Tag: police state

Her Leaks Exposed Global Financial Corruption. Now She Is In Prison.

A former Treasury Department official, Edwards — whose decision to leak a trove of highly confidential government documents to BuzzFeed News prompted a massive investigation that exposed how dirty money moves through the global banking system and helped spur legislative action in the US and beyond — reported to Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, on Friday morning to begin her six-month sentence. The minimum-security prison is where Martha Stewart and Billie Holiday both served time.

The information she provided to BuzzFeed News formed the basis of the FinCEN Files, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor.

But many across the US are not familiar with Edwards. Labeling her “the forgotten whistleblower,” the Washington Post described her in July as “one of the most important whistleblowers of our era, and yet hardly anyone remembers her name.”

Despite losing her freedom and most, if not all, of her family’s finances waging a legal fight, Edwards maintained she had no regrets, believing her actions will help thwart future criminals and terrorists. “I’m absolutely proud of what I did,” she said, “and I know American lives have been saved.”

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Cops Brag About Stealing Man’s Weed & Pocket Change After He Called 911 for a Tree on His Home

In spite of the fact that weed is legal in some form in well over half the country, the drug warrior predator class still viciously enforces the war on marijuana, ruining and ending countless lives from coast to coast in the process.

Showing the massive disconnect between the police and the policed is the fact that despite the majority of the country agreeing on the legalization of marijuana, police departments still shamelessly take to social media to brag about kidnapping, caging and robbing people for it.

The Glasgow police department in Kentucky is feeling the backlash of the internet this week after they took to Facebook and bragged about robbing a man of his weed and even his pocket change.

Officers originally responded to the home to “help” the occupants because a tree had fallen on their house. Instead of helping them, however, cops searched the home, stole their plant matter, money, and even a box of quarters, dimes, and nickels — shamelessly bragging about it in the process.

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Australia Traded Away Too Much Liberty

Up to now one of Earth’s freest societies, Australia has become a hermit continent. How long can a country maintain emergency restrictions on its citizens’ lives while still calling itself a liberal democracy?

Australia has been testing the limits.

Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. “Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a government website declares. “International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.” The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australia’s human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country “cannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.”

The nation’s high court struck down a challenge to the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. “It may be accepted that the travel restrictions are harsh. It may also be accepted that they intrude upon individual rights,” it ruled. “But Parliament was aware of that.” Until last month, Australians who are residents of foreign countries were exempt from the rule so they could return to their residence. But the government tightened the restrictions further, trapping many of them in the country too.

Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”

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Internet Shutdown Emerging As Authoritarian Weapon Of Choice

Over the last decade, governments worldwide have intentionally shut down the internet at least 850 times, with a whopping 90% of those shutdowns taking place over just the last five years.

What’s behind this troubling trend? “More people are getting online and getting access to the internet,” said Marianne Díaz Hernández, a lawyer in Venezuela and a fellow with the nonprofit Access Now. “As governments see this as a threat, they start thinking the internet is something they need to control.”

These staggering statistics come from a new report released Wednesday by Access Now and Jigsaw, a division of Alphabet that focuses on addressing societal threats with technology. The report documents the history of internet shutdowns over the last decade, the economic toll shutdowns take on the countries that impose them and what governments and the broader business and civil society community can do to stop what has fast become a widespread and grave human rights violation.

Felicia Anthonio leads Access Now’s #KeepItOn campaign, which has been documenting internet shutdowns since 2016. “Internet shutdowns don’t ensure stability or resolve crises that are happening,” Anthonio said. “It’s actually endangering people’s lives.”

The report, published in Jigsaw’s publication The Current, traces the recent spate of internet shutdowns back to the five-day shutdown in Egypt in 2011. Though exact data on every shutdown that has ever happened is non-existent and smaller-scale blackouts had taken place before that, the authors write, “never before had an entire country, one where more than a quarter of the population was connected to the internet, simply severed itself from the open web.”

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Court Ruling Strips Apartment Dwellers Of Fourth Amendment Rights – Leaves Hallways Open To Warrantless Police Surveillance & Arrests

Pushing back against a lower court ruling that leaves apartment dwellers vulnerable to warrantless surveillance and arrests, The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the hallways outside apartments are protected curtilage which police may not invade without a warrant or a resident’s consent. In an amicus brief filed in Sorenson v. Massachusetts, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that just as the “curtilage” of detached homes are off-limits to police without a warrant, areas immediately adjacent to an apartment should also be considered protected curtilage under the Fourth Amendment.

Affiliate attorneys David J. Feder, Nathaniel P. Garrett, and Jeremy R. Kauffman of Jones Day in California assisted in advancing the arguments in the Sorenson brief.

“As James Otis recognized, ‘A man’s house is his castle.’ Whether that castle takes the form of an apartment, a humble hut, or a mansion is not the issue,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Privacy should not depend on your home’s square footage. The Fourth Amendment forcefield that protects against warrantless government invasions and surveillance does not discriminate.”

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Cop Pleads Guilty to Filming Himself Repeatedly Rape His Own K-9, Trafficking in Child Porn

As TFTP previously reported, a police officer from the Bossier City Police Department was arrested in December 2018 for filming unspeakable acts with animals. Officer Terry Yetman, 38, was charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse of animals—producing the evidence himself—including filming sex with his own police K9. This decorated cop was also charged with 31 counts of child pornography several months later. Now, nearly 3 years after his initial arrest, Yetman has pleaded guilty.

TFTP learned at the time, Yetman, who had only been out on bail for two days for the 40 counts of animal abuse charges, was taken into custody once more and charged with 31 counts of possession of pornography involving juveniles.

According to the Louisiana State police, Yetman was originally arrested on December 19, 2018 and charged with 20 counts of sexual abuse of animals by performing sexual acts with an animal, and 20 counts of filming sexual acts with an animal.

In a plea deal, however, Yetman — despite facing over 70 charges — pleaded guilty to just one count of possession of child pornography and five counts of sexual abuse of an animal.

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This Will Not End Well: Police Now Being Authorized to Draw Blood from DUI Suspects

Multiple states now have policies in action where drinking and driving can get your blood drawn by force — for a misdemeanor. While many states require a medically trained professional to conduct the blood draw, Georgia has upped the ante by training cops to draw your blood.

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety received an impaired driving grant this month and is using it to train police officers to be vampires. While police won’t actually suck out your blood with their teeth, they will use a syringe to remove your blood from your body — even if you do not consent.

“A blood test is often the key piece of evidence needed to convict a DUI driver in court, but the barriers law enforcement officers are facing in getting blood drawn during a DUI investigation are resulting in too many of these cases going to trial without any toxicology evidence,” Allen Poole, director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, said.

The agency claims that not only will the blood evidence help prosecute cases, this could also be a deterrent if a driver knows a cop is also a phlebotomist.

“Knowing law enforcement will be able to gather forensic evidence and better prosecute the case, we’re hoping to get voluntary compliance with people not getting behind the wheel and driving,” said Roger Hayes, GOHS Law Enforcement Services Director.

But forced blood draws and increased DUI stops have done nothing to deter drunk drivers. In spite of their increased presence over the last decade, DUI checkpoints and Soviet-style roadblocks have not proven to significantly decrease DUIs.

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SURVEILLANCE STATE: “Identify and Disrupt” Bill will Give Australian Authorities Access to Any Citizen’s Social Media, Email Account Without Consent; Allow Them to Add, Delete Information and Send Messages

If you were wondering what a tyrant like Stalin or Mao would do in the age of technology, take a look down under.

The Australian parliament passed unprecedented legislation that gives federal police near-unrestricted powers to spy on any Australian citizen – by gaining access to their social media and email accounts without their knowledge – if they have been ‘suspected of criminal activity.’

The totalitarian “Identify and Disrupt” bill creates 3 new types of “data disruption” warrants that the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission can use to copy, delete and modify content on individuals online accounts. 

Federal authorities will be able to impersonate the account holder and send emails or messages to their online correspondents. 

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