Tag: police state

Christian Teacher Fined $750,000 for Refusing to Agree That There Are More Than 2 Genders – Persecution in the First World

At this point, Canada hasn’t just done away with common sense. It’s dumped gasoline on it and set it ablaze for the world to see.

For example, former Chilliwack, British Columbia, school trustee Barry Neufeld must pay $750,000 for violating the Human Rights Code.

What exactly did Neufeld do for such a massive fine?

A Tribunal concluded he “invoked negative and insidious stereotypes about LGBTQ people, especially trans people, which denied their inherent dignity and, in some cases, reflected the hallmarks of hate against them as a group,” as the CBC reported Feb. 20.

“For five years, he publicly denigrated LGBTQ people and teachers and associated them with the worst forms of child abuse,” the Tribunal said further.

Neufeld had a complaint brought against him by Chilliwack Teachers’ Association and B.C. Teachers’ Federation after making Facebook posts, a speech, remarks at school board meetings, and comments to the media that the sentencing body felt would make those groups the target of hate.

One unnamed teacher said his comments had family members urging this person to reconsider career paths. The Tribunal said Neufeld “poisoned” the workplace.

He is a Christian, and his comments were relayed by The Christian Post. They aligned with historic Christian teaching on sexuality to which millions still subscribe today.

“It dawned on me that for a Christian, there are two approaches to take. The pastoral approach is one of compassion and empathy while firmly refusing to buy into their client’s delusional thinking. As one pastor said to a transgender person: ‘it is my responsibility to love you: but it is God’s job the [sic] change you’. However, while helping me grasp a better understanding of gender Dysphoria, the [issue] is so complex that it is hard to apply these insights in a debate at the political level, especially on Facebook,” Neufeld wrote.

He said his mission is to try “speaking out to the lawmakers in Victoria and trying to motivate lukewarm Christians who are sitting idly by as all of Society ‘Slouches towards Gomorrah.’”

Further, he spoke about the political ramifications of gender ideology, noting that it has “demonized people of faith who believe that God created humans male and female: In the Image of God.”

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Canada’s Bill C-22 Mandates Mass Metadata Surveillance of Canadians

Canada’s Liberal government has introduced Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, 2026, a surveillance bill that compels electronic service providers to store Canadians’ metadata for a year and hands police and intelligence agencies new tools to access it.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The bill follows a failed first attempt, Bill C-2, which collapsed under the weight of near-universal criticism from opposition parties, rights groups, and the tech industry.

This is a mandatory data retention regime that forces companies to hold location data, device information, and other sensitive metadata on every Canadian, not just those suspected of crimes, ready for law enforcement retrieval via warrant. The logic is familiar: build the haystack first, search it later.

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The Dark Side of AI: Innocent Grandmother Wrongfully Jailed for 6 Months After Facial Recognition Error

A Tennessee grandmother spent nearly six months behind bars in North Dakota, a state she had never even stepped foot in, after being wrongfully identified by AI facial recognition technology in a bank fraud investigation.

The Grand Forks Herald reports that Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old mother of three and grandmother of five from Tennessee, found herself trapped in a nightmare that began last July when U.S. Marshals arrested her at gunpoint while she was babysitting four young children. Fargo police had used facial recognition software to identify her as the primary suspect in an organized bank fraud case, despite the fact that she had never set foot in North Dakota.

The case began in April and May 2025 when Fargo Police Department detectives investigated several bank fraud incidents. Surveillance footage captured a woman using a fraudulent U.S. Army military identification card to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from local banks. To identify the suspect, investigators employed facial recognition software, which incorrectly matched the woman in the videos to Lipps.

According to court documents obtained through an open records request, the detective assigned to the case reviewed Lipps’ social media accounts and Tennessee driver’s license photo after receiving the facial recognition match. In the charging document, the detective stated that Lipps appeared to be the suspect based on facial features, body type, hairstyle, and hair color. Notably, no one from the Fargo Police Department contacted Lipps to question her before filing charges.

Lipps was arrested on July 14 and booked into her county jail in Tennessee as a fugitive from justice. She faced four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft in North Dakota. Held without bail due to her fugitive status, Lipps spent 108 days in the Tennessee jail before North Dakota officers transported her to Fargo on October 30.

“It was so scary, I can still see it in my head, over and over again,” Lipps said during an interview about her ordeal.

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Florida Gives Tech Platforms Deadline for Age ID Checks

Florida’s attorney general has handed tech companies an ultimatum: build identity verification systems into your platforms by April 8, or his office starts filing lawsuits.

The deadline comes as a federal appeals court hears arguments this week on whether the state can legally force millions of users to prove who they are before accessing social media.

The law driving this, HB 3, bans anyone under 14 from social media entirely and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. It also forces adult content sites to verify visitors are 18 or older.

Attorney General James Uthmeier gave tech companies 30 days to implement age restrictions and 60 days to deploy parental consent mechanisms. “It is the law of the land,” he said at an Orlando event on March 9. Non-compliance means litigation.

What Florida is actually mandating is a digital ID checkpoint at the entrance to the internet. The law doesn’t specify which verification methods qualify as “reasonable.” It doesn’t cap how long platforms can retain identity documents. It doesn’t limit what platforms can do with the surveillance infrastructure once it’s built. Florida gets the policy win.

Users hand over their documents. The data sits in corporate systems indefinitely, available for breaches, subpoenas, and purposes nobody has disclosed yet.

Uthmeier even named TikTok and Discord specifically. Discord’s attempt to introduce digital ID age verification has been met with much backlash, especially after a leak over over 70,000 government IDs. Uthmeier appears unconcerned.

NetChoice, co-plaintiff in the legal challenge, named this directly: the law creates a security risk by “mandating the surrender of sensitive information.” That’s the part Florida’s child-protection framing is designed to obscure. Every minor blocked from TikTok requires millions of adults to first prove they aren’t minors. The verification burden falls on everyone.

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They censored debate on the censorship bill

On today’s episode of the Candice Malcolm Show, Candice is joined by our old friend Andrew Lawton, former independent journalist and current Member of Parliament for Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. Andrew sits on the Justice Committee, where they just shut down debate on Bill C-9, the Liberal government’s latest censorship bill.

They are literally censoring debate on a censorship bill! You can’t make this stuff up.

Andrew walks us through his attempts to amend the bill that removes religious exemptions for sincerely held views, which were shut down and rejected by the Liberal government. Andrew discusses the committee process and how the Liberals were able to push this through.

Candice and Andrew discuss the various attempts by the Liberal government to censor Canadians and crack down on free speech, which historically aims to silence their critics rather than address real concerns of hate and violence in Canada. On that topic, they discuss the terrifying string of terrorist intimidation currently aimed at Iranian dissidents and Jewish Canadians in Toronto, where Liberal laws have done nothing to protect these communities.

Andrew notes that C-9 would not have stopped these attacks, and notes the danger of having an estimated 700 members of Iran’s secret police force, the IRGC, active in Canada.

Finally, Candice and Andrew discuss the CBC, in light of the recent testimony from former host Travis Dhanraj. Andrew reconfirms the Conservative Party commitment to defund the state broadcaster.

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British tourist, 60, ‘who filmed Iranian missiles’ in Dubai is facing two years in prison after being charged with cybercrime offence

A British tourist arrested after allegedly filming missiles hitting Dubai is facing two years in prison after being charged with a cybercrime. 

The 60-year-old Londoner, who was detained on Monday night, is said to have deleted the video immediately when asked. He insists he did not mean to break the law.

However, he has been charged alongside 20 others over videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the UAE, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai. 

The official allegation relates to ‘broadcasting, publishing, republishing or circulating rumours or provocative propaganda that could disturb public security’. The offence carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. 

Dubai’s government heavily polices social media and responded to the outbreak of war by threatening jail against anyone sharing information that ‘results in inciting panic among people’.

Videos of drone and missile strikes were regularly shared on social media in the early days of the conflict, but these have largely disappeared and been replaced by a deluge of posts praising Dubai’s government. 

Once a tax-free haven attracting influencers from across the globe and thousands of Brits seeking warm weather and crime free streets, Dubai’s carefully crafted image has been shattered and some residents believe it is ‘finished’. 

The emirate, home to around 240,000 British expats including Rio and Kate Ferdinand, Luisa Zissman and Petra Ecclestone, has been targeted by constant Iranian missile and drone attacks as the regime strikes US allies in the Middle East. 

Dubai was hit by a fresh wave of drone attacks today, with a fire breaking out at a hotel in Creek Harbour in the early hours of the morning. Around noon, a building on the Sheikh Zayed Road was hit followed by a further incident in the Al Bada district. 

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The App Store Accountability Act Is A Privacy Nightmare Disguised As Child Protection

Washington has discovered a familiar political trick: wrap a flawed policy in the language of protecting children and hope nobody reads the fine print. The latest example is the App Store Accountability Act, a bill championed by lawmakers who appear eager to regulate the internet without understanding how it actually works.

Supporters insist the legislation will protect kids online. In reality, it risks undermining privacy, violating constitutional protections, and creating a cybersecurity disaster in the process.

And remarkably, Congress is pushing forward with this even though federal courts have already signaled that this exact regulatory model is unconstitutional.

The App Store Accountability Act would require app stores to verify the ages of every user and share age information with app developers. On paper, that sounds straightforward. In practice, it would force companies to collect massive amounts of sensitive personal data simply to download everyday apps.

Want to download a weather app? Verify your age.

Want to install a calculator? Verify your age.

Want to read the news? Verify your age.

The practical result is obvious: app stores would be compelled to gather highly sensitive identity data on tens of millions of Americans and then distribute that information to countless third-party developers.

This could be one of the largest digital identity honeypots ever conceived.

Security experts have been warning about this for months. In fact, 419 cybersecurity and privacy academics from 30 countries recently signed an open letter warning that large-scale age verification systems are “dangerous and socially unacceptable” because they create enormous new attack surfaces for hackers and data thieves.

The logic is simple. If every app download requires age verification, that means sensitive identity data must be stored, transmitted, and accessed across thousands of services. Instead of limiting the spread of personal information, the bill effectively multiplies it.

For cybercriminals, it would be a dream target.

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TDF sounds alarm over imminent passage of Bill C-9

Proposed “Combatting Hate Act” expands the legal definition of hatred and removes key free expression safeguards in the Criminal Code.

The House of Commons has closed debate on Bill C-9, the “Combatting Hate Act.” The Bill expands and codifies the definition of “hatred,” departing from the Supreme Court’s strict requirement of “vilification and detestation.” It removes the longstanding good faith religious speech protections for sincerely held religious opinions and expressions based on religious texts in the Criminal Code and eliminates the requirement for Attorney General consent before charging individuals with certain hate crime offences. The Bill also creates a new offence that applies when an underlying offence—even a non-criminal one—is motivated by hatred, potentially doubling the penalties for the underlying act.

The Bill has faced opposition from civil liberties groups and religious organizations. TDF was invited to testify before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and filed a brief outlining its serious misgivings. 

“Ironically, the government has moved to end debate on issues of public concern for a bill that would end debate on issues of public concern. The Bill empowers prosecutors to bring charges based on the merest suggestion that the impugned conduct is motivated by an ill-defined concept of “hatred,” massively increasing potential jail time and legal jeopardy for defendants. In our experience, these types of offences tend to be laid against marginalized and working-class people rather than powerful elites and political insiders. However, all Canadians can expect greater digital censorship and increased online police surveillance if the Bill becomes law. We only have to look at the UK example, where police make approximately 12,000 annual arrests for online “hate incidents” under similar legislation.” 

The Bill now moves to a vote at the justice committee. After that, it will proceed to the report stage and third reading before advancing to the Senate.

TDF will continue to oppose the Bill and all attempts by the government to censor Canadians.

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US News Orgs Nearly Silent on Israel’s Violent Suppression of Journalism

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently published two meticulous reports that further expose Israel’s violent repression of journalism, in its ongoing genocide in Gaza and elsewhere.

CPJ published a report on February 19 titled ‘‘’We Returned From Hell’: Palestinian Journalists Recount Torture in Israeli Prisons.” CPJ collected 59 in-depth testimonies from Palestinian journalists released from Israeli custody since October 7, 2023.

The report goes into excruciating and painstaking detail about the experiences of 56 journalists, who told CPJ they were “repeatedly beaten inside prisons by authorities, as well as during arrest and transfer to the facilities.”

Less than a week later, CPJ published a report (2/25/26) that found “Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist and media-worker killings in 2025”—86 of the 129 deaths CPJ recorded.

That was an uptick from 2024 (when Israel was responsible for 85 out of 124) and 2023 (78 of 99), CPJ revealed.

Taken together, these reports added more evidence of Israel’s illegal and shameless targeting of the journalists who cover its war crimes.

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UK Lords Back Facial Recognition Overreach, Protest Crackdown Powers

The UK Lords spent March 9 dismantling what little legal cover existed for anonymous protest and privacy, and building new tools to suppress it entirely.

Start with what they refused to protect. Peers voted down an amendment that would have kept the DVLA database (the equivalent of the DMV in the US) out of live facial recognition searches.

That database isn’t a surveillance archive. It was built to verify driving licenses. It contains photographs linked to the confirmed real-world identities of most UK drivers, and the Lords just cleared the path for police to run it against faces captured in real time at public gatherings. A licensing bureaucracy would become an identification engine. The repurposing happened quietly, through a vote most people won’t read about.

The Lords also voted down a proposed “defence of reasonable excuse” for concealing identity at protests. The amendment would have shifted the burden of proof onto police officers to justify why a face covering made someone arrestable.

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