Tag: police state

IRS Warning Americans to Report $600 Transactions From Payment Processors or Risk Facing Audit

The Internal Revenue Service reminds taxpayers to report transactions of at least $600 made through payment networks like Venmo, Paypal, and Cash App as the agency seeks to obtain data regarding part-time employment and side gigs, a move that critics have termed government overreach.

In a recent explainer posted online, the IRS said that according to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, any payment made after March 11, 2021, that exceeds $600 must be reported. The target of the new reporting rule is small business owners, and people working side hustles or part-time gigs for extra income. Earlier the reporting threshold was $20,000 and more than 200 transactions within a calendar year. But, the amended rule applies to a single transaction.

“You should receive Form 1099-K by January 31 if, in the prior calendar year, you received payments from all payment card transactions (e.g., debit, credit, or stored-value cards), and in settlement of third-party payment network transactions above the minimum reporting thresholds,” said the agency.

The reporting guidelines do not apply to noncommercial payments such rent, vacation, food, or one-time transactions like selling something online. The Form 1099-K will be sent by the payment platforms through which the transaction was done.

If a form is received by mistake, “contact the Payment Settlement Entity (PSE) listed on the Form 1099-K” or provide an explanation in the tax return, according to the agency.

Failure to report transactions on Form 1099-K could trigger an audit by the IRS since the agency receives a copy of the form.

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What’s missing from the Twitter files: The truth about the FBI

Elon Musk half-delivered on his promise to tell all about Twitter’s censorship of The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. What was missing were details of specific warnings we know the FBI made to Twitter about a Russian “hack and leak operation” involving Hunter during their weekly meetings with top executives of the social media giant in the days and weeks before The Post published its exclusive bombshell.

We know that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan testified Tuesday in a lawsuit against the Biden administration brought by Republican attorneys that he organized those weekly meetings with Twitter and Facebook in San Francisco for as many as seven Washington-based FBI agents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Twitter’s then-head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth has stated in a sworn declaration that he was told during those meetings to expect “hack-and-leak operations” by state actors involving Hunter Biden.

Twitter cited its new “hacked materials” policy on October 14, 2020, when it locked The Post’s account for two weeks and censored our story revealing an email from Hunter’s Ukrainian benefactor thanking him for meeting with his father, the then-VP, in Washington, DC. The email was not “hacked material”; it came from Hunter’s laptop, which was the legal possession of Delaware computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac. The Post published an image of the Dec. 2019 subpoena issued to Mac Isaac for the laptop which Hunter had abandoned at his store eight months earlier.

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Check out this new software tool the government is sponsoring to use friends and family members to “correct” social media posts

Have you ever been on social media and had a weird moment of déjà vu? You post something, and then fifty people come back at you with identical talking points.

Maybe they’re all brainwashed mainstream media consumers, or maybe it’s just bots.

But thanks to a government-sponsored Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust app being developed by the Hacks/Hackers team and the University of Washington, soon we’ll get the best of both worlds where everyone will be able to respond to social media posts just like a brainwashed bot.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a grant to the group to develop the app to fight “misinformation.”

The app will allow you to enter the social media post of a suspected conservative or free-speech advocate, and then the app will tell you why they’re wrong and how to appropriately respond.

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FBI Director pushes for “lawful access” to encrypted messages

FBI Director Christopher Wray last month spoke before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and, among the many topics dedicated to “threats to the homeland,” he addressed that of encryption.

His remarks on this are carried by the FBI website under the heading, “Lawful Access.” Wray opens by saying that the agency is a strong advocate of “wide and consistent” encryption use.

The FBI chief goes on with platitudes, and not particularly sincere ones (considering his statements that followed): protecting online data and privacy is a top priority, and encryption a key element.

But…

“Encryption without lawful access, though, does have a negative effect on law enforcement’s ability to protect the public,” Wray says, and thus continues the FBI’s long-since established stance that strong encryption prevents law enforcement from performing their duties.

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This Couple Died by Suicide After the DEA Shut Down Their Pain Doctor

It was a Tuesday in early November when federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration paid a visit to the office of Dr. David Bockoff, a chronic pain specialist in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a Hollywood-style raid—there were no shots fired or flash-bang grenades deployed—but the agents left behind a slip of paper that, according to those close to the doctor’s patients, had consequences just as deadly as any shootout.

On Nov. 1, the DEA suspended Bockoff’s ability to prescribe controlled substances, including powerful opioids such as fentanyl. While illicit fentanyl smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels has fueled a record surge in overdoses in recent years, doctors still use the pharmaceutical version during surgeries and for soothing the most severe types of pain. But amid efforts to shut down so-called “pill mills” and other illegal operations, advocates for pain patients say the DEA has gone too far, overcorrecting to the point that people with legitimate needs are blocked from obtaining the medication they need to live without suffering. 

One of Bockoff’s patients who relied on fentanyl was Danny Elliott, a 61-year-old native of Warner Robins, Georgia. In March 1991, Elliott was nearly electrocuted to death when a water pump he was using to drain a flooded basement malfunctioned, sending high-voltage shocks through his body for nearly 15 minutes until his father intervened to save his life. Elliott was never the same after the accident, which left him with debilitating, migraine-like headaches. Once a class president and basketball star in high school, he found himself spending days on end in a darkened bedroom, unable to bear sunlight or the sound of the outdoors. 

“I have these sensations like my brain is loose inside my skull,” Elliott told me in 2019, when I first interviewed him for the VICE News podcast series Painkiller. “If I turn my head too quickly, left or right, it feels like my brain sloshes around. Literally my eyes burn deep into my skull. My eyes hurt so bad that it hurts to blink.”

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Warden accused of running ‘rape club’ at prison where Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman served time

A male warden is on trial for allegedly running a “rape club” at the California women’s prison where Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman and Allison Mack all have served time.

In what has been called a shocking abuse of power, Ray J. Garcia, 55, was the top official at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin when the FBI allegedly caught him with naked pictures of inmates in their cells on his government-issued phone in 2021.

At the opening of his trial on seven counts of sexual abuse conduct involving three female inmates, the court heard how the alleged incidents by Garcia and his staff were so open that inmates referred to it as “rape club.”

Four other prison officials have also been charged with sexual abuse, two of whom have already pleaded guilty.

An inmate named Melissa, whose last name was withheld, testified that Garcia told her repeatedly he “wanted to f—k” her and showed her naked pictures of himself “all the time,” according to reports.

Prosecutors said Garcia digitally penetrated Melissa and forced her to touch his penis between 2019 and 2021. The incidents took place in the prison bathroom and cell, where Garcia allegedly would insert “half-eaten, sucked-on” candy canes into her vagina.

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San Francisco will allow police to deploy robots that kill

Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots n emergency situations — following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal board over support for law enforcement.

The vote was 8-3, with the majority agreeing to grant police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other police oversight groups. Opponents said the authority would lead to the further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with poor and minority communities.

Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that forwarded the proposal to the full board, said she understood concerns over use of force but that “according to state law, we are required to approve the use of these equipments. So here we are, and it’s definitely not a easy discussion.”

The San Francisco Police Department said it does not have pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm robots with guns. But the department could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

“Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives,” she said.

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Mayor Eric Adams to Involuntarily Hospitalize Mentally Ill New Yorkers

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Tuesday announced the city’s new plan to address mentally ill residents by hospitalizing them against their will, even if they do not pose an immediate safety risk to others.

Under Adams’ directive, New York City police officers, firefighters, and health department officials are allowed to involuntarily commit mentally ill individuals if they “cannot support their basic human needs to an extent that causes them harm.”

Previously, city officials were authorized to hospitalize mentally ill individuals who were dangerously violent and deemed an immediate threat to others. They would usually be discharged from the hospital after a few days when their conditions slightly improved.

Now, Adams’ directive authorizes “the removal of a person who appears to be mentally ill and displays an inability to meet basic living needs, even when no recent dangerous act has been observed.”

“If the circumstances support an objectively reasonable basis to conclude that the person appears to have a mental illness and cannot support their basic human needs to an extent that causes them harm, they may be removed for an evaluation,” the directive stated.

However, Adams and his staffers failed to define “basic needs” or provide any criteria for how city workers would determine if those needs are being met.

In announcing his plan, Adams claimed that the idea that city officials were only empowered to involuntarily hospitalize an individual if they are violent was a “myth” that “must be put to rest.”

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As Ross Ulbricht Rots in a Cage for a Website, FTX Founder Celebrated by Elite for Stealing Billions

“How did this dude steal billions of dollars and is now speaking at a summit as a free man? Make it make sense.” — the internet.

This is the question that millions of people are asking after weeks have now passed since Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX scandal unfolded. Bankman-Fried is accused of treating FTX as a ‘personal fiefdom’ as he squandered billions in cash and digital assets of his former clients.

According to a Bloomberg News report, customer funds were seemingly used to buy real-estate while Bankman-Fried himself took a $1 billion loan out from Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. The firm was trading billions of dollars from FTX accounts and leveraging the exchange’s native token as collateral, according to reports.

Essentially, Bankman-Fried was taking assets from his customers, without their permission, and squandering them on risky trades. According to U.S. securities law, mixing customer funds with counterparties and trading them without explicit consent — is against the law.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz is one of the folks throwing his hands up and demanding to know why Bankman-Fried has not been arrested or even charged.

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A Peek Inside the FBI’s Unprecedented January 6 Geofence Dragnet

The FBI’s biggest-ever investigation included the biggest-ever haul of phones from controversial geofence warrants, court records show. A filing in the case of one of the January 6 suspects, David Rhine, shows that Google initially identified 5,723 devices as being in or near the US Capitol during the riot. Only around 900 people have so far been charged with offenses relating to the siege.

The filing suggests that dozens of phones that were in airplane mode during the riot, or otherwise out of cell service, were caught up in the trawl. Nor could users erase their digital trails later. In fact, 37 people who attempted to delete their location data following the attacks were singled out by the FBI for greater scrutiny.

Geofence search warrants are intended to locate anyone in a given area using digital services. Because Google’s Location History system is both powerful and widely used, the company is served about 10,000 geofence warrants in the US each year. Location History leverages GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals to pinpoint a phone within a few yards. Although the final location is still subject to some uncertainty, it is usually much more precise than triangulating signals from cell towers. Location History is turned off by default, but around a third of Google users switch it on, enabling services like real-time traffic prediction. 

The geofence warrants served on Google shortly after the riot remained sealed. But lawyers for Rhine, a Washington man accused of various federal crimes on January 6, recently filed a motion to suppress the geofence evidence. The motion, which details the warrant’s process and scale, was first reported by journalist Marcy Wheeler on her blog, Emptywheel. 

In a statement, a Google spokesperson defended the company’s handling of geofence warrants.

“We have a rigorous process for geofence warrants that is designed to protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement,” the company said. “When Google receives legal demands, we examine them closely for legal validity and constitutional concerns, including overbreadth, consistent with developing case law. If a request asks for too much information, we work to narrow it. We routinely push back on overbroad demands, including overbroad geofence demands, and in some cases, we object to producing any information at all.”

Google requires a three-step process for geofence warrants to narrow their scope to only those most likely to be guilty of a crime. In the first and broadest step, the FBI asked Google to identify all devices in a 4-acre area, including the Capitol and its immediate surroundings, between 2 pm and 6:30 pm on January 6. Google initially found 5,653 active devices that “were or could have been” within the geofence at that time. When Google added in data from devices that only connected to its servers later that day, or the next, the number increased to 5,723. (Location History works in airplane mode because phones can continue to receive GPS satellite signals.)

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