Tag: police state

Twitter Algorithm Reveals Tool For Government Intervention

A researcher claims to have found a tool allowing for government intervention in Twitter’s algorithm, upon Elon Musk’s decision to allow the algorithm to become open sourced to the public.

Breitbart reports that Musk honored his promise on Friday by releasing a portion of Twitter’s recommendation algorithm on the website GitHub, where computer programmers often go to share and collaborate on work dealing with open-source code.

Web developer Steven Tey then claimed to have discovered a particular mechanism within the code that allows the U.S. government to make changes to the website’s algorithm.

“When needed, the government can intervene with the Twitter algorithm. In fact, @TwitterEng (Twitter Engineering) even has a class for it – ‘GovernmentRequested,” Tey tweeted, including a link to the code on GitHub.

Upon purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk vowed to increase transparency and loosen restrictions on certain speech and accounts that had been imposed by previous leadership. One of his goals was to make the algorithm open source for public viewing; he later said that “our ‘algorithm’ is overly complex & not fully understood internally,” and that “people will discover many silly things, but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!”

In addition, Tey discovered that the algorithm takes such factors into account as following-to-follower ratio when determining which users to promote; users with a low number of followers but a high amount of followed accounts would be negatively affected.

Keep reading

Thousands of Hours of Jan. 6 Video Hidden, Withheld from Defendants, Court Filing Says

The U.S. Department of Justice has withheld thousands of hours of video recorded at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, from January 6 criminal defendants, and U.S. Capitol Police might have held back more than 1,300 hours of security video from a congressional oversight committee, a new federal court filing alleges.

Defendant William Pope contends in an update to a previous court filing that he and others charged with crimes at the Capitol that day need access to what should be more than 152,000 hours of video. That is if Capitol Police preserved it all.

“Americans have historically been skeptical of opaque government processes, and that skepticism has never been more intense than it is now regarding January 6,” Pope wrote in a 17-page court filing before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras.

“Concealment of the Capitol CCTV is fueling public speculation that there is more to January 6 than is being reported.”

Pope, who is representing himself, is seeking full access to the U.S. Department of Justice evidence database so he can use it in his defense.

Pope dissected a declaration from Capitol Police general counsel Thomas DiBiase introduced by federal prosecutors in his case. He also compared it to an earlier DiBiase declaration. In his new filing, Pope calls these documents the “dueling dubious DiBiase declarations.”

“Despite hundreds of January 6 CCTV clips now being public, Mr. DiBiase still believes other footage from those same cameras must be hidden from the American people,” Pope wrote.

Keep reading

Connecticut Democrats Seek to Create a Censorship Board to Limit Free Speech

The  Democrat-dominated Connecticut legislature is seeking to create a censorship board through Senate Bill 6410 to regulate online speech.

The bill would establish a board to study so-called online “harassment” of individuals, including government officials, and recommend legislation to censor free speech by the creation of reporting guidelines. The censorship board would consist of nine members, four of whom would represent the minority Republican party.

The bill states:

Such assessment shall include, but need not be limited to,

(1) short term and long term effects of harassing behaviors online on elected officials, public officials and residents of this state,

(2) what state or municipal action is needed to address negative online behaviors that consider a citizen’s right to freedom of speech versus an individual’s right to be free from harassment including, but not limited to, potential changes in state law concerning  additional penalties or enforcement of online harassment, and

(3) establishing guidelines for the reporting of online harassment of elected state and municipal officials that find a balance between making elected officials accessible to the people whom they serve and protecting them from abusive, offensive or threatening online harassment.

Chris Zeller, executive director of the Connecticut Republican party (CTGOP), told Breitbart News the Democrats are trying to pass a censorship measure to cover up their agenda.

“They are trying to hide years of incompetent governance and a far-left agenda that is too radical for the average Connecticut voter,” he said.

According to a policy brief from Yankee Institute, about 150 people commented on the legislation via (presumably written) testimony. The vast majority of these opposed the bill. Some of those who opposed the bill said it would be used to “inhibit freedom of speech.”

Kate Prokop, president of Connecticut Residents Against Medical Mandates (CTRAMM), stated in her testimony that she is worried her organization will be censored because certain Democrat state politicians labeled CTRAMM as “extremist” during the pandemic.

“I’m not advocating for hate speech or condemning people. [I’m] against online censorship because it establishes an unnecessary paternal relationship with the government,” Prokop said. “Proposed Bill 6410 aims to limit constitutionally protected free speech online by demanding self-censorship from residents that have been gaslighted by elected officials for years.”

The bill was approved by committee March 17 and will now get a vote in the House.

Keep reading

Biden admin moving forward with light bulb bans in coming weeks

The Biden administration is preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and climate agenda.

The regulations, which prohibit retailers from selling incandescent light bulbs, were finalized by the Department of Energy (DOE) in April 2022 and are slated to go into effect on Aug. 1, 2023. The DOE will begin full enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to begin transitioning away from the light bulb type and, in recent months, begun issuing warning notices to companies.

“The lighting industry is already embracing more energy efficient products, and this measure will accelerate progress to deliver the best products to American consumers and build a better and brighter future,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said last year.

According to the DOE announcement, the regulations will save consumers an estimated $3 billion per year on utility bills and cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons over the next three decades.

Keep reading

Doublespeak: State Department warns about online censorship then threatens to “hold platforms accountable”

In a startling display of doublespeak at the Summit for Democracy 2023, United States (US) Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned about more countries “using the internet to try to control speech” and claimed that the Biden administration is trying to promote an open internet before threatening to “hold platforms accountable” for so-called “harms.”

Blinken raised the alarm about the internet “growing more closed, more insecure, more siloed by the day.”

He continued by stating: “More countries are putting up firewalls and shutting down access, using the internet to try to control speech, quash dissent, spread misinformation and disinformation.”

The Secretary of State followed up by claiming that the Declaration for the Future of the Internet (a 60-country commitment to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation”) reaffirms the US’s commitment to an “open network of networks that respects democratic principles and human rights.”

After lambasting other countries for closing off the internet and positioning the Biden admin as a paragon of openness, Blinken pivoted and said, “We have to do better at addressing some of the risks that come with the open internet.”

He then proposed a “delicate balance” between “openness and security,” “protecting speech and preventing incitement,” and “fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech.”

Not content with suggesting a balance between protecting speech and censoring speech that the Biden administration deems to be “incitement,” Blinken then threatened consequences for platforms that don’t fall in line.

“The President’s…made clear that we need to be able to hold platforms accountable when they fail to address the harms caused by their technology, from the content they spread to the algorithms that they use.”

Keep reading

Biden DOJ Convicts Man for Anti-Hillary Memes, Faces up to 10 Years In Prison

Biden’s DOJ has found Douglass Mackey, better known for his online persona “Ricky Vaughn,” guilty in the trial concerning his anti-Hillary memes.

Mackey, 33, could face up to 10 years in prison for a meme he posted on Twitter one week before the 2016 election.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” stated United States Attorney Breon Peace.

The meme was reportedly an image of a black woman in front of an “African Americans for President Hillary” sign, according to The Gateway Pundit.

“Emblazoned on the picture was the message: ‘Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history,’” reports TGP.

Now that you’re intellectually ahead, stay physically ahead by visiting our store.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of New York, at least 4,900 people texted “Hillary” to the meme phone number.

Keep reading

Critics Warn of ‘a Dragnet of Surveillance’ as U.S. Pushes Ahead With Plans for More ‘Smart’ Cities

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week announced $94 million in grant awards to fund 59 smart city technology projects across the country.

Despite widespread and mounting pushback against biometric surveillance and control systems associated with smart city technologies and the failure of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) previous attempt to grant-fund smart city transformation in Columbus, Ohio, Buttigieg told The Verge he thinks “smart city technologies matter more than ever.”

Cities just need to take a different approach — experimenting with and testing out different technologies first, rather than implementing a “grand unified system” all at once, Buttigieg said.

The new grants, part of the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program, are the first round of $500 million in funding that will be awarded for smaller smart mobility projects over the next five years, authorized under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

In this funding round, DOT awarded smart grants for a range of projects, including drone surveillance or delivery, smart traffic signals, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, smart grid development, intelligent sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure. Some cities, including Los Angeles (LA), received multiple grants.

Smart city development typically focuses on the implementation of technologies like the IoT, 5G, cloud and edge computing, and biometric surveillance to track, manage, control and extract profit from an array of urban processes.

Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist and smart cities critic, said the smart city infrastructure is meant to facilitate the development of cities “micromanaged by technocrats via an all-encompassing system of mass surveillance and a vast array of ‘internet of things’ devices that provide a constant and massive stream of data that is analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI).”

Keep reading