Tag: police state

Supreme Court Sees Nothing Wrong with Prolonged, Warrantless Spying of One’s Home by Police Using Hidden Cameras

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to stop police from using hidden cameras to secretly and warrantlessly record and monitor a person’s activities outside their home over an extended period of time. In refusing to hear an appeal in Travis Tuggle v. U.S., the Supreme Court left in place a lower court ruling which concluded that no “search” in violation of the Fourth Amendment had occurred because the private activity recorded by the hidden surveillance cameras took place in public view. The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute had filed an amicus brief in Tuggle warning that without adequate safeguards in place, there would be no turning back from the kinds of intrusions posed by such expansive, ever-watching surveillance technology capable of revealing intimate details of a person’s life.

Jim Harper with TechLaw at the University of Arizona College of Law assisted The Rutherford Institute and the Cato Institute in advancing the Fourth Amendment privacy arguments in Tuggle.

“Unfortunately, we are steadily approaching a future where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “As the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recognized, ‘Foreseeable expansion in technological capabilities and the pervasive use of ever-watching surveillance will reduce Americans’ anonymity, transforming what once seemed like science fiction into fact.’”

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Doctors Warn Against Illegal ‘Covid Censorship’ Bill In California That Would Shut Them Down For ‘COVID-19 Misinformation’

Some doctors in California have vowed to fight a possible new law that would threaten their medical licenses if they were caught spreading “COVID-19 misinformation”

The medical professionals are calling the effort “unconstitutional” and “illegal.”

California Assemblyman Evan Low introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 2098 on Feb. 15, which would prevent licensed physicians and surgeons from spreading so called “covid misinformation”

The Epcoh Times reports: if passed, the law would inject disciplinary actions by the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California to care providers promoting alleged misinformation.

“The idea that they’re going to come after physicians that spread misinformation, without defining what misinformation is, [is] frightening,” Physician Dr. Jeff Barke told The Epoch Times.

Amid the pandemic, Barke was among the minority of health care professionals unafraid of challenging the science behind masks and vaccinations pushed by the California Department of Public Health and Center for Disease Control and Prevention—urging for individual freedom of choice.

Barke, a private practice physician in Newport Beach, has continuously fought against COVID-19 mandates and has urged for California schools to reopen—saying children are statistically unlikely to die due to the virus.

While Barke is against the mandates—especially lingering COVID-19 vaccine mandates for kids—he reassures that he is not anti-vaccine.

As the threat of censorship lingers among some health professionals, Barke said he fears scientific studies are at risk—as those who have challenged vaccines and masks will be potentially forced into compliance.

“Science is not about consensus. It’s not about agreement. It’s about sharing and debating ideas,” Barke said. “That sharing and debating ideas has not been allowed during the COVID crisis.”

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An Off-Duty Cop Murdered His Ex-Wife. The California Highway Patrol Ignored the Red Flags.

When law-enforcement officials believe that someone has committed a crime, they often go to great lengths—and can be quite creative—in coming up with charges to file. Criminal codes are voluminous, and it’s common for prosecutors to pile up one charge after another as a way to keep someone potentially dangerous off the streets.

When the accused is a police officer, however, agencies typically find their hands tied. “Nothing to see here,” they say, “so let’s move along.” Their eagerness to protect their own colleagues from accountability can have deadly consequences. A recent lawsuit by the victim of a California Highway Patrol officer’s off-duty shooting brings the problem into view.

The case centers on Brad Wheat, a CHP lieutenant who operated out of the agency’s office in Amador County. On Aug. 3, 2018, Wheat took his CHP-issued service weapon and hollow-point ammunition to confront Philip “Trae” Debeaubien, the boyfriend of Wheat’s estranged wife, Mary. As he later confessed to a fellow officer, Wheat planned more than a verbal confrontation.

“I just learned this evening that Brad confided in an officer…tonight that he drove to a location where he thought his wife and her lover were last night to murder the lover and then commit suicide,” an officer explained in an email, as The Sacramento Bee reported. Fortunately, Debeaubien had left the house by the time that Wheat arrived.

Initially, Wheat’s colleagues convinced him to surrender his CHP firearm and other weapons and they reported it to superiors. Instead of treating this matter with the seriousness it deserved, or showing concern for the dangers that Debeaubien and Mary Wheat faced, CHP officials acted as if it were a case of an officer who had a rough day.

They essentially did nothing. “Faced with a confessed homicidal employee, the CHP conducted no criminal investigation of its own, notified no allied law enforcement agency or prosecutor’s office, and initiated no administrative process,” according to a pleading filed by Debeaubien in federal district court. “Nor did the CHP notify [the] plaintiff that he was the target of a murder-suicide plan that failed only because of a timely escape.”

You read that right—the agency seemed so uninterested in the safety of two potential murder victims that it didn’t even inform them about the planned attack. It sent Wheat to a therapist, who reportedly said he needed a good night’s sleep. It sent him on vacation for two weeks, let him return to work, and returned his firearm and ammunition—something CHP said he needed for his job.

You can probably guess what happened next. Two weeks later, Wheat took the same weapon and ammo and this time found his ex-wife and her boyfriend. He shot Debeaubien in the shoulder, the two struggled and Wheat—a trained CHP officer, after all—retrieved his dislodged weapon, shot to death his ex-wife, and then killed himself.

Now CHP says it has no responsibility for this tragic event and that its decisions did not endanger the plaintiff’s life. This much seems clear from court filings and depositions: CHP’s response centered on what it thought best for its own officer. Any concern about the dangers faced by those outside the agency seemed incidental, at best.

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Teacher Spying Is Instilling Surveillance Culture Into Students

For the teachers, it began in October at the California Teachers Association’s 2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference. Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki explained how they identified potential new members of UBU, the school’s club of LGBTQ supporters. “When we were doing our virtual learning—we totally stalked what they were doing on Google, when they weren’t doing schoolwork,” Caldeira said. “One of them was Googling ‘Trans Day of Visibility.’ And we’re like, ‘Check.’ We’re going to invite that kid when we get back on campus.”

Whatever you think of LGBTQ issues, the fact that a teacher can remotely track what students do online should give you pause. This was not a case of a teacher reviewing the browser history on a classroom computer after school. As Caldeira said, albeit with her tongue in cheek, they were stalking the kids. (The title of Caldeira and Baraki’s presentation declared that it was about running such clubs “in conservative communities.” Needless to say, conservative teachers can snoop on kids’ online activities too.)

The Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, California, where Caldeira is employed (and is currently on leave, following the uproar over the story), uses GoGuardian, a standard software tool for monitoring what students do during Zoom classes. GoGuardian, which promotes itself as powering “digital learning environments where every student can thrive,” is being used in about 30,000 schools.

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Democrat Congressman Sparks Backlash After Suggesting to Seize Trucks From Protesters Headed to D.C., Give Them to Growing Businesses

Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego (AZ) called for seizing the trucks of protesters headed to Washington, D.C., and then giving the property to businesses looking to grow.

“Perfect time to impound and give the trucks to small trucking companies looking to expand their business,” Gallego tweeted in response to the following news headline: “Trucker convoy could shut down DC Beltway tomorrow.”

“Law enforcement agencies in Maryland, Virginia and D.C. are monitoring what could be a number of trucker convoys coming to D.C.,” the report said. “Truckers apparently spurred on by the recent protests in Canada want their voices heard, but the extent of the protests and how disruptive they may be is still unclear.”

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The Left’s Support of the Persecution of Ottawa Protesters Ensures That It Will Be Used Against Them Next

A Western democracy is currently being toppled from within and turned into a fascist police state in which members of the political opposition to the ruling elite are being hunted down by the state. The Canadian government has viciously persecuted citizens, not just for protesting the vaccine mandates, but anyone who provided monetary support to them. This level of tyranny in the West should be raising alarm bells and red flags — especially among supposed advocates of civil liberties — but it’s not. Instead, many folks are supporting it.

The left has not only chosen to look the other way in regard to the treatment of the protesters and their supporters, but they have embraced the state’s tyrannical response. Even Anonymous has gone full fascist shill, and is applauding the abuse and subsequent response by the Trudeau regime.

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Scotland Stops Publishing Covid Vaccine Death Statistics, Blames ‘Anti-Vaxxers’ For Raising Alarm

Public Health Scotland has announced it will no longer publish information about deaths and hospitalizations related to Covid-19 vaccination status, citing concerns the data is being “misused” by anti-vaccination campaigners.

Scotland’s public health watchdog announced the sudden change in policy last week in its most recent Covid-19 report, saying the frequency and content of the data would be reviewed.

Instead, officials will focus on publishing more complex data that promotes the idea of vaccine effectiveness.

Remarkably, Public Health Scotland officials admitted they will no longer publish the vaccination status of deaths in the country due to the activities of anti-vaccination campaigners.

The report published last week will be the last weekly publication to include data which includes information on death rates, broken down by the number of doses received.

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On This Presidents Day, Stop Worshiping the Imperial Presidency

Ah, Presidents Day: a much-needed moment to slow down and commemorate presidents past and present, because we definitely don’t have enough of that in this country.

I jest!

Walking around Los Angeles, you’d be hard-pressed not to pass someone sporting BIDEN-HARRIS merchandise—a shirt, a bumper sticker, a sweatshirt, a mask. Back where I grew up in Virginia, the same is true, though they have a different hero: For years, “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” adorned the lawns, cars, and hats of those who wanted you to know they stood, and perhaps still stand, with former President Donald Trump.

That’s not news. Public displays of affection for the U.S. president have become standard in everyday American life, extending well past election cycles and rock-concert-esque inaugurations, as if who you voted for is a personality trait. That’s the conventional wisdom, it seems. So, on this fair Presidents Day, a reminder: Presidents aren’t saints. They aren’t monarchs. They aren’t celebrities. And they aren’t your friends! The executive leader is an employee of the country—someone whose job was, and still should be, limited in size and scope.

It has become something decidedly different over the years, with each president becoming more powerful than the last. That maybe explains, to some degree, why the political fangirling has grown in tandem. Though I can’t step back in time to the 18th and 19th centuries, I would venture to say Americans weren’t donning shirts with presidents’ faces or branding horse-drawn carriages with the names of current and erstwhile U.S. leaders. Nor do I think former President George Washington, whose birthday serves as the inspiration for this holiday, would have wanted that sort of hero worship, when considering that the bedrock of America’s founding specifically sought to create a new order—one without a king or king-like figure.

“The founders of our republic did not want to put that much [power] in the hands of a single leader,” Mark Rozell, the founding dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, told The Christian Science Monitor. “America’s addiction to executive power has become dangerous for this country.”

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