Tag: police state

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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UK Govt Urges Schools To SNITCH On ‘Anti-Muslim Hostility’ In Orwellian Crackdown

The UK government is ramping up its assault on free expression, now urging schools, councils, and workplaces to monitor and report “anti-Muslim hostility” as part of a broader strategy that critics slam as a tool to silence legitimate debate.

Under Labour’s plans, institutions will be encouraged to track incidents of ‘prejudice’ against Muslims, with a new definition adopted to clarify unacceptable behavior. This comes amid a surge in hate crimes, but opponents warn it could muzzle criticism of Islamism or immigration policies.

Schools are at the forefront, with the government pushing for monitoring in education settings where antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate have reportedly normalized.

This escalating surveillance in schools reeks of authoritarian control, prioritizing thought policing over genuine security.

The strategy includes boosting security for mosques and Muslim schools through schemes upgrading CCTV, alarms, and fencing. A new “anti-Muslim hostility tsar” will oversee implementation, advising schools, universities, and public services on tackling hatred.

Communities Secretary Steve Reed defended the move in Parliament: “Today, we are adopting a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility. This gives a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so we can take action to stop it.”

But Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has blasted the vague wording, warning it could chill free speech and make people afraid to criticize Islam, migration, or Islamist extremism. He argued it might be used to silence debate rather than stop actual attacks.

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UK Parliament Plans ISP Blocking and Age Verification Powers

If you wanted a case study in how modern democracies widen state oversight step by step, Britain has offered a clear example. On March 9, two major surveillance-related bills advanced through Parliament, each pointing toward broader government authority, reduced personal privacy, and tighter limits on protest activity.

These measures advanced through procedural votes and technical amendments that sounded administrative, yet carry consequences for how millions of people use the internet and exercise civic rights.

The main legislative action unfolded in the House of Commons during debate on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Members of Parliament actually rejected amendments from the House of Lords that would have required age verification for VPNs and certain user-to-user services.

But don’t get too excited. Replacement amendments approved by MPs would grant significant new authority to the state. The powers allow the government to require internet service providers to block or restrict children’s access to specific online platforms, impose time-of-day limits on when services can be used, and mandate age verification across nearly any platform that enables users to post or share content.

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Homeland Security Helps Nab 80-Year-Old Man for Paying a Sex Worker

Here’s your periodic reminder that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—the agency tasked with safeguarding America from terrorism and other grave threats—is also in the business of policing private sexual acts between adults.

An 80-year-old man was recently arrested in Plattsburgh, New York, as part of an ongoing Homeland Security investigation into potential prostitution at a massage business. He was charged with the misdemeanor crime of patronizing prostitution in the third degree.

The arrest was made by deputies with the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office as they helped Homeland Security Investigations execute a federal search warrant at “an alleged prostitution enterprise operating as a massage parlor,” per a Sheriff’s Office press release. Further information is supposed to be released later by the Buffalo field office of Homeland Security Investigations.

The elderly man may have been a bonus bust in this operation, not the express point of it. But he’s far from the first person facing criminal charges because Homeland Security has decided to take an interest in stopping sex between consenting adults. (Or, one suspects, to police immigration under the auspices of policing sex.)

Homeland Security routinely teams up with local cops to police independent massage businesses, searching for signs of sex. Almost always, the targeted businesses are operated and staffed by Asian women.

The feds say they’re looking for human trafficking. But again and again, we see the flimsiest of evidence employed to justify this suspicion; again and again, we see stings that turn up nothing more than licensing violations or, at worst, prostitution arrests.

The women working at these businesses—the ones Homeland Security claims to be protecting—are often subjected to repeated intimate encounters with local and federal law enforcement officers or their informants (a situation made all the more perverse if authorities really believe these are victims of trafficking). Then they wind up arrested, out of work, and facing fines for prostitution, practicing massage without a license, and so on. They may also find their savings subject to asset forfeiture.

In “Operation Asian Touch,” for instance, Homeland Security agents had at least 17 sexual encounters with women working at Mohave County, Arizona, massage businesses. Afterward, women who agreed to paid sex acts were arrested and had their assets seized.

In the Florida massage parlor stings in which Homeland Security helped nab New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft for solicitation, charges against Kraft and many other men arrested for solicitation were eventually dropped. But women providing massages and sex acts were still prosecuted, with some having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for “soliciting” these men to commit prostitution.

Workers arrested in these stings are often taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

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How Grok’s Football Roasts Put X in the Crosshairs of Britain’s Online Censorship Law

Few subjects in Britain carry as much emotional weight as football. Club loyalty runs deep, tragedies remain painfully close to the surface, and rivalries often cross the line between banter and cruelty. That volatile mix resurfaced this week when Grok, the AI chatbot on X, generated what officials described as “vulgar roasts” after users explicitly prompted it to produce offensive material.

UK authorities reacted quickly, discussing the Online Safety Act, Britain’s new censorship law, and raising the possibility of serious financial penalties for X. Under the law, platforms can face fines reaching up to ten percent of global revenue if they fail to address harmful content.

The material dredged up some of the most painful chapters in English football history. It mocked the Hillsborough disaster, where 97 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death at an FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield after police failures led to fatal overcrowding in a standing pen.

It also referenced the Munich air disaster, which killed 23 people, including eight Manchester United players, when the team’s aircraft crashed during takeoff in icy conditions. Grok further alluded to the recent death of Diogo Jota, who died in a car accident in Spain in June 2025 at the age of 28 while playing for Liverpool F.C.

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Turkey Blocks 41 Social Media Accounts Over Iran War Posts

Turkey’s government blocked 41 social media accounts on X, Facebook, and Instagram last Friday, deleted content from 75 more, and launched criminal proceedings against account holders, all on the grounds that they spread what officials called “disinformation and provocative content.”

The crackdown followed the start of attacks on Iran. Presidential Communications Director Burhanettin Duran framed the deletions as a national security response, saying the targeted accounts had been “systematically sharing unverified content aimed at creating fear, panic and uncertainty in society.”

Who decided the content was disinformation? The government. Who gets to define “provocative content”? The government. Who determines what threatens “public order, social peace, and our national security”? Also, the government; the same government that ordered the blocks.

The operation involved the Turkish Presidency’s Communications Directorate, the cybercrime department of the Security Directorate General, the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, and the chief public prosecutors’ offices. A coordinated state apparatus, mobilized to silence social media accounts during a regional conflict.

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Airport Nightmares Over TSA Lines Have Returned

The Transportation Security Administration is getting affected again by the Democrats, and now those long lines at airports are back. Most of these workers are exempt from the immediate effects of the shutdown in Washington. They have to show up for work, but they aren’t paid. The Democrats believe punishing TSA agents over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation activities will work. It won’t. As we saw in an NBC News poll, ICE is more popular than the Democratic Party. Also, ICE’s operations remain funded and unaffected—paid through the Big, Beautiful Bill.  

So, what are we even doing here? Democrats could sign off on a DHS funding bill after the January Minneapolis drama. Their base wouldn’t allow it, so most of the government was funded through September, with a short-term CR providing DHS funding until a longer-term funding measure could be hashed out. It failed. Republicans wanted another two-week extension, but Democrats rejected it. The agency was shut down over Presidents’ Day weekend, and now the mayhem has returned. In New Orleans, things looked like an Afghan refugee camp.

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Dodgy Fire Stick crackdown: Eight new targeted areas named as police plan to swoop on illegal streamers

Police have launched a fresh crackdown on dodgy Amazon Fire TV sticks, with eight new areas across the UK being targeted.

Illegal Amazon Fire Sticks and ‘dodgy boxes’ are streaming devices that have third-party software installed in them, allowing users to watch premium content from providers such as TNT Sports, Sky Sports and Disney+ for free. 

The use of these devices is deemed a ‘serious crime‘, and police forces across the UK and Ireland, alongside the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), have been targeting individuals who continue to watch unauthorised content. Sky, who pay billions to the Premier League to show matches, also have their own in-house piracy team.

The latest swoop is part of ‘Operation Eider’, a campaign led by FACT, with 14 more cases identified on November 14, 2025.

The eight areas targeted were: London, South West, North West, North East, Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and Humber, West Midlands.

Of the 14 cases, 12 individuals received cease-and-desist (C&D) notices, while two were served with C&Ds via knock-and-talk enforcement. 

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Rhode Island Bill Could Turn Gun Owners Into Criminals for Keeping the Firearms They Legally Bought

Two new bills introduced in the Rhode Island legislature are taking aim at legal gun owners, and one of them could easily turn lawful gun owners into criminals overnight, simply for maintaining possession of the firearms they legally purchased. 

Each of these bills, by themselves, represent a major infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, but taken together they pose an existential threat to the Second Amendment rights of Rhode Island residents. 

Any gun or magazine ban that allows existing owners to maintain possession of their arms can be amended in the future to remove those protections, and that’s exactly what H8073 does with so-called assault weapons. The state’s ban on the sale and transfer of modern sporting rifles, which was only adopted a year ago, would be expanded to prohibit the possession of those arms beginning July 1 of this year. Simply keeping the gun you lawfully purchased could result in a ten-year prison sentence and/or a fine of up to $10,000.

Then there’s H7755, which would expand the state’s “Responsible Firearm Purchasing Act.” Under the current law, anyone purchasing a handgun must provide the seller with a valid “training certificate” issued by the Rhode Island Attorney General, and after the sale has been approved they’re subjected to a 7-day waiting period before they can take possession of their handgun. 

H7755 would expand that requirement (and waiting period) to all gun sales in the state. In order to simply purchase a gun to keep in the home you’d have to take an 8-hour training course complete with a live-fire requirement, and then pass a written test developed by the Attorney General’s office. 

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