Tag: police state

Peter Thiel-Funded Company Anduril to Triple the Number of Autonomous Surveillance Towers Along the US-Mexico Border

In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report that detailed how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted with Anduril Industries—a Peter Thiel-funded company—to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along US borders. The report outlines the plan to increase the number of surveillance towers from 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

The new GAO report describes the “Integrated Surveillance Towers” (IST) program that currently consists of “803 fielded towers located along US borders that detect items of interest, such as people or vehicles.”

The IST program includes towers from four legacy systems, including Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST). An AST is a solar-powered surveillance tower that the DHS says can “provide autonomous surveillance operations 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.” The towers are equipped with radar, optical, and thermal cameras.

According to the GAO report, in August 2024, DHS approved the purchase of up to 42 additional ASTs. DHS had previously approved Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) request to purchase up to 133 additional towers between 2022 and 2023. The report states that the program should be completed by March 2034, with 2,300 deployed by that date.

The GAO was established in 1921 to serve as an independent and nonpartisan agency that audits the federal government. The GAO releases annual reports on key issues and details its findings to Congress.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to digital privacy and rights, called the expansion of border surveillance a “digital dumpster fire for human rights and civil liberties.”

“It’s not just surveillance towers; drones, aerostats, surveillance vehicles, ground sensors, game cameras, and license plate readers are also part of the vast taxpayer-funded infrastructure that threatens all those who live, work, or seek refuge in the borderlands,” the EFF wrote in response to the GAO report. “This technology isn’t exclusive to U.S. federal agencies: it’s also deployed by state and local law enforcement, and even by governments on the Mexican side.”

The EFF also noted that these rapidly expanding surveillance technologies place residential neighborhoods in Arizona within the sight of the towers, making them “capable of spying on homes on both sides of the border.”

Keep reading

OUTRAGE: Far-Left NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill Signs Draconian Law That Will Effectively Block People from Praying Outside Abortion Centers

The radical Left’s relentless war on religious freedom and the unborn has reached a terrifying new level in New Jersey.

Far-left Governor Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) signed sweeping legislation Thursday that creates harsh new criminal and civil penalties for alleged “interference” with abortion and transgender medical procedures.

Pro-life leaders warn the measure could be weaponized to frighten Christians and sidewalk counselors away from peacefully praying outside abortion facilities.

Sherrill signed S2260/A2218, which creates a new criminal offense called “interference with reproductive health care services.”

The Democrat governor claimed the legislation was necessary to protect abortionists and their patients.

“We have seen attacks from the Trump Administration and other states on access to reproductive and gender affirming healthcare, and attempts to impose restrictions across state borders. Here in New Jersey, we are standing firm in defense of reproductive freedoms – including the right to choose and the right to receive gender-affirming care,” Sherrill said in an official statement.

“No one should fear intimidation or violence for seeking healthcare, and no healthcare professional should fear punishment from another state for providing care that is legal in New Jersey. With this legislation, we are making clear that New Jersey will protect patients, providers, and the fundamental freedom to make personal healthcare decisions.”

Keep reading

District attorney strips police department of prosecution power after cops arrest citizen journalists for exercising their 1st Amendment rights

The Henderson County District Attorney and County Attorney have informed the Trinidad, Texas Police Department that they will no longer accept ANY cases for prosecution solely investigated or filed by the department until further notice.

The letter, obtained by local media, effectively neuters the Trinidad PD’s ability to bring meaningful criminal cases. The Henderson County Sheriff’s Office will now handle crimes inside city limits.

Pending cases will be reviewed one by one. The prosecutors themselves requested the ongoing Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) audit of the department, FOX 4 reported.

This is the direct fallout from Trinidad’s heavy-handed war on free speech.

Trinidad, a town of fewer than 1,000 people about an hour southeast of Dallas, has struggled for years with serious water problems, discolored water, sediment, strong odors, and chemical readings far above legal limits.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality later confirmed major deficiencies, including chemicals more than 300% above federal limits and a failing distribution system.

Citizen journalist Jennifer Combs, who runs the Southern Belle Watch Facebook page, posted that she had received reports of residents being hospitalized due to bacteria in the water. She asked people to share what they were seeing so the information could be passed to state regulators.

Then-Police Chief Charles Gregory responded by having her arrested on a state jail felony charge of false alarm or report. Gregory claimed the post “creates fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community.”

Combs, a mother with a clean record, was taken from her home, handcuffed, and spent 23 hours in jail.

A Henderson County grand jury quickly no-billed the case, declining to indict her. Combs then filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas against the city and several officials, alleging First Amendment retaliation, malicious prosecution, and a deliberate effort to punish her reporting.

Those allegations remain pending and have not been adjudicated. The federal case is Combs v. Gregory et al.

The warrant process came under its own devastating scrutiny. Henderson County Judge R. Scott McKee later wrote that two Trinidad officers omitted material information about citizen complaints, water concerns, and the context of Combs’ statements when seeking a Facebook search warrant.

McKee ordered the officers to appear personally for future warrant applications so that the court could question them under oath if necessary. KLTV reported that the judge said omissions can mislead a probable-cause determination just as affirmative misrepresentations can.

One day after FOX 4 aired its first report on Combs, YouTube journalist Winston Noles — known online as Otto the Watchdog — traveled to Trinidad to protest. He stood outside city hall with a profane sign condemning “bad cops” and livestreamed the encounter to his audience.

Eighteen minutes into the livestream, police arrested him for misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

Keep reading

‘Have I Been Flocked’ Website Lets You Check If Police Searched for Your Car Using Flock Camera System

A new website allows drivers to find out whether their license plate has been photographed and searched through law enforcement agencies’ Flock camera systems.

The new website, “Have I Been Flocked,” compiles Flock camera audit logs and lets users see if their plate number has been run through the Flock application by a system operator.

If a person’s license plate appears in the database, it means not only that the plate was photographed, but that someone using the Flock system actively searched the database for that plate, according to the site. Included in the audit log is the stated reason someone in law enforcement gave for looking up the plate.

The site notes several limits to what its records show. The database does not reveal when or whether a vehicle passed one of the Flock Safety cameras. Those searching Flock databases are not necessarily police officers, and appearing on the site does not mean a person was under investigation.

The database of audit logs was built through FOIA public records requests filed with 6,586 different agencies across the country. Organizers caution that some information may be outdated or incomplete.

“The dataset is incomplete; few governments provide easy access to these logs, and the records we obtain are often redacted,” organizers of the site warn.

Keep reading

Weird timing: Why is the ‘Mary Poppins’ of Disinformation launching a comeback now?

Well, look who’s back…

The Mary Poppins of censorship has danced back into the spotlight.

Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration “disinformation” czar who became famous for singing cringe political “show tunes” online while lecturing the rest of us about what could and couldn’t be said, apparently isn’t ready to give up on the censorship business.

She’s now taking her song and dance show overseas.

Jankowicz almost ran Joe Biden’s floptacular Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security before public outrage helped kill the project almost as quickly as it appeared.

But sadly, that outrage didn’t kill the ideology behind it.

During the Biden years, an entire ecosystem of government agencies, NGOs, academics, “disinformation researchers,” media organizations, fact checkers, and Big Tech platforms worked together to suppress, demonetize, and punish information they considered dangerous.

Of course, it was just a coinky dink that most of the “dangerous disinformation” happened to come from Trump supporters, populists, conservative media, COVID skeptics, or basically anyone making the establishment look stupid.

Revolver knows that world quite well.

Keep reading

California Energy Commission Bans Sale of Majority of Tires… Far-Left Commissioner Licks Her Lips As She Boasts About New Rules

Meanwhile, in the Democrat hellhole of California…

The California Energy Commission on Monday voted to restrict what type of tires Californians can buy and when they can replace their tires.

The new rules will lead to a ban on the sale of the majority of tires in the state because they don’t meet the new efficiency standards.

The regulatory agency, full of unelected bureaucrats, claimed the new rules would lead to a price increase of only $6.50 per tire in the second phase; however, Bret Gladfelty of Goodyear said the increase would end up being several hundred dollars.

David Hochschild, the chairman of the California Energy Commission, absurdly claimed that the new tire rules are “ultimately about protecting consumers.”

KCRA reported:

At the center of this is a tire’s rolling resistance, or how much energy a tire uses as it rolls down the road. Lower resistance means a vehicle uses less gas or electricity. New cars come with generally efficient tires, but consumers typically replace those with higher rolling resistance tires.

The first phase would begin in 2029, which would allow the sale of tires with a maximum rolling resistance level of 9.1 newtons per kilonewton (N/kN). In phase 2, the standard lowers to 7.2 (N/kN) starting in 2033. The commission came up with the standards after testing 537 types of tires.

According to the commission’s staff, the rules are meant to ensure replacement tires sold in California are at least as energy efficient on average as the tires that come with the car or truck when it’s originally sold. The CEC claims Californians could save $79 in four months in gas or electricity costs under phase 1, and about $153 in phase 2 within seven months.

According to analysis by KCRA, more than 70% of tires will be banned.

Keep reading

‘UK Has Fallen’: Sen. Cruz Mourns Britain Criminalizing Public For Memes

U.S. Republican Senator Ted Cruz has lamented the loss of liberty in the United Kingdom after a former police officer was convicted of a crime for merely reposting a meme mocking Islam.

The Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court found retired police officer Stephen Gray guilty this month of violating Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 over a supposedly “grossly offensive” image he shared on his Facebook account.

The meme, which was flagged to the Durham Constabulary by a non-Muslim neighbour, portrayed a man wearing a turban next to a rasher of bacon with the caption: “Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

While Gray acknowledged that some may have found the meme in bad taste, he said he was shocked that it would result in a criminal conviction and a £1,000 fine.

Responding to a report on the case by Breitbart London, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) remarked: “No meme is criminal. The UK has fallen.”

Keep reading

Argentina Gives Government New Power to Bar or Expel Foreigners Over “Hate” Messages and Attacks on National Symbols

Argentina’s President Javier Milei has signed a new decree expanding the country’s immigration restrictions to cover certain speech and conduct directed against Argentines.

Decree 681/2026, issued on July 29 and published in Argentina’s Official Gazette on July 30, amends the country’s Immigration Law. It creates new grounds for denying entry to foreigners and for canceling the residency of foreigners already in Argentina.

Under the decree, authorities may act against foreigners who have directed oral or written “hate messages” or incited violence against Argentines as a people, or against an individual Argentine because of that person’s nationality. The measure also covers foreigners who participate in acts described as an “outrage” against Argentina’s national symbols.

The government argues that the measure is justified by national sovereignty, public order, social cohesion and the protection of Argentine citizens. The decree says Argentina has experienced an increase in messages of hate and acts of hostility directed specifically at the Argentine people, their culture and national identity.

The key question: What counts as “hate”?

This is where the policy deserves careful scrutiny.

The decree does not say that every criticism of Argentina or its government can be punished. In fact, it specifically states that legitimate expressions of ideological disagreement and political, academic or civic criticism protected by the Constitution are not covered by the new provision.

That distinction matters.

A foreign national who threatens violence against Argentines because they are Argentine is in a fundamentally different category from someone who criticizes President Milei, mocks Argentine politicians, condemns Argentina’s immigration policy, disagrees with its foreign policy or expresses an unpopular opinion about the country.

A threat of violence is not the same thing as a political argument.

Incitement to violence is not the same thing as criticism of a president.

And an offensive political statement is not automatically a security threat.

Sovereignty is legitimate — but so is caution

Conservatives in the United States generally recognize that a sovereign nation has the right to control who enters and remains within its territory.

The United States itself gives the federal government broad authority over the admission of foreign nationals, particularly when national security or immigration law is involved.

Argentina is therefore not unusual in asserting that foreigners can be denied entry or removed under certain circumstances.

The difficult question is where immigration enforcement intersects with expression.

The Argentine decree itself attempts to draw that line by explicitly protecting legitimate political, ideological, academic and civic criticism.

But the practical application of the law will ultimately determine how meaningful that protection is.

Who decides what qualifies as “hate”?

The most important issue may not be the government’s stated objective of preventing violence.

Keep reading

Governments Don’t Like It When We Gather Without Their Permission

There are a number of ways in which Western governments are waging war against their citizens.  The United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and leftists in the United States do not believe in free speech.  These Western governments also spy on their citizens without warrants or probable cause.  They have transformed their court systems into ideologically-partisan dictatorships that impose rulings based upon feelings and “political correctness,” rather than black-letter law and self-restraint.

An offense that often gets overlooked, however, is Western governments’ infringement of citizens’ freedom of association.

Freedom of association is our natural, God-given right to meet with likeminded people, discuss ideas, express ourselves, and promote our mutual interests.  As with freedom of speech, it is fundamental to any notion of liberty.  Respect for freedom of association is the bedrock for religious freedom, freedom of conscience, communal identity, and national self-determination.

Countries are born when people of common ancestry, language, history, and customs choose to work together and defend their way of life.  Towns spring up when likeminded people settle and develop a region together.  Religious congregations grow through common worship.  Schools, skilled trade unions, clubs, sports leagues, and civic organizations of all types are formed when people come together to pursue similar interests and advance shared ideas.

At its heart, freedom of association respects human beings’ natural inclination to cooperate with others to build something together that would not be possible for any one person to build alone.  As a voluntary commitment to pursue a group’s common aims, it is the collective expression of each individual’s personal liberty.

As with all God-given rights and liberties, government power (or State authority) is the greatest threat to freedom of association.  When governments prevent people from discussing ideas, worshiping together, working together, or pursuing common interests, the State is using its monopoly on the lawful use of force to infringe citizens’ inalienable rights.

What we see across the West is the bureaucratic State imposing its political will in defiance of the collective will of citizens.

Perhaps the most glaring problem of the last several decades has been Western governments’ refusal to secure their national borders.  There is no more natural political association than a nation state’s citizenry.  Over centuries and millennia, tribes of similar peoples came together to protect their lands and resources from foreign invasion, while promoting domestic order, safety, and peace.

Keep reading

X Wins Australian Case Over Private Message Scanning Rule

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner wrote a rule requiring online services to scan what their users send each other. Not to act on reports, but to run detection systems across private messages before anyone has complained, hunting child sexual abuse and pro-terror material. Top censor, Julie Inman Grant, wrote it herself, under powers the Online Safety Act hands her, and breaching it carries penalties of up to $49.5 million.

Then she took the view that it covered social media platforms as well, because they let users send each other messages.

On August 12, the Federal Court told her it does not. The Relevant Electronic Services Standard “does not apply” to X, Justice Elizabeth Raper held, ruling for the platform in a case it brought in May 2025. It “would be rather perverse for a social media service…not to enable messaging or chat between end users,” X’s barrister had argued — on eSafety’s reading, having a DM function was enough to pull a platform into a rulebook written for something else.

The distinction is important because of who writes what. Social media services in Australia are covered by a code developed with the industry, X included. The RES Standard is not a negotiated code. It is an instrument the Commissioner drafts and enforces herself. The standard says it applies “to the exclusion of any industry code” — so reading it to cover social media would have let the instrument she controls displace the one she negotiated.

Raper said so directly. “I accept X Corp’s characterisation of the facts that the RES Standard has been made by the commissioner…as a standard applicable to participants in a different section of the online industry, that are specified…as ‘providers of relevant electronic services’,” she wrote.

Keep reading