Tag: police state

Australia’s “eSafety” Commissioner Threatens App Stores Over AI Age Verification Deadline

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is threatening to go after app stores and search engines unless they block AI services that haven’t verified their users’ ages by March 9, 2026.

The ultimatum landed after a Reuters took it upon itself to survey 50 leading text-based AI platforms, and found that 30 of them had taken no visible steps toward compliance with the country’s controversial censorship and surveillance ideas.

“eSafety will use the full range of our powers where there is non-compliance,” a spokesperson said, spelling out that this extends to “action in respect of gatekeeper services such as search engines and app stores that provide key points of access to particular services.”

What’s actually being built here is bigger than age verification. Five industry codes taking effect March 9 under Australia’s Online Safety Act 2021 impose age-gating requirements across a wide range of services: AI platforms, app distribution services, social media, gaming, dating apps, and any website deemed high-risk for pornography, extreme violence, or self-harm content.

Every category gets its own code. Each non-compliance carries fines of up to A$49.5 million (around US$35 million). The system isn’t aimed at one corner of the internet. It covers most of it.

The age verification requirement doesn’t stand alone. Under a separate amendment to the Online Safety Act passed last year, social media platforms must already ban users under 16 entirely.

The March 9 codes extend that logic further, requiring services to verify the identity of users and filter what they can see based on age. The infrastructure being assembled connects age to identity to content access across the internet as Australians currently use it.

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UK Government Brands Union Flag A ‘TOOL OF HATE’ In Leaked ‘Social Cohesion’ Strategy

A leaked draft of the UK Government’s new ‘social cohesion’ strategy has sparked outrage by labeling the flying of English, Scottish, and Union Jack flags as potential “tools of hate.”

The document claims these national symbols were sometimes used last summer to “exclude or intimidate,” adding that the “extreme right has tried to turn symbols of pride into tools of hate.”

The 47-page draft, leaked to the Spectator magazine, also highlights how antisemitism has become “normalised in many corners of society” from schools and universities to workplaces and the NHS.

Under the proposals, titled Protecting What Matters, some £800 million over 10 years would be allocated to 40 areas where social cohesion is “under pressure.”

The strategy is set for a cross-Government rollout next week, but critics are already slamming it as divisive.

Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice blasted the draft, telling the Sun: “Absurdly, this says our national flag is a tool of hate used to intimidate. The whole paper is a divisive nonsense that should be consigned to the bin.”

The leak ties directly into ongoing controversies over national flags, as detailed in our previous coverage where English councils admitted spending tens of thousands to remove “unauthorised” English and Union Jack flags from lampposts.

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UK Mulls Banning 67 Dog Breeds for ‘Animal Health’ — but Is That Really the Reason?

After all these years, it turns out that your beloved pooch may be “unhealthy,” so much so that his breed has to be banned. This dire news comes from the far-left government of the United Kingdom, where beagles, dachshunds, mastiffs, great danes, boxers, and saint bernards may soon be a thing of the past. All in all, the government is considering banning no fewer than sixty-seven dog breeds, with the stated reason being animal health. This is so implausible, however, that it cries out for another explanation, and there is an obvious one that doesn’t bode well for Britain’s future as a free society.

The UK’s Daily Mail reported Thursday that this initiative comes from the top: “Sixty-seven dog breeds could be banned in Britain if new breeding guidelines set by parliament become mandatory, campaigners have warned.” This is because “the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for animal welfare has launched a new tool to determine if a dog is healthy.”

Why was a new tool to determine if a dog is healthy needed now, to the extent that the British parliament has a group devoted to studying this question? Is Britain suffering a plague of unhealthy dogs? Are these legions of unhealthy dogs infecting their owners with diseases of some kind?

None of that seems to be the case; on the contrary, this sudden parliamentary fascination with canine health seems to be entirely a bolt from the blue, and the parliamentary group’s criteria for what constitutes sufficient dog health look just as arbitrary: “The cross-party committee has developed a 10-point checklist of extreme physical characteristics which can make for a poorly pooch. They include mottled colouration, excessive skin folds, bulging outward-turning eyes, drooping eyelids, under or overbite and a muzzle that interrupts breathing.”

The upshot of this is that numerous breeds of dog that are perfectly healthy but which have a coloration or skin folds or eyes to which parliament objects may end up being banned. And parliament means business: “The assessment – which is currently voluntary but expected to become law within five years – aims to drive out breeds with these sorts of exaggerated attributes.”

The claim is that this is all about caring for the poor dears, just as Canada’s euthanasia program is supposed to be all about alleviating pain and suffering. Britain’s anti-dog push “comes after studies have shown animals of these varieties can sometimes suffer pain, discomfort and frustration from birth.” However, “critics have cautioned the new criteria will see some 67 of the most popular types of dog in the UK automatically dubbed unhealthy.” These include “widely adored breeds like dachshunds, shih tzus and Scottish terriers – and even the late Queen’s beloved Welsh corgis.”

Given that these claims about the health of well-known and beloved dog breeds are so implausible, what else could be going on here? Well, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) recently landed himself in hot water when he posted this on X: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” Could it be that Muslims in Britain are forcing exactly this choice, or that Britain’s far-left Labour government is trying to ensure that the country’s growing and restive Muslim population continues to vote for Labour en masse?

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When 7‑OH Fears Drive Policy by Anecdote

For generations, communities in Southeast Asia have used the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa — kratom — brewed as a drink to relieve pain and steady mood. Its principal alkaloids, mitragynine and the more potent 7‑hydroxymitragynine, act on opioid receptors and produce analgesic effects.

Kratom has since gained a significant presence in the United States, where consumers often use it as an alternative to prescription opioids or as a self-directed aid in managing withdrawal. It is sold in teas, capsules, powders, and concentrated extracts, with purified 7‑OH products increasingly appearing in vape shops, convenience stores, and online markets.

Regulators are now moving toward prohibition. Last July, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced plans to urge the Drug Enforcement Administration to place 7‑OH in Schedule I — the same legal category as heroin.

Supporters of these efforts argue that kratom — especially high-potency 7‑OH — could fuel the next wave of overdose deaths. But the data tell a different story.

Fatal overdoses in which 7‑OH has been implicated are exceedingly rare, and deaths linked to kratom more broadly are rarer still. In the limited cases where coroners listed kratom or 7‑OH as contributing factors, polysubstance use was the norm. Roughly two-thirds of decedents had fentanyl in their systems. About one-third had heroin present, and just under one-fifth had prescription opioids or cocaine. Around 80% had documented histories of substance misuse, and about 90% were not receiving clinical care for pain.

Each of these deaths is tragic, and any loss of life linked to psychoactive substances deserves careful scrutiny.

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This Small-Town Couple Sells Affordable Caskets – the State Wants to Shut Them Down

Todd Collard and his wife, Candi Mentink have owned and operated Caskets of Honor for years, providing high-quality custom designs at an affordable price for grieving families. But their dream of helping people honor their loved ones slammed into a roadblock when Oklahoma’s regulators stepped in.

The business started in 2016 soon after Todd decided to build a casket for fun. It didn’t take long for this project to become a business idea — one that would set them on their journey to manufacture affordable caskets with custom designs for those who lost loved ones. “I just always thought it’d be really neat,” Todd told Townhall. “We’ve all been to funerals and seeing just the same old caskets over and over.”

He continued, saying he “just thought it’d be really cool to be able to create a tribute to somebody or a theme or anything that they like—hunting, fishing, golf, whatever,” and that he wanted to “just create something that is memorable.”

From their shop in Calvin, Oklahoma, Caskets of Honor the couple worked together to create these caskets. Todd handles the building and outside design of the box while Candi uses her sewing skills to create the interior of the casket. “I tell people I’m a perfect example of why they should put Home Economics back in school,” Candi said.

Buying a casket direct from the company benefits consumers because if they were to purchase one at a funeral home, they would be paying exorbitant prices due to markups. Caskets of Honor sells to its customers directly so they don’t have to deal with inflated prices.

At first, the couple sold to funeral homes. But they wished to sell to families, so they took their products to the Tulsa State Fair in 2021. Todd said their caskets were “the hit of the fair,” with many coming by their booth to see their caskets. They gave away over 2,000 business cards at the event.

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Spain JAILS Seven Citizens For Calling Migrants ‘SCUM’ On Facebook

Spain’s Supreme Court has upheld prison sentences for seven individuals over Facebook comments criticizing unaccompanied foreign minors in the border enclave of Melilla, marking a chilling escalation in the far-left government’s war on free speech amid skyrocketing migrant-related crime.

The ruling, which imposes terms ranging from eight months to one year and ten months, stems from posts that prosecutors deemed as promoting hostility toward the group of mostly North African migrants. 

Charges were initially dropped, but an appeal led to convictions under Spain’s hate crime laws.

This case exemplifies the inverted priorities under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led government, which has faced mounting criticism for prioritizing mass migration over native safety and free expression.

Just months ago, Alex Soros heaped praise on Sánchez for granting amnesty to up to 500,000 illegal migrants via royal decree, bypassing parliament entirely. Soros called it “real leadership,” urging more nations to follow suit in flooding their borders.

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Britain is Trying to Censor Americans – But America is Fighting Back

Ofcom has confirmed it is referring 4chan to a final enforcement decision under the Online Safety Act. The target is a Delaware company that runs an entirely anonymous imageboard from the United States, with no offices, staff, servers or assets in Britain. The demand: install age-verification systems and content filters so that British children cannot access the site or face daily fines levied from London on an American platform. This case is not an outlier. It is the clearest real-world demonstration of what the new generation of “online safety” laws requires: private companies must build automated filters that decide, in advance, which legal speech is too harmful for minors to see. The question the regulators never quite answer is simple: what exactly does the filter catch?

In the early 2020s, a political consensus formed on both sides of the Atlantic: social media is harming children and something must be done. The result in Washington was the Kids’ Online Safety Act (KOSA); in Westminster, the Online Safety Act (OSA), which received Royal Assent in October 2023 and began enforcement in 2025. The political appeal of both measures is genuine. Adolescent mental health deteriorated in the 2010s, parents are alarmed and platforms have appeared indifferent. But good intentions do not make good law, and the form these interventions took is constitutionally and morally indefensible. Both KOSA and the OSA rest on a duty-of-care model: platforms must take “reasonable measures” or implement “proportionate systems” to prevent minors from encountering content associated with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm and suicide. This is not a regulation of conduct. It is a mandate to suppress speech based on its topic and its predicted emotional effect on a reader: the very definition of content-based regulation.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated the constitutional problem plainly in its July 2023 letter opposing KOSA: the bill “is a content-based regulation of constitutionally protected speech” that “will silence important conversations, limit minors’ access to potentially vital resources and violate the First Amendment”.  Under Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a law is content-based if it “applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed”. Content-based regulations are “presumptively unconstitutional”.

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Europe Is Building a Digital Identity System for 450 Million People

The European Union is quietly constructing what may become one of the most sweeping digital identity systems ever attempted. Under new legislation, every EU member state must provide citizens with a government-approved “European Digital Identity Wallet” by 2026. This system will allow people to store official documents, verify identity, access government services, sign legal contracts, and potentially interact with financial institutions through a single digital platform. It is being marketed as a modernization effort designed to make life easier for citizens navigating an increasingly digital economy.

Supporters claim the digital wallet will simply replace physical paperwork. Instead of carrying passports, driver’s licenses, or other credentials, individuals will be able to verify their identity online with a government-issued digital key. The European Commission argues that this will streamline bureaucracy and allow citizens to interact with both public and private services more efficiently across all 27 member states.

Yet the implications extend far beyond administrative convenience. Once identity becomes centralized within a digital framework controlled or approved by government authorities, participation in everyday life increasingly depends on that system. Access to banking, employment verification, healthcare services, travel documentation, and legal contracts can all be integrated into the same identity infrastructure. What begins as a convenience quickly becomes a gateway through which access to modern society is managed.

Governments have always maintained population registries in one form or another. What makes digital identity systems fundamentally different is the speed and scale at which they operate. When identification becomes digitized and interconnected across borders, the ability to monitor economic and social activity expands dramatically. Identity verification can occur instantly, records can be updated in real time, and information can be shared between institutions with unprecedented efficiency.

This development becomes even more significant when viewed alongside other technological initiatives currently underway in Europe. The European Central Bank continues to explore the creation of a digital euro, a central bank digital currency that would exist entirely within electronic financial systems. If digital identity platforms and digital currency systems eventually intersect, financial activity and identity verification could become closely linked within the same infrastructure.

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UK Consults on Social Media Age Verification While Directing Parents to Report “Hate Speech” to Big Tech

The British government launched a consultation this week that could require age verification for anyone using social media, gaming sites, or AI chatbots.

The consultation, titled “Growing up in the online world,” opened on March 2nd and closes May 26, 2026. It asks the public whether the government should ban under-16s from social media entirely, impose mandatory overnight curfews on platform access, restrict AI chatbot features for minors, and require platforms to disable “addictive design features” like infinite scrolling and autoplay.

The government says it will respond in summer 2026, and Parliament has already handed ministers new legal powers to act on the findings without waiting for fresh primary legislation.

The Prime Minister announced those powers on February 16, weeks before the consultation even opened. The government can now move faster once it decides what it wants. What the public thinks determines the packaging, not the destination.

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall framed it this way: “The path to a good life is a great childhood, one full of love, learning, and play. That applies just as much to the online world as it does to the real one.”

The actual policy tools being considered are a different matter.

Age verification, as a mechanism, works by proving identity. Every user proves who they are.

A social media platform that must exclude under-16s must verify the age of its over-16s. That means collecting identity documents, linking browsing activity to real identities, or building infrastructure that a government can later compel to serve other purposes.

The surveillance architecture required to enforce a children’s safety law is the same architecture required to surveil adults. It gets built for one reason. It gets used for others.

Then there’s the “Help your child stay safe online” campaign site, the government launched alongside the consultation. The site includes a page directing parents to report “bullying, threats, harassment, hate speech, and content promoting self-harm or suicide” directly to platforms, with links to the reporting tools of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Twitch.

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UK COUNTER-TERROR Police Ad Warns Teens Sharing ‘Funny’ Content Could Be TERRORISM

The UK’s Counter Terrorism Police have released a disturbing advertisement depicting a white teenager facing police seizure of devices and a potential criminal record simply for sharing a link he found “funny”—content, we are told, was later deemed terrorist material.

This move, part of the broader Prevent anti-radicalization strategy, underscores the UK regime’s push to police online activity among youth, framing it as a gateway to extremism while ignoring surging real-world dangers from mass migration.

In the ad, a teen laments: “I just got all my device taken away by the police… My mom couldn’t believe it. I might get a criminal record and not be able to go to college.” He then explains: “I only shared a link. I just thought it was funny, but it was terrorist content.”

Counter Terrorism Policing describes itself as “a collaboration of UK police forces working with the UK intelligence community to help protect the public and our national security by preventing, deterring, and investigating terrorist activity.”

A recent academic analysis in the Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism highlights the escalating involvement of family courts and Prevent in childhood radicalization cases, noting “the number of children referred to Prevent and Channel due to concerns that they might be at risk of, or from, radicalisation has been steadily increasing since 2015.”

It adds that professionals like teachers are “legally obligated to refer that child to the police under the auspices of Prevent” if suspecting risk.

Government guidance on Prevent duty in schools urges communication with parents to spot signs, but also empowers referrals if family members show vulnerability. As one factsheet states, referrals can come from “a family member, friend, colleague, or a professional.”

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