Tag: police state

The FBI is spending millions on social media tracking software

Social media users seemed to foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it. 

Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.

The FBI has contracted for 5,000 licenses to use Babel X, a software made by Babel Street that lets users search social media sites within a geographic area and use other parameters.

The contract began March 30 and is worth as much as $27 million. The FBI has already agreed to pay an IT vendor around $5 million for the first year of the contract, procurement records indicate. The contract has not previously been reported.

The Justice Department has previously had Babel X in its arsenal, contracting records show. But the new contract appears to be by far the most the agency has ever shelled out for the software, and is one of the largest contracts for the software by a civilian agency, experts said.

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Washington State Is BANNING Non-Electric Cars by 2030

As 1984 gains a firmer grasp on the modern world, one recent bill has caused it to spread its reach even further: a bill inserted within Washington state’s $16.9 billion “Move Aside Ahead Washington” package. This new piece of paper, signed by Washington governor Jay Inslee on March 25, now makes it so that police will enforce all vehicles sold, purchased, or registered within the state to be electric vehicles by 2030.

Sec. 415. (1) A target is established for the state that all publicly owned and privately owned passenger and light-duty vehicles of model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in Washington state be electric vehicles.

(2) On or before December 31, 2023, the interagency electric vehicle coordinating council created in section 428 of this act shall complete a scoping plan for achieving the 2030 target.

According to Inslee, this bill will “create more efficient transportation options,” as he says that “Transportation is our state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is no way to talk about climate change without talking about transportation.”

Inslee went on to add, “This package will move us away from the transportation system our grandparents imagined and towards the transportation system our grandchildren dream of.”

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Police Seized Almost $10,000 From Him. A Court Ruled He Had No Right to an Attorney.

In April 2015, police in Indiana seized almost $10,000 from Terry Abbott after he was arrested for selling drugs to a confidential informant.

Cops used a process known as civil forfeiture, allowing them to proceed with pocketing those funds prior to securing a criminal conviction. Naturally, Abbott attempted to challenge that action in court. But he lost his attorney—as the money he would use to pay for that counsel had been taken by the state.

So for years he had to represent himself.

The Indiana Supreme Court on Tuesday decided that’s in keeping with the law—ruling that defendants have no right to use their seized funds to finance legal representation.

“We do not find the legislature intended this language to give the court equitable authority to order the seized property released to the defendant to defend the forfeiture action,” wrote Justice Steven H. David, noting that the court’s hands were tied by the relevant statute on the books.

Central to the American criminal justice system is that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty. But civil forfeiture isn’t a criminal action; it’s a civil one, occurring in civil court, where defendants are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer. Only in certain extraordinary circumstances, the court ruled, is the state required to provide one.

Abbott didn’t qualify. This means that, in cases like his, the government is able to put defendants in a chokehold by seizing the very assets that they would use to defend themselves against such a seizure. Fighting to get your cash back is a bit difficult when the government has taken all of your cash.

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Why the Feds Intentionally Poisoned Americans During Prohibition, Killing Thousands—and Why You’ve Never Heard about It

I was recently invited to speak to a student group about alcohol prohibition. During the course of my talk, I shared with them perhaps the most chilling historical account of America’s failed experiment to ban the sale of alcohol.

The Prohibition Era (1920 -1933), which began with the passage of the Volstead Act, had many problems. Virtually overnight, millions of Americans became criminals for the “crime” of having a drink. Instead of people trading money for a jug of beer or a bottle of gin, they had to make their own or turn to the black market. It resulted in a surge of organized crime and the rise of many of the most notorious gangsters in history, including Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Charles “Lucky” Luciano.

“In the absence of Prohibition, we wouldn’t have had the kind of syndicated criminality that occurred. Prohibition was the catalyst,” explains Howard Abadinsky, professor of criminal justice at St. John’s University and the author of the book Organized Crime.

One might think the surge of organized crime—which resulted in a corresponding surge of law enforcement to suppress it—would be the darkest consequence of Prohibition. It was not.

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Nothing Has Changed Since George Floyd Died, US Cops Still Kill Someone Every 8 Hours

It has been nearly two years since Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. At the time, Floyd’s death would set off massive protests across the country as politicians and political pundits played lip service to Black Lives Matter and others, as they offered up their hollow support. Illustrating the extremely hollow nature of their “support” is the fact that despite all the appeals to emotion, the toothless “reform” bills, and incessant gaslighting — absolutely nothing has changed.

As the fourth month of 2022 begins, American cops are keeping to their deadly numbers like clockwork. One quarter of the year is over and cops have killed more than 250 people — right on track with previous years. This number is set to increase by one, on average, every 8 hours, every single day, of every single week, of every single month, of every single year.

The Biden administration promised change but since he’s been in office, it’s been more of the same, and, in fact, has gotten worse. Last year’s budget (FY 2021) for the hiring program, approved under Trump, was set at $156.5 million. Biden more than doubled the funding for it in FY 2022.

The “defund the police” movement has since morphed into a “fund the police” more movement, spearheaded by the very people who promised to do the opposite. Biden just released a “fund the police” budget proposal in March for $30bn more in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put “more police officers on the beat.”

America spends more on policing than every other country in the world spends on their entire militaries, except for China. But if we remove China from the picture, US law enforcement would be the largest military in the world — and it’s deployed right here in the land of the free.

Despite all this spending, crime in many areas is on the rise, corruption in police is rampant, and police in America are still killing unarmed and even innocent people. And what do the politicians do to fix it? Increase spending.

Since 2018, cops in America have killed 4,761 citizens. And politicians want to give them more money, as if that is the solution.

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Pennsylvania State Sen. Doug Mastriano Wanted Government to Publicly Report Identities of Everyone Who Got Coronavirus

Republican Pennsylvania State Senator and Gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano proposed rolling back medical privacy protections during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Friday report from the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The Capital-Star located several of Mastriano’s memos and press releases from 2020 — which were reportedly removed from his website — through an Internet archival resource. In one such document from March 17, 2020, Mastriano said he was concerned that “existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens…” He went on:

I am concerned that existing HIPAA regulations are threatening the lives of our citizens and depriving Pennsylvania residents of knowing if – and when – they were exposed to a contagious person. This emergency measure is necessary to share vital and life-saving medical information with those who may have been subjected to this dangerous virus. The new information that would become available would help us combat the spread of the Coronavirus.

Mastriano, who has since built his brand around “personal freedom,” introduced a measure calling up the federal government to temporarily suspend HIPAA and “allow for full disclosure of details that are currently considered private, and are not disclosed to the public.” He said:

It is deeply concerning that the federal government did not proactively roll back this dangerous policy, which endangers our people. This situation changes daily – it remains my top priority to do what is in the best interest of protecting public health, and this measure will increase transparency in an effort to quell the spread of this virus.

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New York City Will Mandate Masks for Children Under 5 Years Old

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that the city would mandate children aged 2 to 4 to continue wearing masks after a judge issued an order in favor of his administration.

“Every decision we make is with our children’s health and safety in mind. Children between 2 and 4 should continue to wear their masks in school and daycare come Monday,” the Democrat mayor said on Twitter on April 1.

It came after State Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio earlier that day struck down the city’s mask order for young children. However, an appellate court issued a stay in the lower court’s ruling, allowing the mask mandate to remain intact amid the appeals process.

Porzio stated that the mandate was “absurd” after it was lifted for children aged 5 and older, and characterized it as “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” That ruling was handed down in response to a lawsuit from a group of parents who sued Adams and New York City agencies.

“Universal masking, therefore, presents one of the strongest, if not the strongest defense against COVID-19 for settings with children ages two to four,” New York City attorneys said in court papers, although numerous studies have shown that young children have exceedingly low COVID-19 death and hospitalization rates compared with other age groups—even compared with older children.

“For these reasons,” the city added, “throughout the pandemic, both the City and New York State had more stringent rules in place for this setting.”

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