reasonable suspicion that they have committed a crime. For example, two Florida sheriff’s deputies were disciplined in 2022 after they arrested a legally blind man for refusing to show his ID.

This officer had other means at his disposal, though. “I identified defendant via facial recognition from Clearview, with assistance from C. Perez, analyst at the MDPD real time crime center,” the report says.

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Ohio Governor Pushes Lawmakers To Ban Or Limit Delta-8 THC Products

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) wants the state to either ban or regulate delta-8 THC products.

But since there’s nothing he can do administratively, he is urging lawmakers to do something in regards to intoxicating hemp products like delta-8.

“I would be very happy to have a ban,” DeWine said during a press conference, holding up packages of delta-8—one resembling Frosted Flakes, another looking like Cocoa Puffs and a third that looks like Trolli candy.

“It’s up to the legislature. If it is moved basically under the marijuana protocol, you wouldn’t see packaging like that…and I would be satisfied with that.”

Seventeen states have banned delta-8 and seven more have restrictions around it, according to the National Cannabis Industry Association.

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FAMILIES OF PEOPLE KILLED BY NYPD BRACE FOR ERIC ADAMS TO VETO CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM BILLS

A SMALL GROUP OF organizers rallied outside of New York City Hall on Wednesday to call on Mayor Eric Adams not to veto a series of bills that would ban the use of solitary confinement in city jails and increase oversight over police stops and searches. 

The push by grassroots reform groups to ban solitary confinement comes in response to a surge in recent years of deaths in city jails, including several cases of people who had been detained in solitary confinement. Families of people killed as a result of stops by New York Police Department officers have also urgedOpens in a new tab the mayor to sign the policing measures into law. 

Advocates and officials working on the reforms expect Adams, who has publicly opposedOpens in a new tab the bills, to vetoOpens in a new tab at least two of the measures this week. He has until Friday to do so, or the measures will pass into law. 

The battle pits a pro-police mayor, an NYPD veteran himself, against a progressive City Council, which approvedOpens in a new tab the three billsOpens in a new tab last month by large marginsOpens in a new tab during its last meetingOpens in a new tab of 2023. The fight is the latest in a well-trod pattern of centrist Democrats or Republicans fighting back against popular and democratically enacted welfare reforms. In New York, City Council leaders and members said they have the votes to override the mayor’s veto.

“We are prepared to override the mayor’s veto,” council member Crystal Hudson, who sponsored a bill to strengthen laws around consenting to a search, told The Intercept. “The City Council is the city’s legislative body. The body has spoken.” The council would have 30 days from a mayoral veto to issue an override. 

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Missouri Courts Ask For $3.7 Million To Continue Expunging Past Marijuana Convictions

Missouri circuit courts have cleared more than 100,000 marijuana charges from people’s criminal records so far—a mandate that was a big selling point for those who voted to pass the constitutional amendment that legalized recreational marijuana in 2022.

However, court officials say it’s hard to determine how many more charges are left because many court records are not digitized.

Missouri court officials are set to request another $3.7 million to complete marijuana expungements in the coming budget year, making their case Wednesday to a House appropriations committee.

By law, any revenue the state collects from taxes on recreational marijuana sales, along with fees the businesses pay, must first go towards the state’s costs of regulating the program. Then it goes to expenses incurred by the court system for expunging certain marijuana offenses from people’s criminal records.

Last year lawmakers signed off on $4.5 million for state courts to pay their employees overtime or to hire temp workers to complete the massive number of expungements required by law. They approved an additional $2.5 million in a supplemental budget on May 5.

Circuit courts must request funds to reimburse their expenses for completing expungements from the Circuit Court Budget Committee, which oversees the special assistance program.

So far, the committee has given $4.2 million to the county courts, said Beth Riggert, communications counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court. And the committee has allocated the funds to any circuit court that has requested it, she said.

“Some circuit courts have advised they have not requested special assistance funds because they did not have current court clerks willing or able to work overtime,” Riggert said, “and/or have been unable to find qualified individuals to provide special assistance because the analysis required is complicated and better done by experienced personnel, such as retired clerks.”

As of January 2, Missouri courts have granted 103,558 expungements. Out of all the counties, Greene County has received the most funding, nearly $940,000, and has completed the most expungements at 4,306.

After Greene, the counties that have completed the most expungements are not necessarily the largest counties or the ones that have received the most money.

The second highest number is 3,515 from Laclede County, which has a population of 36,000. The county has received a little more than $35,000 from the special assistance program.

In third place is St. Louis County, the state’s largest county with more than a million people, where court officials have processed 3,479 expungements. The county has received just over $135,000. The court has reviewed 11,300 files, a spokesman for the 21st Circuit Court said.

Franklin County, which has a population of 104,000, is fourth, completing 3,200 expungements and receiving about $53,000. Franklin is just ahead of Jackson County, which has a population of 717,000. Jackson has completed 2,900 and received nearly $195,000.

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Sharing deepfake porn could lead to lengthy prison time under proposed law

The US seems to be getting serious about criminalizing deepfake pornography after teen boys at a New Jersey high school used AI image generators to create and share non-consensual fake nude images of female classmates last October.

On Tuesday, Rep. Joseph Morelle (D-NY) announced that he has re-introduced the “Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act,” which seeks to “prohibit the non-consensual disclosure of digitally altered intimate images.” Under the proposed law, anyone sharing deepfake pornography without an individual’s consent risks damages that could go as high as $150,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years if sharing the images facilitates violence or impacts the proceedings of a government agency.

The hope is that steep penalties will deter companies and individuals from allowing the disturbing images to be spread. It creates a criminal offense for sharing deepfake pornography “with the intent to harass, annoy, threaten, alarm, or cause substantial harm to the finances or reputation of the depicted individual” or with “reckless disregard” or “actual knowledge” that images will harm the individual depicted. It also provides a path for victims to sue offenders in civil court.

Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ), who co-sponsored the bill, said that “proper guardrails and transparency are essential for fostering a sense of responsibility among AI companies and individuals using AI.”

“Try to imagine the horror of receiving intimate images looking exactly like you—or your daughter, or your wife, or your sister—and you can’t prove it’s not,” Morelle said. “Deepfake pornography is sexual exploitation, it’s abusive, and I’m astounded it is not already a federal crime.”

Joining Morelle in pushing to criminalize deepfake pornography was Dorota and Francesca Mani, who have spent the past two months meeting with lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The mother and daughter experienced the horror Morelle described firsthand when the New Jersey high school confirmed that 14-year-old Francesca was among the students targeted last year.

“What happened to me and my classmates was not cool, and there’s no way I’m just going to shrug and let it slide,” Francesca said. “I’m here, standing up and shouting for change, fighting for laws, so no one else has to feel as lost and powerless as I did on October 20th.”

Morelle’s office told Ars that “advocacy from partners like the Mani family” is “critical to bringing attention to this issue” and getting the proposed law “to the floor for a vote.”

Morelle introduced the law in December 2022, but it failed to pass that year or in 2023. He’s re-introducing the law in 2024 after seemingly gaining more support during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing on “Advances in Deepfake Technology” last November.

At that hearing, many lawmakers warned of the dangers of AI-generated deepfakes, citing a study from the Dutch AI company Sensity, which found that 96 percent of deepfakes online are deepfake porn—the majority of which targets women.

But lawmakers also made clear that it’s currently hard to detect AI-generated images and distinguish them from real images.

According to a hearing transcript posted by the nonprofit news organization Tech Policy Press, David Doermann—currently interim chair of the University at Buffalo’s computer science and engineering department and former program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—told lawmakers that DARPA was already working on advanced deepfake detection tools but still had more work to do.

To support laws like Morelle’s, lawmakers have called for more funding for DARPA and the National Science Foundation to aid in ongoing efforts to create effective detection tools. At the same time, President Joe Biden—through a sweeping AI executive order—has pushed for solutions like watermarking deepfakes. Biden’s executive order also instructed the Department of Commerce to establish “standards and best practices for detecting AI-generated content and authenticating official content.”

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AI Fraud Act Could Outlaw Parodies, Political Cartoons, and More

Mixing new technology and new laws is always a fraught business, especially if the tech in question relates to communication. Lawmakers routinely propose bills that would sweep up all sorts of First Amendment-protected speech. We’ve seen a lot of this with social media, and we’re starting to see it with artificial intelligence. Case in point: the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications (No AI FRAUD) Act. Under the auspices of protecting “Americans’ individual right to their likeness and voice,” the bill would restrict a range of content wide enough to ensnare parody videos, comedic impressions, political cartoons, and much more.

The bill’s sponsors, Reps. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) and Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), say they’re concerned about “AI-generated fakes and forgeries,” per a press release. They aim to protect people from unauthorized use of their own images and voices by defining these things as the intellectual property of each individual.

The No AI Fraud Act cites several instances of AI being used to make it appear that celebrities created ads or art that they did not actually create. For instance, “AI technology was used to create the song titled ‘Heart on My Sleeve,’ emulating the voices of recording artists Drake and The Weeknd,” states the bill’s text. AI technology was also used “to create a false endorsement featuring Tom Hanks’ face in an advertisement for a dental plan.”

But while the examples in the bill are directly related to AI, the bill’s actual reach is much more expansive, targeting a wide swath of “digital depictions” or “digital voice replicas.”

Salazar and Dean say the bill balances people’s “right to control the use of their identifying characteristics” with “First Amendment protections to safeguard speech and innovation.” But while the measure does nod to free speech rights, it also expands the types of speech deemed legally acceptable to restrict. It could mean way more legal hassles for creators and platforms interested in exercising their First Amendment rights, and result in a chilling effect on certain sorts of comedy, commentary, and artistic expression.

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Parole denied for 68-year-old in Alabama: ‘A life sentence for growing marijuana’

Leon Hotchkiss, now 68, remains behind bars in Alabama, spending decades imprisoned for growing pot.

Authorities seized about five and half pounds of the plant on his property in Baldwin County, allowing authorities to charge him under the state’s marijuana trafficking law.

In 2013, Hotchkiss was sentenced to spend the next 40 years in prison.

And when he came up for parole in February, after serving a decade, the three-member Alabama parole board voted to keep him there.

The board set his next hearing in 2028 – the furthest they could push it back. He’ll be 73.

Today, Hotchkiss is incarcerated at the Loxley Community Work Center, although he spends most days outside the lockup. Each morning, he is dropped off at his job at a Fairhope boat dealership.

Jody Cullifer recently retired from the dealership, but he’s the person who secured the job for Hotchkiss. He said he had trouble finding a person to wash the boats, so he called the prison and asked if they had anyone who could do the job and provide general maintenance. They sent Hotchkiss.

On Hotchkiss’s first day, Cullifer explained the job. “He picked up really quick… and did a phenomenal job,” he said.

Cullifer called Hotchkiss a good worker and a trustworthy employee, and said the bosses gave him his own key to the dealership. That way, Hotchkiss could let himself inside in case the prison van dropped him off too early in the morning.

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CRIME SCENE DNA DIDN’T MATCH MARCELLUS WILLIAMS. MISSOURI MAY FAST-TRACK HIS EXECUTION ANYWAY.

FELICIA ANNE GAYLE PICUS was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious murder that devastated her family and rattled her neighbors in the gated community of University City, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. Police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The scene was replete with forensic evidence: There were bloody footprints and fingerprints, and the murder weapon — a kitchen knife used to stab Picus — was left lodged in her neck.

That detail caught the medical examiner’s attention. Weeks earlier, another woman had been stabbed to death just a couple of miles away, and the weapon was left in the victim’s body. Days after Picus’s murder, the University City police chief told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that investigators had identified a “prime suspect,” someone they said had been spotted in the area “in recent weeks,” whom they believed had killed before.

But whatever became of that lead is unclear. After Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole came forward with a story about how his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to murdering Picus. Soon, police secured a second informant: Laura Asaro, Williams’s former girlfriend, also told the cops that Williams was responsible for the killing. There were reasons to be wary of their stories. Both informants were facing prison time for unrelated crimes and stood to benefit. Many of the details they offered shifted over the course of questioning, while others did not match the crime. Nonetheless, Williams was charged with Picus’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Questions about the investigation and Williams’s guilt have only mounted in the years since the August 1998 crime. DNA testing on the murder weapon done years after his conviction revealed a partial male profile that could not have come from Williams. On the eve of Williams’s scheduled execution in 2017, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens intervened. He issued an executive order that triggered a rarely used provision of Missouri law, empaneling a board to review the evidence, including DNA, that jurors never heard about at trial.

While that review was ongoing for most of the last six years, the board never submitted a final report or recommendation to the governor, as the law requires. Instead, last June, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he was rescinding his predecessor’s order, effectively dissolving the panel that had been reinvestigating the case.

The question now is whether Missouri law allows the governor to simply disappear an ongoing investigation. Because the law has so rarely been used, its contours have never been fully litigated, prompting the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, to file a civil lawsuit seeking to invalidate Parson’s order. The state’s attorney general balked, arguing that Williams was trying to usurp the governor’s independent clemency powers. The AG has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit — and clear the way for Williams’s execution.

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Philly police oversight group hasn’t investigated any complaints since it started

The Citizens Police Oversight Commission hasn’t investigated a single citizen complaint of police misconduct since it was created in 2021, the watchdog agency’s leadership has acknowledged to Axios.

Why it matters: For now, all citizen complaints of police misconduct are still turned over to police internal affairs.

  • The agency’s director of investigations, Jamison Rogers, tells Axios he’s in the process of putting together an investigative unit. He acknowledged that redirecting complaints back to the police isn’t ideal because some residents who turn to the CPOC don’t have faith in internal affairs.
  • The commission’s mission is to improve police officer conduct and accountability and restore community trust in the department.

By the numbers: CPOC received 137 citizen complaints in 2023, including one involving officers who responded to a call about a distressed woman who was later killed in a hit-and-run.

  • About a quarter of the complaints included allegations that police officers had committed physical abuse, civil rights violations, falsification, sexual misconduct, drug use, or some other crime, per city data.
  • The agency has sole discretion over which misconduct complaints it investigates, per city law.

Driving the news: Some commissioners and residents told Axios they’re concerned that CPOC isn’t further along, but commission leaders say they’re confident in the process and hope to hire more than a dozen investigators over the next eight months.

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