Tag: police state

COVID Whistleblower Sentenced to 4 More Years in Prison Over Reporting: Rights Group

Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan has been sentenced to another four years in prison for her early reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic as it initially broke out in China, according to French international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Zhang was initially imprisoned in December 2020 and put on trial again on Sept. 19 to face the same charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a controversial statute the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to target political dissidents.

“She should be celebrated globally as an ‘information hero,’ not trapped in brutal prison conditions,” RSF Asia-Pacific advocacy manager Aleksandra Bielakowska said in a Sept. 20 statement.

“Her ordeal and persecution must end. It is more urgent than ever for the international diplomatic community to pressure Beijing for her immediate release.”

It was a closed trial, with police surrounding the courthouse to prevent entry.

Although the case has gained significant international attention, Chinese authorities also barred foreign diplomats from observing the proceedings.

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China’s internet ID push signals a new era of digital control

On July 15, China passed new legislation known as the National Network Identity Authentication, also called Internet ID.

Under this new law, Chinese citizens would voluntarily enroll via a government app, submitting their true name and a facial scan, after which they would be issued a unique ID code used for all online accounts. As of May, approximately 6 million individuals had already obtained IDs during the pilot phase.

Based upon the nature of the control the Chinese Communist Party has over media and censorship, it is not surprising the Chinese government desires the ability to track its population during their internet sessions, especially those citizens who would be critical of the current regime or dissidents that are living outside mainland China.

The new Internet ID law expands on an ongoing digital authoritarianism agenda pursued by China in recent years. Already, the Chinese government has demonstrated its growing capacity and willingness to monitor its citizens’ online activities. 

From the widespread usage of internet backbone filtering through the “Great Firewall” to the mandatory real-name registration implemented since 2010, Beijing has increasingly restricted avenues for anonymous speech online. The new ID system is designed to further tighten the government’s grip on cyberspace at an individual level.

This law would enable the Chinese government, enabled by the new digital ID system, to centralize user identities in a government-controlled database, allowing authorities to track which user fronts which online account, even if platforms only see the anonymized token. 

This approach applies nation-state censorship in a more individualized way and introduces the possibility that content may be filtered or platforms blocked for certain users, both within China, where the government manages internet access, and potentially on a broader scale. 

It could allow the Chinese government to use filters and blocking mechanisms within a platform to limit access to certain services associated with a personalized digital ID for specific individuals.

While the legislation claims to be voluntary at launch, many fear that adoption could gradually become mandatory. In China’s regulatory environment, the “voluntary” label has frequently functioned as a transitional stage before compulsory enforcement. 

Authorities have encouraged social media giants, e-commerce platforms and even payment providers to begin integrating the Internet ID into their user authentication flows. If access to essential digital services becomes dependent on possession of this ID, individuals may find their ability to function online is effectively contingent upon submitting their biometric and personal data to the state.

This law is just the next step in China’s desire for digital authoritarianism, enhancing the government’s ability to surveil, monitor, shape and control a population down to the individual citizen level. 

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91-Year-Old Pennsylvania Woman With Dementia Loses $247,000 Home Over a $14,000 Tax Debt

In yet another example of what is colloquially known as home equity theft, a 91-year-old Pennsylvania woman has lost her home—and all of its worth—over a small tax debt. But the case just outside of Philadelphia is a particularly vivid illustration of a predatory and gruesome practice that the Supreme Court broadly ruled unconstitutional in 2023.

In 2020, Gloria Gaynor (not the disco queen) forewent her yearly trip to the tax office during COVID-19, recounted Jackie Davis, her daughter, to the local ABC affiliate for its excellent report on the story. Gaynor’s faculties noticeably declined around then, according to Davis. Even still, the Upper Darby resident returned in 2021 to pay her property taxes, her attorney said, under the impression that the pause in enforcement meant the government would apply her money toward the previous year. Instead, it went to 2021, and her debt from 2020 remained intact.

As these things go, it continued to grow. Her $3,500 bill ultimately reached $14,419 with penalties, interest, and fees. The government sold that debt to a real estate firm, the CJD Group, which then acquired the deed to the home.

The rub is that the home is worth over 17 times that. Yet Gaynor—who had nearly paid off the mortgage—will not see a dime in equity, despite that she owed the government $232,000 less than what the home is ultimately worth.

Regular Reason readers may be familiar with Tyler v. Hennepin County, the 2023 Supreme Court case that ruled home equity theft illegal. The plaintiff, 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler, fell behind on her property taxes after some unsettling neighborhood incidents prompted her move from her Minneapolis condominium to a retirement home. She subsequently struggled to pay both her rent and her property taxes. So the local government seized the condo, sold it for $40,000, and kept the $25,000 in excess of her tax debt, which included steep penalties, interest, and fees.

“A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the State to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.”

It was a good decision. But Gaynor’s plight highlights one way governments are getting around it: by selling properties for the value of the debt—instead of putting it on the market or selling it at auction—so that there is no excess equity to speak of.

That doesn’t mean, of course, the equity doesn’t exist. It does. It is just now in the hands of a private company, as opposed to the elderly woman who spent the last 25 or so years paying off the mortgage, and nearly finishing.

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Should Elected Officials Censor Americans? Trump’s Administration Says Yes.

Last week, a gunman in Utah shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk. It was a brutal and tragic event, regardless of one’s politics. And yet the fallout of Kirk’s murder has revealed a disturbing hostility toward free speech on the political right.

Republicans have long cast themselves as defenders of free speech against cancel culture and the censorial impulses of the political left. And there was merit to the argument—Reason has covered many cases of overreach.

But over the last week, MAGA Republicans have scoured social media for government employees posting about Kirk’s murder, contacting employers in an attempt to get them fired. “Kirk’s online defenders have snitch-tagged the employers of government workers over social media posts saying they don’t care about the assassination, that they didn’t like Kirk even as they condemn his assassination, and even criticizing Kirk prior to his assassination,” Reason‘s Christian Britschgi wrote this week. Even for nongovernmental employees, social media detectives apparently compiled a database with tens of thousands of people who criticized Kirk, including their names and employers.

Of course, that’s just people online. It’s not like those with government power are advocating such a thing, right?

“I would think maybe their [broadcast] license should be taken away,” President Donald Trump told reporters this week on Air Force One, about TV networks. “All they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer,” Vice President J.D. Vance said while guest-hosting Kirk’s podcast this week. “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Vance’s argument bears a striking resemblance to the comments made just a few years ago by his ideological enemies. When certain public and not-so-public figures received backlash for offensive statements, some commentators noted that this was not cancel culture, it was “consequence culture”—people merely experiencing the consequences of their actions.

It’s no surprise that Trump has no principles on free speech—from the beginning of his first term, he called the press the “enemy of the American people.” But Vance’s position marks a notable pivot from just a few months ago.

“Just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite,” Vance said in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February. “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square, agree or disagree.”

Now, Vance seems less keen on defending someone’s right to offer views that he personally disagrees with. Unfortunately, he’s not alone.

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Trump proposes revoking licenses of critical American TV networks

US President Donald Trump has floated the idea of “maybe” revoking the broadcast licenses of American television networks that provide negative coverage of him.

The suggestion came a day after ABC indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, following what it called “offensive and insensitive” comments made by the comedian about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Kimmel claimed on his program that Trump and his supporters were trying to “score political points” over Kirk’s killing and compared the president’s reaction to his death to “how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

Trump, who was returning from the UK aboard Air Force One on Thursday, told journalists that TV networks “give me only bad publicity or press.”

“I mean, they are getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away,” he said.

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The “Charlie Kirk Act”, Free Speech, Propaganda, And A Censorship Nightmare

As of the date of this writing, September 17th, 2025, it is Constitution Day. Despite this, in 2025 America, the Constitution is being eroded more than ever before. Just read any of constitutional attorney and founder of The Rutherford Institute, John W. Whitehead’s essays on the matter.

The infringements are endless, with masked agents running amok, disappearing people off the streets, extrajudicial executions at sea, military deployed domestically as law enforcement, unconstitutional wars waged, illegal mass surveillance on every American, warrantless search and seizure, debt-based Fiat currency, and so much more.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The only way for Americans to sit by and allow their freedoms to die at such a magnitude is to keep them perpetually distracted and apathetic. This is why 5th-generation warfare comes in so handy for the ruling class. Keep the entire population besieged from all sides at all times, economically, biologically, informationally, neurologically, so utterly saturated, so deep in the trenches, they don’t even realize they’re in a war.

When the average tax cattle are so exhausted from capitalist exploitation just to meet the bear standards for survival, so psychologically fatigued from the constant influx of doom porn, and the various other ways that the rat race is designed to keep us exhausted and unfulfilled while being simultaneously bombarded with socially engineered algorithms feeding into echo chambers it’s easy to keep the masses focused on manufactured outrage and fake culture wars, or shallow celebrity gossiping and rigged sports-ball entertainment. Blissfully unaware or uncaring of how their rights are being stripped away every day

The most fundamental of these freedoms is guaranteed to us in the 1st amendment — freedom of speech, freedom of expression, among others. That simple principle is the litmus test of a free society: Can you speak your mind freely without reprisal from the state? For believers in America’s founding ideals, the answer should be a resounding yes. And yet politicians and citizens alike oftentimes seem all too keen on allowing their principles to be pulled by puppet strings, ethically ambiguous and logically inconsistent.

Last week’s heinous murder of controversial conservative pundit Charlie Kirk has brought these issues to the forefront of our current discourse. Kirk based his entire brand on exercising the First Amendment, engaging in public debates with individuals whose ideological position opposed his own until he was ultimately gunned down last week.

Already, there are numerous discrepancies in the official story of the assassination, and much in line with the old adage of not letting a good crisis go to waste, the usual suspects have wasted no time in exploiting his death to ramp up the divide and conquer rhetoric. On the heels of attempting to make him a martyr, many on the right who previously grandstanded for free speech are now openly demanding the erasure of the rights that Charlie himself embodied.

But let’s not mince words here and call a spade a spade; none of this being said is to put him on a pedestal. Charlie Kirk was a professional liar, a propagandist of the highest degree who promulgated blatantly false, oftentimes bigoted, authoritarian rhetoric. He built a career off of perpetuating the fake left versus right dichotomy, exploiting the base he cultivated by inflaming the fears, anger, hatred, sadness, and anxieties of conservatives. While this was probably not Kirk’s intention, as he himself was likely just as much a victim of government propaganda that ultimately fomented his views, it was most definitely the result. Yet despite all of this, anyone who claims to actually support free speech should still support his right to express his ideas, no matter how much one may disagree with them.

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From Dictator to example: while the left criticized Bukele for militarizing El Salvador, achieving 1,000 days without homicides, Belgium now copies his strategy to curb crime

He was called a dictator. They accused him of using the military to repress and violating human rights. Progressive voices in Europe and the Americas were outraged when Nayib Bukele flooded the streets with soldiers to confront the gangs that had brought El Salvador to its knees.

But the truth is different: thanks to that bold decision, El Salvador achieved what seemed impossible. A full 1,000 days without homicides. Neighborhoods once dominated by terror are now filled with families. Thousands of gang members are behind bars. Life has returned to a country once held hostage by crime.

Bukele always made it clear: the safety of his people takes precedence over the opinions of foreign bureaucrats. He never asked for permission to save lives. He ignored the editorials of progressive media and the speeches of the European left. His focus was on the people of his country.

Now, the hypocrisy stands exposed. In Brussels, the capital of Belgium, the same government that criticized Bukele is considering deploying the military to the streets to stop a wave of organized crime shootings. When Europe does it, it’s called a strategy.

When a Hispanic American country does it, it’s labeled a dictatorship.

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New York Wants Online Digital ID Rules for Social Media Feeds Under “SAFE For Kids Act”

New York is advancing a set of proposed regulations that would require social media platforms to verify users’ ages before granting access to algorithm-driven feeds or allowing nighttime alerts.

Attorney General Letitia James introduced the draft rules on Monday, tied to the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) For Kids Act, which was signed into law last year by Governor Kathy Hochul.

Presented as part of an effort to reduce mental health harms linked to social media, the law would compel platforms to restrict algorithmic content for anyone under 18 or anyone who hasn’t completed an age verification process, which would mean the introduction of digital ID checks to access online platforms.

In those cases, users would be limited to seeing content in chronological order from accounts they already follow.

Platforms would also be barred from sending notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. to those users.

The rules give companies some flexibility in how they confirm a user’s age, as long as the method is considered effective and designed to protect personal data.

Acceptable alternatives to submitting a government ID include facial analysis that estimates age. Any identifying information collected during verification must be deleted “immediately,” according to the proposal.

For minors to access personalized algorithmic feeds, parental permission would be required.

That too involves a verification step, with the same data-deletion requirements in place once the process is complete.

The SAFE For Kids Act targets platforms where user-generated content is central and where at least 20 percent of time spent involves engagement with feeds tailored to user behavior or device data.

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Bipartisan Lawmakers Propose Federal Digital Identity Agency

A bipartisan push in Congress is calling for the creation of a federal agency to regulate digital identity systems, at a time of growing concerns over the digital ID push.

Representatives Bill Foster of Illinois and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania are leading the initiative, which would give the new agency broad authority to certify and audit both the software and hardware used to verify identities online.

Current federal guidance, such as that from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, remains optional.

The proposed agency would go further by establishing rules that digital ID systems must follow. It would serve as an independent authority to evaluate whether a technology is secure enough for government or commercial use, particularly as digital ID tools become more widespread.

Foster, a longtime proponent of government involvement in digital identity policy, has previously introduced versions of the Improving Digital Identity Act. That legislation called for the development of consent-based systems to allow people to confirm their identity online without relying on private platforms or vulnerable credentials.

“The next best thing you can do is provide people with at least the ability to prove they are who they say they are and not a deepfake,” he said last year.

But the push for a national digital identity framework raises serious alarms for privacy advocates who warn that such systems could erode the last vestiges of online anonymity.

By tying identity verification directly to state-issued credentials and biometric data, digital ID programs risk creating a surveillance infrastructure where every online interaction, transaction, or login is linked back to a traceable individual.

This fundamentally changes the nature of the internet, replacing pseudonymous participation with state-verified presence.

Privacy protections promised by digital ID proponents often hinge on enforcement by government agencies that have a long history of overreach.

While lawmakers emphasize that these tools will help curb fraud or impersonation, they rarely address how digital identity mandates could chill free speech.

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Welcome To Big Brother’s Digital Prison, Part I: Central Bank Digital Currencies

Globalist leaders are working at full speed to introduce central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). A CBDC is a digital currency that is issued directly by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve in the US, the European Central Bank in the EU’s eurozone, and the Bank of England in the UK.

A CBDC will be the final straw that ensures that every dream of suppression and control that the globalists nurture will come true. Several of those dreams are already a reality, including shutting down dissent and free speech, as in Europe, where people are routinely fined and arrested for saying things their governments do not like. A host of other controlling measures are already in the works, including herding people into “15-minute cities” where it is easier to monitor them, keep tabs on their use of private cars, decide what they can and cannot eat – ideally “ecologically preferable” bugs and lab-grown meat, no beef or cheese — track their “carbon footprints”, determine where and how they can travel, oversee their vaccines and so on.

The Oxford-educated, German economist Richard A. Werner said in an interview last year.

“The push for CBDCs is the final step in a multi-decade program by central planners to increase their power over the people and over countries. This is the ultimate step because the powers of CBDCs are so extraordinary that, I mean, even the worst dictators of past centuries could only have dreamt of having such enormous power over the lives of so many people.

“We are talking about a very dystopian future if we allow central banks to issue central bank digital currencies. You know, even if the original designers and heads of central banks who are launching this are super well-meaning, you know, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, we just know what human nature is like and history is the best guide…

“I think the power would be abused, if not by the original generation of launchers, then by the next generation…. It will be a completely totalitarian system of such frightening proportions, it’s hard to imagine…

“The micromanaging decision [about your spending] will then be automated and… you have no right to appeal the algorithm… You just won’t be able to use your money for certain things and then there is nothing that you can do… That by definition ends freedom….

“Dictators like Stalin and other dictators, they could only have dreamt of, you know, the enormous power that central bank digital currencies give to central planners… We are talking about dystopian digital prisons that will be created through central bank digital currencies, because the programmability – and this has been mentioned in the studies by the central banks – include of course geography, and there is this proposal for climate change, whatever reasons, that people… should stay within their 15-minute walking small local area… and there will be digital controls… when you walk with all your RFID chips in your cards and your CBDC anyway, of course you will be immediately recognized if you’re out of the area and you will be punished. It’s a digital prison.”

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