Tag: police state

Presidents Trump and Biden Keep John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Secret

Fifty-nine years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. These many years later, the United States government continues to hold in secret piles of information related to the assassination.

After the popular theatrical run of director Oliver Stone’s movie JFK that dramatically challenged the Lee Harvey Oswald as “lone gunman” explanation for Kennedy’s assassination, the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 became law. It created the Assassination Records Review Board tasked with reviewing and releasing records held by the US government related to the assassination. While some US government records have since been released, others remain hidden away.

On December 15, the remaining Kennedy assassination records are scheduled for release. But, don’t get your hopes up. Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) President and Kennedy assassination researcher Jacob G. Hornberger predicts in an October 21 FFF article that President Joe Biden will, like President Donald Trump did in 2017 when the deadline for release of the final materials first occurred, refuse to let the public see all the information. Indeed, Biden already did so once in 2021 when the secrecy extension period Trump had set for the remaining records passed.

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UK plans to criminalize digitally putting someone’s face on nude body

The UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill has a section that would make sharing “pornographic deepfakes” without consent a criminal offense in England and Wales. This would involve digitally putting someone’s face on a naked body.

The bill seeks to address the rise in manipulated explicit images, where a person’s face is superimposed on another person’s body.

Current legislation requires proving that the images were shared to “cause distress.”

However, the proposed law does not require the prosecution to prove that someone intended to cause harm, potentially leaving the door open for jokes to be prosecuted.

According to the government, one in 14 people in England and Wales have been threatened with their intimate images being shared online. It added that there is a global concern about deepfake technology being used to create fake pornographic images. A website that creates nudes from clothed photos had 38 million visits in 2021.

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San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’

The San Francisco Police Department is proposing a new policy that would give robots the license to kill, as reported earlier by Mission Local (via Engadget). The draft policy, which outlines how the SFPD can use military-style weapons, states robots can be “used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option.”

As reported by Mission Local, members of the city’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee have been reviewing the new equipment policy for several weeks. The original version of the draft didn’t include any language surrounding robots’ use of deadly force until Aaron Peskin, the Dean of the city’s Board of Supervisors, initially added that “robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

However, the SFPD returned the draft with a red line crossing out Peskin’s addition, replacing it with the line that gives robots the authority to kill suspects. According to Mission Local, Peskin eventually decided to accept the change because “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.” San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th.

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Governor Hochul signs novel law that limits cryptomining, for now

New York is taking a first-in-the-nation step to tap the brakes on the spread of cryptocurrency mining, under legislation that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Tuesday.

The measure comes amid growing scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry following this month’s collapse of the FTX exchange. But New York’s measure, which passed the state Legislature in June, is specifically concerned with the environmental aspects of crypto.

“I will ensure that New York continues to be the center of financial innovation, while also taking important steps to prioritize the protection of our environment,” Hochul, a Democrat, said in a message explaining her approval.

The new law sets a two-year moratorium on new and renewed air permits for fossil fuel power plants used for energy-intensive “proof-of-work” cryptocurrency mining — a term for the computational process that records and secures transactions in bitcoin and similar forms of digital money. Proof-of-work is the blockchain-based algorithm used by bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies.

The law also requires the Department of Environmental Conservation to asses how cryptomining affects the state’s ability to meet its climate goals.

Environmentalists said New York was undermining those goals by letting cryptomining operations run their own natural gas-burning power plants.

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Cop Pulls Gun at High School, ‘Accidentally’ Shoots an Innocent Kid and is NOT Arrested or Even Fired

Imagine for a moment that you were carrying a pistol in a public space, and all of the sudden, you accidentally squeeze off a round. Now, imagine if this place was a school.

There are two possible scenarios that would take place; the first one is that police return fire and you are killed. The second, less lethal result would be your inevitable arrest and charges of public endangerment, unlawful discharge, illegal use of a firearm, assault with a deadly weapon, terrorism, or a myriad of other infractions associated with sending a deadly projectile hurling through a space occupied by innocent children. You would immediately be facing fines, jail time, probation, and firearms restrictions.

However, if you are a government agent who’s trusted with carrying a deadly weapon into places others cannot, you needn’t worry about any of those repercussions. The scenario below just so happens to prove it.

Vermillion County Deputy Tim DisPennett, identified as a 19-year veteran of the department, was giving instruction to vocational students at South Vermillion High School when he pulled his gun and “accidentally” shot a student.

The class was geared at teaching students how to be police officers, and participants in the drill were acting out a scenario with a “bad guy,” according to WTHI.

Hopefully, none of the students being taught by Deputy DisPennett were paying attention to his instruction — as his methods are clearly flawed.  

“This morning at South Vermillion High School, there was an isolated incident in one of our vocational classrooms. The incident was an accidental discharge of a firearm by a law enforcement officer during a drill. One student was injured without life-threatening injuries and has been taken to the hospital. Only SVHS is currently on lockdown, due to the abundance of emergency personnel in the building,” read a statement sent out to parents after the shooting.

Luckily the student who was shot was not severely injured and will be okay. As for the deputy, he has not been arrested, nor fired, and has only been placed on paid leave. Detectives with the department are now investigating the shooting.

Aside from the above-the-law treatment of this officer, the excuse for the weapon accidentally discharging is nothing short of asinine.

Guns do not fire themselves.

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Oversight Board tells Meta to stop complying with police requests to censor rap music

Meta’s Oversight Board said that Meta should not have complied with a request from London’s Metropolitan Police to ban a drill music track. Drill music is a rap genre that politicians and law enforcement agencies have associated with gang violence.

In January, rapper Chinx (OS) posted a video of his song “Secrets Not Safe.” Shortly after posting the song on Instagram, Meta received an email from the police requesting the removal of the song. Meta escalated the case to a team for special consideration, and ruled that it violated its policies because it referenced a shooting that took place in 2017 and included what police believed to be a “threatening call to action.”

After the song was removed, Chinx appealed and had it reinstated by a moderator who was not part of the special consideration team. The decision was overruled and the song got banned again after a week, again following a request by the police.

The board questioned whether Meta considered the context, or simply compiled because it was a request from the police.

“Not every piece of content that law enforcement would prefer to have taken down — and not even every piece of content that has the potential to lead to escalating violence — should be taken down,” the board wrote in its decision.

Social media platforms are less transparent about informal requests like the email from the Met.

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