Tag: police state

Privacy For The Powerful, Surveillance For The Rest: EU’s Proposed Tech Regulation Goes Too Far

Last month, we lamented California’s Frontier AI Act of 2025. The Act favors compliance over risk management, while shielding bureaucrats and lawmakers from responsibility. Mostly, it imposes top-down regulatory norms, instead of letting civil society and industry experts experiment and develop ethical standards from the bottom up.

Perhaps we could dismiss the Act as just another example of California’s interventionist penchant. But some American politicians and regulators are already calling for the Act to be a “template for harmonizing federal and state oversight.” The other source for that template would be the European Union (EU), so it’s worth keeping an eye on the regulations spewed out of Brussels.

The EU is already way ahead of California in imposing troubling, top-down regulation. Indeed, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act of 2024 follows the EU’s overall precautionary principle. As the EU Parliament’s internal think tank explains, “the precautionary principle enables decision-makers to adopt precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high.” The precautionary principle gives immense power to the EU when it comes to regulating in the face of uncertainty — rather than allowing for experimentation with the guardrails of fines and tort law (as in the US). It stifles ethical learning and innovation. Because of the precautionary principle and associated regulation, the EU economy suffers from greater market concentration, higher regulatory compliance costs, and diminished innovation — compared to an environment that allows for experimentation and sensible risk management. It is small wonder that only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European.

From Stifled Innovation to Stifled Privacy

Along with the precautionary principle, the second driving force behind EU regulation is the advancement of rights — but cherry-picking from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of rights that often conflict with others. For example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2016 was imposed with the idea of protecting a fundamental right to personal data protection (this is technically separate from the right to privacy, and gives the EU much more power to intervene — but that is the stuff of academic journals). The GDPR ended up curtailing the right to economic freedom.

This time, fundamental rights are being deployed to justify the EU’s fight against child sexual abuse. We all love fundamental rights, and we all hate child abuse. But, over the years, fundamental rights have been deployed as a blunt and powerful weapon to expand the EU’s regulatory powers. The proposed Child Sex Abuse regulation (CSA) is no exception. What is exceptional, is the extent of the intrusion: the EU is proposing to monitor communications among European citizens, lumping them all together as potential threats rather than as protected speech that enjoys a prima facie right to privacy.

As of 26 November 2025, the EU bureaucratic machine has been negotiating the details of the CSA. In the latest draft, mandatory scanning of private communications has thankfully been removed, at least formally. But there is a catch. Providers of hosting and interpersonal communication services must identify, analyze, and assess how their services might be used for online child sexual abuse, and then take “all reasonable mitigation measures.” Faced with such an open-ended mandate and the threat of liability, many providers may conclude that the safest — and most legally prudent — way to show they have complied with the EU directive is to deploy large-scale scanning of private communications.

The draft CSA insists that mitigation measures should, where possible, be limited to specific parts of the service or specific groups of users. But the incentive structure points in one direction. Widespread monitoring may end up as the only viable option for regulatory compliance. What is presented as voluntary today risks becoming a de facto obligation tomorrow.

In the words of Peter Hummelgaard, the Danish Minister of Justice: “Every year, millions of files are shared that depict the sexual abuse of children. And behind every single image and video, there is a child who has been subjected to the most horrific and terrible abuse. This is completely unacceptable.” No one disputes the gravity or turpitude of the problem. And yet, under this narrative, the telecommunications industry and European citizens are expected to absorb dangerous risk-mitigation measures that are likely to involve lost privacy for citizens and widespread monitoring powers for the state.

The cost, we are told, is nothing compared to the benefit.

After all, who wouldn’t want to fight child sexual abuse? It’s high time to take a deep breath. Child abusers should be punished severely. This does not dispense a free society from respecting other core values.

But, wait. There’s more…

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End Of An Era: Pro-Democracy Icon Jimmy Lai Found Guilty Of Sedition In Hong Kong

The high profile trial of Hong Kong’s foremost pro-democracy media tycoon has just wrapped up, and it puts a symbolic cap on the end of an era in terms of prior large scale anti-China activism in the city.

Jimmy Lai, who long spearheaded huge protests and local media criticism of Beijing, was found guilty on Monday in a landmark national security case, marking an end to the 156-dady trial. He could spend the rest of his life in prison based the series of sedition-related convictions.

Prosecutors accused him of conspiring with senior executives of the fiercely pro-democracy and independent Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily and others to request foreign forces to impose sanctions or blockades to thwart Beijing influence in Hong Kong. 

Further, he’s alleged to have engaged in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China, which hearkens back to prior years of long-running street protests which sometimes descended into violence and vandalism, or at times large student takeovers of entire university buildings.

China had long alleged a foreign intelligence ‘hidden hand’ behind the protests. This was in part due to student activists being in semi-regular communication with Western officials and NGOs, and sometimes even honored at events hosted in Europe or the US.

A panel of three government-approved judges convicted the 78-year-old, after Lai had consistently denied all charges. He was first detained in August 2020 under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed national security law.

The security law has been widely seen as the final nail in the coffin of Hong Kong’s long-running autonomy, and was a response to the major 2019 protests which were widely covered in international press reports.

Lai upon the verdict being read appeared upbeat, as he waved to supporters in the public gallery, which included his wife, son, and Hong Kong’s Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen.

Western leaders, including of the US and Britain, are expected to lobby for his freedom, especially given that this is being viewed as ultimately a crackdown on Western values in influence on one of the globe’s main financial hubs.

Sebastien Lai, one of his children, issued a statement on behalf of the family, saying they are saddened by the verdict, describing it as a twisting of justice. “In the 800-page verdict they have there is essentially nothing, nothing that incriminates him,” Lai told reporters in London. “This is a perfect example of how the national security law has been molded and weaponized against someone who essentially said stuff that they didn’t like.”

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Former Prince Andrew May Live in Decrepit Farm After Leaving Royal Lodge Mansion, as Late Virginia Giuffre’s Family Is Furious With Met Police for Dropping Investigation on Him

Disgraced former Prince Andrew is still in the world’s headlines – for the usual bad reasons.

Late Jeffrey Epstein’s victim Virginia Giuffre’s family is furious with Met police, saying that ‘justice has not been served’ upon learning that the Met Police announced they will drop a probe against Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the former Prince and Duke of York.

Andrew reportedly asked his security officer to ‘dig up dirt’ on his accuser Giuffre.

“A bombshell email obtained by the Mail on Sunday exposed how Andrew asked his taxpayer-funded Met bodyguard to find out information on Virginia Giuffre and passed him her date of birth and confidential social security number.”

The two-tier Met Police force announced on Friday (12) that it will not launch an investigation into the matter.

“Ms. Giuffre’s family has said they are ‘deeply disappointed’ by the force’s decision to drop the investigation ‘without explanation’, adding they were not told the announcement was being made.

[…] ‘With the Epstein files about to be released by [the US] congress since the passage of the Epstein Transparency Act, we are surprised that the Metropolitan Police didn’t wait to see what further evidence might appear.

‘While we have hailed the UK’s overall handling of the case of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor previously, today we feel justice has not been served’.”

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Where Is Your Line In The Sand On Digital ID?

Mandatory digital ID is almost here. For years The Free Thought Project and various other independent media outlets; including but not limited to some of our colleagues such as The Conscious Resistance Network, The Last American Vagabond, James Corbett, Jason Bermas, Josh Sigurdson of World Alternative Media, Whitney Webb’s Unlimited Hangout and many more have sounded the alarm on the encroaching dangers of digital ID.

From exposing the technocratic agenda of the scamdemic era attempting to assert digital identity as a “human right” in an effort to snare much of society into a mass surveillance grid.

To the United Nations push to implement digital identity as a part of their Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 16) amid attempts to consolidate power for global governance.

And the latest attempts of the Trump administration exploiting concerns of election security as a means of ushering in digital ID domestically.

It is clear that efforts to implement this dystopian technocratic agenda are moving forward with full speed.

Earlier this year, California joined a growing list of over a dozen states offering digital drivers licenses through digital wallets such as Apple and Google.

Just recently, the popular children’s gaming platform Roblox rolled out a new mandatory facial recognition system to verify the ages of its over 36 million users.

Meanwhile, the state of Alaska recently began advancing plans of enhancing its own digital identity biometric data collection system.

In recent years one of the primary methods in which politicians have attempted to enact digital ID or similar measures has been through exploiting concerns of child safety online, thereby pushing for a series of free speech infringing, censorship inducing, age verification laws utilizing artificial intelligence and facial recognition biometrics among other things to implement such agendas.

At the same time these initiatives are sweeping their way through the country, there are currently nearly two dozen pieces of legislation individually moving their way through Congress with each one seeking to serve as the next attempt to further entrap the American people in this surveillance panopticon.

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Australian Prime Minister Albanese Proposes Tougher National Gun Laws After Mass Shooting in Sydney

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed tougher national gun laws after a mass shooting targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, leaving at least 15 people dead.

Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain. His proposals were announced after the authorities revealed that the older of the two gunmen—who were a father and son—had held a gun license for a decade and amassed his six guns legally.

“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Albanese told reporters.

“People’s circumstances can change. People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity,” he added.

At least 38 people were being treated in hospitals after the massacre on Sunday, when the two shooters fired indiscriminately on the beachfront festivities. Those killed included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.

The horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws primarily aimed at removing rapid-fire rifles from circulation. Albanese called the massacre an act of anti-Semitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.

He pledged swift change, planning on Monday afternoon to present his gun law proposals to a national cabinet meeting that includes state leaders. Some of the measures would also require state legislation.

“Some laws are commonwealth and some laws are implemented by the states,” the Australian leader said. “What we want to do is to make sure that we’re all completely on the same page.”

Christopher Minns, premier of New South Wales where Sydney is the state capital, agreed with Albanese that gun licenses should not be granted in perpetuity.

Minns said his state’s gun laws would change, but he could not yet detail how.

“It means introducing a bill to Parliament to—I mean to be really blunt—make it more difficult to get these horrifying weapons that have no practical use in our community,” Minns told repoters.

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2 Denver deputy sheriffs arrested, accused of assault on at-risk adult

A sheriff deputy and sergeant in Denver were arrested by the Denver Police Department on Thursday and face charges for third-degree assault of an at-risk adult.

The Denver Sheriff Department said in a press release that Sheriff Deputy Jason Gentempo, who was assigned to the Downtown Detention Center, and Deputy Sheriff Sergeant Carla Gentempo, who was assigned to the Administration Division, were placed on investigatory leave on Thursday.

The charge for third-degree assault of an at-risk adult is a class six felony.

The sheriff’s office said the Office of the Independent Monitor was notified, and the Public Integrity Division opened an investigation.

Police told FOX31 on Friday that Carla and Jason Gentempo were both released on a PR bond.

Affidavit: Alleged assault of man in wheelchair

FOX31 obtained the arrest affidavit for Jason Gentempo on Friday.

According to the affidavit, the victim, a paraplegic man, reported that he was assaulted by two off-duty Denver officers, one male and one female, on Oct. 17.

The victim said he put his dog inside before the off-duty law enforcement officers punched him in the head with a closed fist, kicked him in the chest and stomped on his phone.

The hits knocked the victim out of his wheelchair, and he fell back and hit his head. He said the suspects then took off in a white truck they had left running on the street.

The victim gave investigators the surveillance footage from his porch camera, which the affidavit said showed the victim, his dog and another person exit his ground-floor apartment to the porch. The video also showed a woman get out of the driver’s seat and a man get out of the passenger’s seat of a white truck near the victim’s porch.

According to the affidavit, the victim is seen putting his dog back inside the apartment and as he turned back toward the people on the porch, the white female from the truck hit him in the face with a closed fist and kicked him in the chest. The white man from the truck then struck the man as he was falling backward out of his chair, out of the camera view. The man from the truck then kicked the victim’s phone and stomped on it. The suspects then left the scene.

The victim identified both Carla and Jason Gentempo in photos and by name, according to the affidavit, and said they were the suspects who assaulted him.

The Denver Police Department confirmed to FOX31 that this case is related to another case in which a police officer is accused of not filing proper reports and not submitting evidence after responding to an alleged assault.

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Substack expands censorship to Australian users

Last week, we noted that Substack had caved into the UK censorship regime and was restricting the content that UK users can access unless they verified their age with either a selfie or a government-approved ID.

Age verification is not about keeping children “safe,” it is about control: age verification online is increasingly being integrated with digital ID systems, particularly through government-backed digital identity wallets, and is becoming a foundational component of digital ID systems with several countries, including the US, European Union member states, the UK and Australia, advancing digital ID frameworks where age verification is a core function. 

For example, the GOV.UK Wallet is under development and will be used for identity verification, with age verification being a key application. And in Australia, the Digital ID Act 2024 established the Australian Government Digital ID System, allows users to prove identity online.

The example we used in our previous article to demonstrate the type of content being censored for UK users on Substack, unless we comply with the rolling out of the digital ID agenda, was the article ‘UK’s open border policy is not normal; nor is it acceptable’.

Along similar lines, yesterday, a Substack user re-stacked our article ‘London Primary school teacher is banned from working with children for telling a Muslim pupil that Britain is a Christian country’.  Substack has censored the article for non-paying users who have not complied with age verification.

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Bill On Ohio Governor’s Desk Will Put Hemp Companies Out Of Business, Owners Say

Ohioans in the intoxicating hemp industry fear a bill heading to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R) desk will put them out of business.

Ohio Senate Bill 56 is on its way to DeWine after Ohio Senate Republicans passed the bill Tuesday. The Ohio House passed the bill last month after it went to conference committee.

Ohio’s bill complies with recent federal changes by banning intoxicating hemp products from being sold outside of a licensed marijuana dispensary. If DeWine signs the bill into law before the new year, the ban could take effect as soon as March.

“This bill is going to put businesses like me and families like me out of business,” said Ahmad Khalil, one of the owners of Hippie Hut Smoke Shop, with locations in Ohio and Washington.

“Overnight, we’re going to see tens of thousands of people directly impacted, which will ripple effect into 50,000 of families that are also dependent on this person.”

Khalil has been in the hemp industry for nine years.

“This was my American dream, so to see it get taken away from you, kind of hurts,” he said.

Jason Friedman, owner of Ohio CBD Guy in Cincinnati, said this is extremely frustrating.

“My tentative plan will involve eventually closing my East Walnut Hills location resulting in less hours and likely loss of jobs for some of my employees,” he said.

Instead of a ban, Friedman wants regulations for the hemp industry such as age-gating, packaging restrictions, and testing requirements.

“For the state to say that they are changing their stance to banning from regulating because of what the federal government has done in banning intoxicating hemp in the recent spending bill, makes no sense because marijuana has been illegal federally the whole time,” he said.

Mark Fashian, president of hemp product wholesaler Midwest Analytical Solutions in Delaware, Ohio, said this will put him, and hundreds of others out of business, if this becomes law.

He works with more than 500 stores around Ohio that sell intoxicating hemp products.

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Government Unchained: The Year The Constitution Lost Its Guardrails

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”—Abraham Lincoln

We now live in a nation where constitutional rights exist in theory, not in practice.

Yet what good are rights on paper when every branch of government is allowed to ignore, circumvent, chip away at or hollow them out in practice?

Two hundred and thirty-four years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the safeguards meant to shield “We the people” from government abuse are barely recognizable.

In ways the Founders could scarcely have imagined—and would never have tolerated—the safeguards meant to restrain government overreach have become little more than empty platitudes.

America’s founders understood that power corrupts and absolute power—especially when it comes to power-hungry governments fixated on amassing institutional power at the expense of individual freedoms—corrupts absolutely. That’s why they insisted on binding down the government “with the chains of the Constitution.”

In 2025, those chains have been cut link by link.

These links were not severed in secret. They snapped under the weight of executive orders issued without congressional authority, judicial doctrines that shield misconduct from accountability, and a Congress that no longer defends its own constitutional prerogatives.

If Americans are finally learning the true significance of constitutional limits, it is because the government keeps violating them—and daring anyone to stop it. Time and again, the message is being drummed into our heads that constitutional limits no longer apply when they inconvenience those in power.

Any government that treats rights as privileges—contingent on economic status, citizenship, race, orientation, religious beliefs, or political alignment—has already abandoned the Bill of Rights.

And a government that does so with the courts’ blessing is not a constitutional republic.

When rights become privileges, what we are left with is a two-tier system of freedom: those afforded the privilege of enjoying their constitutional rights vs. those targeted for exercising those same rights.

The Bill of Rights was intended as a bulwark. Each amendment was drafted as a barrier against a specific form of tyranny.

In 2025, every one of those barriers buckled under the weight of government corruption, political expediency, partisan politics, and institutional neglect.

The following is what it looked like to live without the protections of the Bill of Rights in the American police state.

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Criminalizing Bible Verses? Canadian Lawmakers Target Religious Expression With Proposed ‘Hate Speech’ Amendment

In a move that should alarm anyone who is pro-free speech, members of Canada’s Liberal Party have capitulated to pressure from Quebec’s ultra-secular separatist party by voting to strip away a longstanding religious exemption from the country’s hate-speech laws as part of the draconian Bill C-9, also known as the so-called Combating Hate Act.

Canada’s Criminal Code has long shielded good-faith religious expression with a clear exemption that speech is not hate propaganda “if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

On Tuesday evening, that protection was casually deleted at the Bloc Québécois insistence.

CBC has the details on what happened next:

Progress appeared to stall after an initial committee meeting to go over the bill was abruptly cancelled last week. Three sources speaking to CBC News said the bill was held up because Justice Minister Sean Fraser’s office brokered the deal with the Bloc without getting buy-in from the Prime Minister’s Office. Tuesday’s meeting was scheduled last-minute after last week’s cancellation. The Bloc has long sought to remove the religious exemption, saying religion could be used as a cover for promoting hate, such as homophobia and antisemitism. Blanchet said his party would not support the bill without the amendment.

Conservatives immediately sounded the alarm. Canadian Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre warned on X that the amendment would “criminalize sections of the Bible, Qur’an, Torah and other sacred texts.”

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