Tag: police state

U.S. Capitol Police Tell Federal Court January 6 Disturbance Videos Are Not Public Records

Judicial Watch announced today the U.S. Capitol Police seeks to shut down a public records lawsuit for January 6 disturbance video and emails by arguing to a federal court that the requested are “not public records.”

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in February 2021 under the common law right of access to public records after the Capitol Police refused to provide any records in response to a January 21, 2021, request for:

  • Email communications between the U.S. Capitol Police Executive Team and the Capitol Police Board concerning the security of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The timeframe of this request is from January 1, 2021 through January 10, 2021.
  • Email communications of the Capitol Police Board with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concerning the security of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The timeframe of this request is from January 1, 2021 through January 10, 2021.
  • All video footage from within the Capitol between 12 pm and 9 pm on January 6, 2021.

Regarding withholding the videos, the Capitol Police told the court:

The USCP’s camera security system, including footage recorded by it within the Capitol and sought by [Judicial Watch], is solely for national security and law enforcement purposes.

Access to video footage from the USCP’s camera security system is limited to narrow circumstances and strictly controlled by USCP policy.

The USCP has not made any public disclosures of video footage from January 6 from its camera security system.

There are currently pending criminal investigations and prosecutions of individuals involved in the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

There are currently pending congressional investigations into the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In its motion, the Capitol Police also argues the case should be closed because, among other assertions, even if the records Judicial Watch asks for are “public records,” the USCP’s interests in confidentiality “outweigh any public interest in those materials.”

It also claims not to have access to many of the emails sought by Judicial Watch.

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Victoria, Australia will ‘LOCK OUT’ unvaccinated people from its economy

The Australian state of Victoria will “lock out” unvaccinated people from participating in the economy, Premier Dan Andrews has announced.

Victoria is currently under draconian lockdown restrictions, with residents of Melbourne – who make up the vast majority of the state’s population – living under a 9pm to 5am curfew, forbidden from leaving their homes except to work, buy groceries, or get a Covid-19 vaccination. When the lockdown is lifted, Premier Dan Andrews said on Sunday, future restrictions will apply only to those who are unvaccinated.

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Gov’t Threatens Kodak Black with Cease and Desist Over Donating AC Units to Housing Projects

In July of this year, as residents of the Golden Acres Projects sweltered in their homes during an oppresive Florida heatwave, rapper Kodak Black decided to step in and help them out. On the 4th of July, Black arrived in the neighborhood with a truck full of 100 AC units to hand out. He went door to door himself to hand out the units.

“We out here passing out AC units, helping install them,” Kodak said in a video posted to social media. “We do it for the projects, we do it for the projects. The people relying on just enough cash to survive. We’ll get you all ACs man, we out here.”

Many of the residents were brought to tears by the kind act which may have quite literally saved some of their lives.

“A lot of times people get it twisted. They be like, ‘Man, Kodak sleep, Kodak this, Kodak that.’ Well check this out. Kodak back in his hood, man, giving back. It’s nothing new. You just happen to be a part of it today, that’s it.”

While the community celebrated their new AC units and the fact that they could now cool their homes, the government was working behind the scenes to do what government does.

Fast forward to this month and the Housing Authority of Pompano Beach made sure that no good deed goes unpunished. TMZ reports the Housing Authority of Pompano Beach issued a cease and desist letter to Kodak, claiming that he caused “disturbances” when delivering air-conditioning units to a housing project in July.

“Your actions have adversely impacted the Property’s residents’ right to peacefully enjoy the property,” the letter reads, according to TMZ.

The authority also claimed that the rapper’s subsequent music video, which was shot in the same location, also caused a “disturbance.”

Others disagree, however, and Black’s attorney, Bradford Cohen, responded with a letter of his own reprimanding the housing authority for their “wish to stop the assistance to the elderly and underprivileged during a heat wave and 2 year pandemic.”

The Libertarian Party VP candidate for 2020, Spike Cohen, also shared some harsh words about the government’s response to a rapper donating AC units to those in need.

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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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