Tag: police state

DHS to label white supremacists as the ‘most persistent and lethal threat’ to the US

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is set to label white supremacists as the most serious terror threat facing the United States. 

In three draft reports reviewed by Politico, DHS says the threat posed by white supremacists is more significant than the immediate danger from foreign terrorists.

“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.

Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents add.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

Kevin McAleenan, the former acting DHS secretary, ordered the agency last year to start crafting annual homeland threat assessments. The three draft documents use varying language to describe the threat posed by white supremacists, but all of them say they pose the most significant threat, according to Politico.

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The Feds Who Made America’s Fentanyl Freakout Worse

Police officers in Texas were told some terrifying news on June 26, 2018: Anti-government flyers poisoned with a deadly opioid had been placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office squad cars, and a sergeant who had touched one was en route to the hospital with overdose symptoms. The incident set off a flurry of media coverage, and it frightened police halfway across the country. The Maine Information Analysis Center forwarded Harris County’s bulletin to local departments, while the Commonwealth Fusion Center wrote its own safety alert for Massachusetts officers.

But it wasn’t true. Three days later, a laboratory analysis found that there was no fentanyl on the flyers. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office blamed the panic on a problem with field test kits.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid hundreds of times more powerful than morphine, is responsible for about half of overdose deaths in the United States. Among law enforcement, it has taken on mythical properties. First responders around the country have claimed to have nearly died from accidental exposure, based on the scientifically inaccurate idea that a deadly amount of fentanyl can pass through human skin or even poison the air around it.

That myth has spread through a surprising avenue: America’s counterterrorism agencies.

Leaked police documents reviewed by Reason show that fusion centers—local liaison offices set up by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of 9/11—have circulated fentanyl myths, causing police officers to panic and wasting first responders’ time.

The documents were first released as part of BlueLeaks, a massive trove of law enforcement data leaked by the hacker collective Anonymous. Out of 121 fentanyl-related bulletins in the BlueLeaks trove reviewed by Reason, at least 36 claimed that fentanyl could be absorbed through the skin and at least 41 discussed the alleged danger of airborne fentanyl.

FBI officials even claimed that fentanyl is “very likely a viable option” for a chemical terrorist attack in a September 2018 bulletin, although they also admitted that there is “no known credible threat reporting” suggesting that anyone was actually planning such an attack.

The more the myths spread, the more officers in the field panicked, convinced that they had fallen victim to an accidental fentanyl overdose.

Fentanyl is a genuinely dangerous drug. A state trooper in Salem County, New Jersey, fainted and had to be revived with naloxone in September 2018 during a drug bust, according to a bulletin by the New Jersey Regional Operations and Intelligence Center. The officer had touched their face with fentanyl-contaminated hands—likely bringing the drug into contact with the mouth or eyes—and later tested positive for opioid exposure.

But overdosing “from transdermal and airborne exposure to Illicitly Manufactured Fentanyl (IMF) is a near scientific impossibility,” according to the Harm Reduction Coalition.

In other words, fentanyl can’t jump through air or the skin to suddenly kill you.

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Customs And Border Protection Bought Half A Million Dollars Worth Of Location Data

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) just got its hands on a whole bunch of location data. The news service Motherboard (Vice’s technology segment) uncovered a procurement order for $476,000 paid to the company Venntel Software last month. Venntel specializes in location data mining, compiling and selling GPS data gathered on users from various phone apps.

Sources who work with Venntel gave Motherboard more insight into the type of data the government now has its hands on.

Venntel’s technology only gives anonymized data, meaning it does not identify specific people or phone numbers. It gives only a randomized identification number. BUT there is an easy way to identify the owners of the phone.

The technology allows the CBP to draw a perimeter around a geographical area, and obtain the location data for any phones in that area. In this way, CBP could draw a circle around one particular home, acquire the data from it, and surmise that the few devices in that home belong to the homeowners.

What this means:

This allows Customs and Border Protection to ignore laws that require them to obtain a warrant before surveilling particular subjects. They simply purchase the data, instead of having to show probable cause that a crime has been committed.

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Police Claim Woman Handcuffed in Back of Police Cruiser Got a Gun and Shot Herself in the Head

 Unfortunately, over the years, TFTP has reported on several incidents in which people handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser have managed to somehow get their hands on a gun and then somehow shoot themselves in the head. In 2018, Sarah Wilson allegedly grabbed a gun and shot herself in the head while handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser. Her death was ruled a suicide. Victor White III, 22, was handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser in Louisiana and also allegedly grabbed a gun and shot himself in the back of a police cruiser. Like Wilson, his death was also ruled a suicide. Now, another investigation is underway as it’s happened yet again.

Authorities are now investigating the death of a 30-year-old woman in police custody who officers say managed to obtain a gun while handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser, and kill herself.

The unnamed woman was being transported by police between two hospitals for a mental health evaluation and would never make it to her destination.

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Court Refuses Qualified Immunity for Alabama Cop Who ‘Insulted’ and Killed Man Who Was Trying to Help Stray Dog

A federal appeals court on Thursday declined to grant qualified immunity to an Alabama police officer who shot and killed a man “without warning” for failing to show identification after he attempted to help a stray dog his family found in a parking lot.

Robert Earl Lawrence was shot in the stomach by Dothan Police Sergeant Adrianne Woodruff and he bled out on the pavement “on the next to last day of the year” in 2014. His three young children and his girlfriend were in the car–screaming while it happened.

Prior to his death and altercation with police, Lawrence, reportedly a sovereign citizen, was just trying to help the dog his family found near the local Walmart by taking it to the Dothan Animal Shelter.

But Lawrence’s attempt to help quickly went askew.

“The receptionist told Lawrence that they accepted dogs only from residents of Houston County,” the court notes. “He told her that he was from nearby Geneva County but had found the dog in Houston County. She agreed to take the dog but asked for his identification. He refused to provide it, claiming that being required to do so would violate his federal privacy rights.”

A brief argument ensued and Woodruff entered the room–reiterating the shelter’s policy about accepting strays and advising Lawrence to fill out an intake form. He declined and left the shelter, “carrying the dog with him,” saying he would just leave the animal on the road.

Woodruff followed Lawrence out and warned him that dumping the dog would be considered a crime. She also copied down his tag number–in line with a policy for people who threaten to dump animals the shelter refuses to take in. As Lawrence got into his car, Woodruff grabbed him from behind and said “You’re not leaving.”

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Court rules NSA phone snooping illegal — after 7-year delay

The National Security Agency program that swept up details on billions of Americans’ phone calls was illegal and possibly unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

However, the unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the role the so-called telephone metadata program played in a criminal terror-fundraising case against four Somali immigrants was so minor that it did not undermine their convictions.

The long-awaited decision is a victory for prosecutors, but some language in the court’s opinion could be viewed as a rebuke of sorts to officials who defended the snooping by pointing to the case involving Basaaly Moalin and three other men found guilty by a San Diego jury in 2013 on charges of fundraising for Al-Shabaab.

Judge Marsha Berzon’s opinion, which contains a half-dozen references to the role of former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in disclosing the NSA metadata program, concludes that the “bulk collection” of such data violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The call-tracking effort began without court authorization under President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A similar program was approved by the secretive FISA Court beginning in 2006 and renewed numerous times, but the 9th Circuit panel said those rulings were legally flawed.

The appeals court stopped just short of saying that the snooping was definitely unconstitutional, but rejected the Justice Department’s arguments that collecting the metadata did not amount to a search under a 40-year-old legal precedent because customers voluntarily share such info with telephone providers.

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