Tag: police state

UK Government Greases Skids For Fleets of Surveillance Drones Over Cities

In what appears to be a cynical PR stunt, the UK government is considering plans to allow women who feel threatened on the street to call upon surveillance drones that would arrive in minutes and shine a bright light on any potential attacker.

What could possibly go wrong?

“Women in fear of an attack will be able to use a phone app to summon a drone, which could arrive within minutes armed with a powerful spotlight and thermal cameras to frighten off any potential assailant,” reports the Telegraph.

Trials will take place on campus at Nottingham University at a cost of £500,000 during which the tech will be used to “protect students and staff.”

The scheme will be submitted to the UK government’s Innovate research program, and could eventually see helicopters being replaced by drones as a front line tool of law enforcement.

“It is a high capability drone that costs just £100 an hour but can do 80 percent of what a police helicopter can do,” said Richard Gill, the founder of Drone Defence. “It cannot do high speed pursuits but it can do the other tasks such as searching for people and ground surveillance.”

Gill noted that 25 drones could do the job of one police helicopter in London for the same price, with the drones being housed at five base locations across the city.

The idea of countless government drones whizzing around a city keeping tabs on people is garishly dystopian.

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‘Mass Formation Psychosis’ Admittedly Used by Governments as Tool of Population Control

Dr. Robert Malone’s assertions about “mass formation psychosis” in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic are underscored by the fact that authorities in the UK admitted to using “totalitarian” methods of “mind control” to instill fear in the population.

In Canada, the military also admitted launching a psychological operations campaign against their own people in order to manipulate them into compliance with COVID-19 restrictions and mandates.

During his viral podcast with Joe Rogan after he was banned by Twitter, Malone explained how the global population was being manipulated into remaining in a constant state of hysterical anxiety via mass formation psychosis.

“What the heck happened to Germany in the 20s and 30s? Very intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad. And how did that happen?” asked Malone.

“The answer is mass formation psychosis.”

“When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other and has free-floating anxiety in a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or series of events on one small point just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere,” he added.

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Police Use of Artificial Intelligence: 2021 in Review

Decades ago, when imagining the practical uses of artificial intelligence, science fiction writers imagined autonomous digital minds that could serve humanity. Sure, sometimes a HAL 9000 or WOPR would subvert expectations and go rogue, but that was very much unintentional, right?

And for many aspects of life, artificial intelligence is delivering on its promise. AI is, as we speak, looking for evidence of life on Mars. Scientists are using AI to try to develop more accurate and faster ways to predict the weather.

But when it comes to policing, the actuality of the situation is much less optimistic.  Our HAL 9000 does not assert its own decisions on the world—instead, programs which claim to use AI for policing just reaffirm, justify, and legitimize the opinions and actions already being undertaken by police departments.

AI presents two problems,  tech-washing, and a classic feedback loop. Tech-washing is the process by which proponents of the outcomes can defend those outcomes as unbiased because they were derived from “math.” And the feedback loop is how that math continues to perpetuate historically-rooted harmful outcomes. “The problem of using algorithms based on machine learning is that if these automated systems are fed with examples of biased justice, they will end up perpetuating these same biases,” as one philosopher of science notes.

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UK Inches Closer To Eliminating Private Car Ownership

Soon, Brits will own nothing and will be happier for it…

UK Government Transport Minister Trudy Harrison recently spoke at a mobility conference, addressing the future of personal mobility. In her comments, she said it was necessary to ditch the “20th-century thinking centred around private vehicle ownership and towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.” That’s right, she said the quiet part loud and showed the hand of a growing number of government officials.

Harrison went on to praise not only public transportation but also bike share services, e-scooters, and ride sharing platforms. All of these are supposed to tune down how much carbon the UK is emitting into the atmosphere. As with all choices, this comes at a cost, particularly for those living in rural areas.

What’s more, 300 residents in Coventry recently expressed interest in giving up their personal cars. The tradeoff from the government reportedly would be a mobility credit worth up to £3,000. This mobility credit program has been going since March of this year, with 73 cars turned in and crushed. No, this isn’t a joke, but I wish it were.

Understandably, many Brits are upset about this. Some have asked if they should start riding their horse instead, all the in the name of “progress.” Others are tying this statement by Harrison with the looming government ban of internal combustion engines for cars by 2030. After all, EVs aren’t exactly cheap, so what better way to force people onto public transportation than by pricing them out of the vehicle market?

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In 2021, the Police Took a Page Out of the NSA’s Playbook: 2021 in Review

With increasing frequency, law enforcement has been using unconstitutional, suspicionless digital dragnet searches in an attempt to identify unknown suspects in criminal cases. Whether these searches are for everyone who was near a building where a crime occurred or who searched for a keyword like “bomb” or who shares genetic data with a crime scene DNA sample, 2021 saw more and more of these searches—and more attempts to push back and rein in unconstitutional law enforcement behavior.

While dragnet searches were once thought to be just the province of the NSA, they are now easier than ever for domestic law enforcement to conduct as well. This is because of the massive amounts of digital information we share—knowingly or not—with companies and third parties. This data, including information on where we’ve been, what we’ve searched for, and even our genetic makeup, is stored in vast databases of consumer-generated information, and law enforcement has ready access to it—frequently without any legal process. All of this consumer data allows police to, essentially, pluck a suspect out of thin air.

EFF has been challenging unconstitutional dragnet searches for years, and we’re now seeing greater awareness and pushback from other organizations, judges, legislators, and even some companies. This post will summarize developments in 2021 on one type of dragnet suspicionless search—reverse location data searches.

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FBI ‘Secret Spy Plane Surveillance Program’ Detailed in Court Records

The FBI’s so-called “secret spy plane surveillance program” is under scrutiny in a Florida terrorism case, where the defendant has asked a U.S. judge to toss evidence from the bureau’s aerial surveillance activities.

The FBI’s aerial surveillance program was first revealed in June 2015 by the Associated Press, which reported that the bureau maintained a civilian air force through private shell companies. The FBI admitted to the program days later, saying in a statement that “it should come as no surprise that the FBI uses planes to follow terrorists, spies, and serious criminals.”

“Contrary to some recent media reporting, the FBI’s aviation program is not classified. Some of our aircraft are registered covertly because overt registration would put our aircraft and operations at risk of compromise,” the FBI said at the time.

Nevertheless, the existence of the FBI’s program sparked outrage among civil libertarians, who celebrated when U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit found in June that a similar program operated by the Baltimore Police Department violated the Fourth Amendment.

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Unarmed Woman Executed by Cop On Her Way to Work Over Alleged Speeding Ticket—Lawsuit

In June of 2020, family and friends of Hannah Fizer, 25, were shocked to learn that their beloved daughter and friend had been killed during a stop over an alleged speeding violation. Then, four months later, they learned there would be no justice and the officer who killed the unarmed woman as she sat in her vehicle — was back on the job.

Since then, Fizer’s father, John Fizer, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Pettis County seeking damages against Pettis County Deputy Jordan Schutte. The lawsuit argues the shooting was an unjustified, an excessive use of force and that Schutte did not follow several standard law enforcement protocols during the stop. When watching the video, it is entirely clear.

This week, PBS aired a minidocumentary (which you can watch below) detailing Fizer’s tragic shooting and it backs up what TFTP has been reporting since her death. As the documentary shows, the department remains unapologetic about killing Fizer.

In October 2020, the Pettis County prosecutor claimed that the officer shooting an unarmed woman during a traffic stop — dumping five rounds into her as she sat in her car — did not violate any policies. The officer “feared for his life.”

“Schutte had the ability and responsibility to prevent the use of deadly force against Ms. Fizer but failed to do so,” the lawsuit reads. “His actions contributed to Ms. Fizer’s avoidable death.”

As the documentary points out, on that fateful night on June 13, 2020, Fizer was on her way to work when she was targeted for extortion by the deputy. Just six minutes after the stop began, Fizer would have five bullet holes in her, still sitting in her car.

After killing Fizer, the deputy would claim the woman — who never made a violent threat in her life — had a gun and threatened to kill him. However, investigators found no such gun and it appears the only thing she was holding was her cellphone after letting the officer know that she was filming the stop.

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