Tag: snitching

Utility company’s proposal to rat out hidden marijuana operations to police raises privacy concerns

Operators of illegal marijuana grow enterprises hidden inside rural homes in Maine don’t have to worry much about prying neighbors. But their staggering electric bills may give rise to a new snitch.

An electric utility made an unusual proposal to help law enforcement target these illicit operations, which are being investigated for ties to transnational crime. Critics, however, worry the move would violate customers’ privacy.

More than a dozen states that legalized marijuana have seen a spike in illegal marijuana grow operations that utilize massive amounts of electricity. And Maine’s Versant Power has been receiving subpoenas — sometimes for 50 locations at a time — from law enforcement, said Arrian Myrick-Stockdell, corporate counsel. It’d be far more efficient, he suggested to utility regulators, to flip the script and allow electric utilities to report their suspicions to law enforcement.

“Versant has a very high success rate in being able to identify these locations, but we have no ability to communicate with law enforcement proactively,” Myrick-Stockdell told commissioners.

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Walz Created ‘Snitch Line’ for COVID Mandate Violators

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been selected as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate for the 2024 presidential election. 

This choice has reignited discussions around Walz’s controversial actions during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the establishment of a notorious “snitch line” in March 2020.

He and his family have also been under fire for their actions and revealing remarks amid the 2020 BLM riots.

The Post Millennial (TPM) reported that Walz’s administration set up the hotline to encourage Minnesotans to report their neighbors for violating COVID-19 lockdown orders. 

This initiative drew thousands of complaints, with citizens reporting on activities such as going to church, hosting birthday parties, buying nonessential items, and not enforcing mask mandates.

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Tim Walz Was a COVID-19 Tyrant

Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz was a moderate Democrat when he served in the House of Representatives but veered left during his two terms as governor. He referred to socialism as synonymous with neighborliness, pursued an extremely progressive governing agenda, and earned an F from the Cato Institute on fiscal policy.

Another notable thing about Walz is that he served as governor during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is thus possible to parse his approach to the virus—and that record is extremely disturbing. Indeed, Walz’s coronavirus policies were extremely heavy-handed and restrictive; under his leadership, the state endured the pandemic in a fundamentally anti-libertarian fashion.

When the coronavirus was first spreading, Walz was an enthusiastic promoter of social distancing rules. He described the crowds in public, outdoor spaces as “a little too big.” He even defended Minnesota’s ridiculous hotline for COVID-19 snitches. That’s right: Walz’s government maintained a method for people to report their neighbors for failing to abide by social distancing rules. Walz insisted in a recent interview that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness”; denouncing one’s neighbors as insufficiently loyal to government policies is a fundamental aspect of socialism, however.

When asked by Republicans to take down the hotline, Walz responded: “We’re not going to take down a phone number that people can call to keep their families safe.”

And though Walz instructed police to merely issue citations to people caught violating stay-at-home orders—which is still bad enough—he also maintained the right, via executive order, to issue $1,000 fines and send violators to jail for 90 days. His government maintained that private, indoor gatherings should be limited to 10 people. Outdoor gatherings were arbitrarily capped at 25 people. On July 23, 2020, Walz declared a statewide mask mandate for most indoor spaces and even some outdoor spaces.

“If we can get a 90 to 95% compliance, which we’ve seen the science shows, we can reduce the infection rates dramatically, which slows that spread and breaks that chain,” Walz said at the time. “This is the way, the cheapest, the most effective way for us to open up our businesses, for us to get our kids back in school, for us to keep our grandparents healthy and for us to get back that life that we all miss so much.”

What followed was the implementation of one of the stupidest COVID-19 rules: Diners at restaurants had to wear masks while walking to their table and moving about the establishment but were allowed to go maskless as long as they were eating and drinking.

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Cops Called on 8-Year-Old Child for Being Outside

Kay Eskridge is a Kentucky mom, former child protective services worker, and fan of the Free-Range Kids movement. Over the years, she’s written to me several times about our shared passion for fostering kids’ independence. This includes a note she sent in 2021 saying that a 7-year-old riding her bike in their quiet Louisville neighborhood had been stopped by cops who wanted to know where her mother was.

But earlier this summer, it happened to Eskridge’s own kid.

“The police were called because my 8-year-old was riding her bike on our street,” says Eskridge.

Her note arrived in my inbox recently. Subsequently, we connected over a Zoom call. She set the scene: Her daughter, Julia, had just finished second grade. Thanks to a weird schedule, Julia arrives home two hours before her friends. That leaves her bored and eager for fun by late afternoon. On May 18, when at last a friend had made it home, Julia hopped on her bike to ride eight houses over to his place.

“She was three houses away,” says Eskridge, “and the police stopped her.”

The policeman was actually someone the family knew. (Eskridge’s husband is in local politics.) He told the girl that “this isn’t a good time to be outside,” according to Eskridge. Julia assured the officer that she was used to traffic and knew how to ride her bike, and continued on her way.

The officer left her alone but decided to pay a visit to the Eskridge house.

Her husband answered the door, but when Eskridge heard what was going on, she took matters into her own hands.

“I was not about to let him handle this,” she says. “So I come bursting through and say, ‘Can a child not ride her bike on the street in this neighborhood anymore? Is that what we’re saying?'”

The policeman assured her no, it wasn’t that. Rather, a woman had called the police because she was “upset that a child was outside.”

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DHS Attempted to Turn Americans on Each Other

Documents released Thursday by America First Legal, a legal group led by Stephen Miller, former senior advisor to President Trump, show that a Department of Homeland Security group proposed that Americans report each other to federal law enforcement.

The documents released were after the AFL had sued the DHS over the creation of a “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group,” alleging that the group was illegally partisan and in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In response to the lawsuit, the DHS agreed to disband the group and give its records to AFL, in exchange for AFL dismissing the case.

In the documents of the now-disbanded committee, the DHS discussed ways to increase the collection of information on American citizens including by attempting to “get into local communities in a non-threatening way.” 

The documents also included the suggestion that political dissent dealt with the “public health” infrastructure, and that information be collected with “a public health catcher’s mitt.” 

The documents also show that the DHS group had intended to use various companies to collect information, with the documents stating “we need to know how commercial companies collect their data.”

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There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

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Jan. 6 rioter who was sentenced in secret provided information to authorities, court papers say

A Pennsylvania man who was sentenced in secret for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot cooperated with authorities investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and an unrelated case, according to court documents unsealed this week.

The documents provide insight into the unusual secrecy in the case of Samuel Lazar, who had been released from federal custody in September after completing his sentence in his Capitol riot case. His case remained under seal even after his release, so there was no public record of a conviction or sentence.

The records unsealed this week show that Lazar, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, admitted to spraying a chemical irritant at police officers who were trying to defend the Capitol and to using a bullhorn to encourage other rioters to take officers’ weapons as he yelled, “Let’s get their guns!” He pleaded guilty to assaulting officers using a dangerous weapon and was sentenced to 30 months in prison during a sealed hearing last March.

More than 1,200 people have been charged with Jan. 6-related crimes, and hundreds of them have pleaded guilty. But it is rare for records of a guilty plea and sentence to be sealed, even in cases involving a defendant’s cooperation. Court hearings and records are supposed to be open and available to the public unless there’s a compelling need for secrecy.

The documents show that prosecutors asked the judge last year to sentence Lazar to a prison term below the federal guidelines range, citing Lazar’s “fulsome” cooperation with the government. That included providing “valuable information” to authorities investigating the Jan. 6 attack, prosecutors said in court papers.

An attorney for Lazar declined to comment on Thursday. She told the judge that her client’s behavior on Jan. 6 “was completely out of character for him as he is extremely respectful, law abiding citizen who has deep respect and appreciation for law enforcement.”

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SECRETS AND LIARS

THE DAY BEFORE Michael Beckcom was arrested for murder, a Texas Ranger spotted his red Ford Explorer parked in a small town not far from the Gulf Coast. On its tailpipe was a silver substance that looked like the remnants of melted duct tape. It was evidence that would link Beckcom to the grisly killing of a federal witness.

On June 4, 1996, Beckcom was jailed on a $10 million bond for his role in the slaying of George “Nick” Brueggen. Brueggen had been cooperating with federal authorities to build a fraud and tax evasion case against Beckcom and his associates, who fancied themselves a sort of South Texas Mafia. Beckcom and several others, including Mark Crawford, the former mayor of sleepy Ingleside, Texas, locked Brueggen in a large metal storage box. Using duct tape, they attached one end of a garden hose to the box and the other end to the tailpipe of Beckcom’s SUV. According to the Texas Rangers’ report, Beckcom then revved the engine, asphyxiating Brueggen.

Facing a capital murder charge, Beckcom cut a deal with prosecutors, becoming the government’s key witness against Crawford, the mastermind behind the murder.

Beckcom’s testimony was vivid. “Nick was kicking the box and making noise; he was panicking,” he testified in federal court, recalling one of his associates offering a pithy aside: “The rat’s in the trap.” When it was all over, his friends were eager to open the box, Beckcom said, while he “looked from the distance” as fumes wafted from its lid. Brueggen’s “eyes were open, and he had a blank stare. He was frozen there.”

Beckcom was critical to convicting Crawford, and while a federal district judge ultimately signed off on his plea deal, he also made clear that Beckcom had lied under oath. “The court believed you in part,” the judge said at Beckcom’s sentencing hearing. “But there were certainly areas where you gave false statements either to the investigating officers or your testimony on the witness stand was false.”

Despite the apparent perjury, Beckcom went on to play an equally crucial role in convicting Jeffrey Prible, who was sent to death row for the murder of his friends Steve Herrera and Nilda Tirado, along with their three kids. The family was found dead in their Houston home on April 24, 1999. Two years later, Prible was indicted for the killings while serving a five-year sentence at the federal correctional institution in Beaumont for a string of bank robberies.

There was no direct evidence tying Prible to the murders. Instead, Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler’s case was based on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence, which made Beckcom’s testimony indispensable even if his credibility was questionable: He was the only witness who could connect Prible to the crime.

Beckcom said that he and his cellmate, Nathan Foreman, had befriended Prible while imprisoned at Beaumont. One evening, according to Beckcom, the three men were sitting in a field on the rec yard when Prible confessed to the killings.

Once again, Beckcom’s testimony was cinematic. He described Prible as a modern-day ninja who boasted about his ability to carry out the murders undetected. “Anybody that can go in a house and take out a whole family and get out without being seen is a bad motherfucker,” Beckcom recalled Prible saying. “And I’m that motherfucker.”

The information Beckcom provided also sewed up the gaping holes in Siegler’s case. Prible lacked a motive — until Beckcom said he was angry with Herrera for hoarding cash from the bank robberies. Beckcom explained away the missing murder weapon by implying that Prible had buried it under some newly poured concrete. “Asphalt’s good sometimes for hiding things,” he said Prible told him. And he countered Prible’s alibi witness — a neighbor who saw Prible dropped off at home hours before the murders — by suggesting that Prible had snuck back into his friend’s house to kill the family.

In early 2017, Prible’s defense lawyers, James Rytting and Gretchen Scardino, sought Beckcom out to learn more about the deal he’d cut with Siegler. The first time he was scheduled to be deposed, Beckcom didn’t show up. Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise; when a defense investigator went to serve him with a subpoena, Beckcom was outwardly hostile to the notion of having to answer any questions.

The investigator persuaded Beckcom to meet him at a Starbucks outside a gated community in Florida. Beckcom rolled up on a Harley Davidson. Still fit, with his dark hair now graying around the temples, he was furious to learn about the subpoena. “If I have to,” the investigator recalled Beckcom saying, “I’ll kill the son-of-a-bitch lawyer and go back to prison, but I’m not going to get involved in this case anymore.”

The threat unnerved Scardino. She hired a retired federal marshal to sit outside the room when they finally got Beckcom in for his deposition. Scardino steadied her nerves as the questioning began, but it was Beckcom who broke the ice. Was he on anything that might impair his memory? Scardino asked. “Just age,” Beckcom joked.

For his role in the Crawford prosecution, Beckcom had been handsomely rewarded: just 11 years for a slaying that could have netted him the death penalty. Still, as he served his time at Beaumont, he hoped that his cooperation in the Prible case would swing the prison doors wide open. He expected as much from Siegler, he told Scardino. Instead, he got a year shaved off his sentence. Nearly two decades later, he was still vexed.

“You thought you’d be walking out the door?” Scardino asked.

“For a house full of bodies? Yeah,” he replied, crossing his arms. “Children? Sure.”

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Could YOUR neighbour report your illegal Amazon Firestick? Warning to law breakers streaming content on ‘dodgy’ devices as experts say officers might turn up at your door

People using Amazon Firesticks and other illegal streaming devices could soon face a knock at the door from police officers warning them they could be prosecuted, experts have warned.

According to data from cybercrime specialists Fact-UK, there has been a significant increase in the number of viewers using their Firestick to illegally watch subscription TV.

The copyright-protection organisation says these illicit streams could be funding organised crime and allowing gangs to profit off their personal data – as retailers crack down on the practice. 

Some households use the devices to watch content from subscription services such as Netflix or Sky Sports illegally for a fraction of the price. 

Intelligence unit officers working with Fact-UK have sent out ‘Cease and Desist’ letters and are conducting nationwide ‘Knock and Talks’ with those who take part in the illegal practice, informing individuals they face further action or prosecution if they do not stop.

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DHS Subdivision Quietly Deleted Video Urging Americans To Report Covid ‘Disinformation’ From Family Members

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quietly removed a video instructing people to report family members for spreading “disinformation” online, according to a report by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO).

Earlier this year, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a DHS subdivision, deleted a video from June 2021 tutoring viewers on “countering disinformation” related to the Covid-19 pandemic and reporting their relatives to social media platforms, according to a report by the FFO, a free speech advocacy group. FFO archived the video before CISA deleted it.

In the cartoon video, CISA depicts a woman named “Susan” looking at a post from her “Uncle Steve” claiming the Covid-19 pandemic is equivalent to the flu. The video criticizes the fictitious post and then advises Americans to look to public health authorities for guidance.

CISA presents another hypothetical post from “Uncle Steve” containing “fake news” misrepresenting government data. The government agency advises Americans to reply to their uncle and then “report” his post to the social media platform he is using, which appears to resemble Facebook.

CISA deleted the video between April 9 and May 9, 2023, internet archives show. The CISA video is also watchable on internet archives.

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