Tag: police state

IRS To Require Facial Recognition To View Tax Returns

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has partnered with a Virginia-based private identification firm which requires a facial recognition selfie among other things, in order to create or access online accounts with the agency.

According to KrebsonSecurity, the IRS announced that by the summer of 2022, the only way to log into irs.gov will be through ID.me. Founded by former Army Rangers in 2010, the McLean-based company has evolved to providing online ID verification services which several states are using to help reduce unemployment and pandemic-assistance fraud. The company claims to have 64 million users.

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Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

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Militarization of America’s health care infrastructure is rapidly accelerating in preparation for medical martial law

The American deep state, in cahoots with globalists the world over, decided at the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak to use the pandemic to advance their tyrannical agendas, and they have been marching towards them with alarming speed ever since.

One of the objectives has always been gaining complete control over the U.S. healthcare system, a process that began in 2009 when then-President Barack Obama and majority Democrats introduced the misnamed “Affordable Care Act,” a.k.a. “Obamacare,” which was literally an attempt to federalize nearly all medical care in the country and give bureaucrats the authority to make life-or-death decisions regarding Americans’ health.

Obamacare survived several legal challenges and was literally declared ‘constitutional’ by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who invented language in the law to claim the individual mandate was a “tax” when even Obama said that it wasn’t. The individual mandate was repealed during Donald Trump’s first year in office after it was inserted into a major tax reform bill.

Nevertheless, the march to control U.S. health care continues, and again, the powers that be are using COVID as the platform, now even moving to militarize how we receive our care, as Reuters is reporting.

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Did You Know? US Gov’t Found Guilty In Conspiracy To Assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Though the United States government has wrapped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy in the American flag, waving his words to symbolize racial harmony and patriotic solidarity even as institutionalized White supremacy remains embedded in policies detrimental to the very Black community he tirelessly strived to uplift, very little is spoken of the fact that a Memphis jury found the United States government guilty of conspiring to assassinate Dr. King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968.

After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a swift unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 that Dr. King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, the NY Times reported at the time.

The King family, who filed the civil suit, was awarded $100. They donated the minuscule amount to charity.

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UK government hires ad agency to convince the public they don’t need privacy

The UK is stepping up its “war on encryption,” reports are saying, and like in any good old war, propaganda comes first to “prepare the ground.” And a new campaign is expected to launch as early as this month.

In this case, they call it publicity, with the Home Office being behind the effort whose goal is to sway public opinion in favor of undermining the privacy of the very members of that public – using their own money from public funds, to the tune of over half a million pounds.

Meanwhile the “hired gun” is ad agency M&C Saatchi. The Rolling Stone said it had a chance to review documents thanks to a Freedom of Information request, and that what it discovered were “some shockingly manipulative tactics.”

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Police Misbehavior Is a Crucial Threat to Liberty

Whenever I write about police abuse and use-of-force issues, I often hear from the “back the badge” crowd to defend whatever it is the police officer did in a given situation. They’re not always wrong, of course, but one recurring theme always sticks in my craw, especially given that these writers typically describe themselves as “conservatives.”

Police defenders instinctively view most situations—and expect the rest of us to do so—from the perspective of the officer. “Well, sure that African American teen was holding a cellphone rather than a gun, but how was the officer to know before he shot him?” “Sure, the SWAT team broke down the door to the wrong apartment, but mistakes happen (note the passive voice).”

One of the stated principles of conservatism is fealty to the constitution, which protects the rights of individuals against the abuses of government. Police are the face of that government. They enforce the rules that lawmakers pass. Having the right to detain or even kill you, officers literally hold all of your “rights” within their grasp.

Therefore, I spend less time worrying about the genuinely difficult challenges of officers than about my fellow citizens’ right to life and liberty. As Charlton Heston says in a Touch of Evil, “Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.” Likewise, I worry less about the frustrations of IRS agents than I do about the rights of taxpayers. Tax collectors have a legitimate job, but a true freedom-lover is primarily concerned about protecting individuals from the state.

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