Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surveillance. Show all posts

November 1, 2017


Reconsidering surveillance law raises anew issues of privacy

from FoxNews: What Americans need to know about domestic surveillance policy, as Congress considers the privacy implications of Section 702 of the FISA Act.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

One year later, is Trump a blessing or a curse to the deep state?

from Rutherford Institute: The American police state is still alive and well and flourishing. Rather than draining the corrupt swamps as he repeatedly promised, Trump and his brand of reality TV politics have merely redirected our attention.
The Government is Not Us

The fragile generation

from Reason: Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Walter E Williams: Let's help our media friends

from Creators: Williams offers a bit of sympathy to the mainstream media and other Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers one year after their trauma.
Media Bias on Parade

Professor calls reason itself a “white, male construct”

from DownTrend: A kooky college professor argues that nonwhites are all naturally irrational.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Presidents are reckless with soldiers' lives

from Creators: The problem is not that Trump is tactless about soldiers' deaths but that he and his predecessors have been reckless with their lives.
Defense Versus The War Machine

October 27, 2017


When it comes to surveillance, watch the watchmen

from NY Times: The relationship between security and liberty is often described as a balancing act. This act can’t take place if we’re not informed about the technology used to safeguard our security.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Hashd al-Sha’abi commander calls for US forces withdrawal from Iraq

from PressTV: "To the US secretary of state, your military forces must prepare now to get out of our homeland Iraq immediately and without delay once the ISIS elimination excuse is over."
Defense Versus The War Machine

Health care is not a right

from Capitalism Magazine: If your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness.
The Pursuit of Happiness

Major study shows legal weed reversed a decade of rising opioid deaths in Colorado

from FreeThoughtProject: The end of cannabis prohibition is paying many dividends for society.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Identitarianism and the Splintering of Democracy

from Quillette: This very good piece looks at how identity politics plays out in a representative democracy.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Sessions continues to push 'gateway drug' myth about marijuana

from Reason: "Much of the addiction starts with marijuana." Jeff Sessions attempts to peddle 20th century propaganda long after the train has left the station.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

October 26, 2017


At long last, Hillary Clinton is the focus of 2 investigations

from USA Today: No pay for play? Funny how once she lost the election, donations to the Clinton Foundation completely dried up. Finally, a serious look into corruption surrounding the Clinton Foundation.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Can the Feds prosecute foreigners if their actions are legal where they are?

from Creators: From Judge Napolitano: "This is all about power and the fiction of universal jurisdiction — a fiction the Framers thought they had buried. It needs to be buried again."
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process

John Stossel: A Private Military

from Creators: We've fought in Afghanistan for 16 years now. Are we making progress? After 9/11, we invaded, overthrew the Taliban, killed Osama Bin Laden and — stayed. Afghanistan is now America's longest war, ever. President Trump's solution is to send several thousand more soldiers. Erik Prince says he has a better idea.
Defense Versus The War Machine

🎬  Cop caught on video breaking into elderly man's home, stealing cash & prescription drugs

from TheFreeThoughtProject: In America, police can legally break into your home and steal your property even if you are innocent, a practice is known as civil asset forfeiture. However, in the video below, a cop was arrested because he did not receive approval from his superiors before stealing from an innocent person.
Police State America

Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens

from Wired: The Chinese government plans to launch its Social Credit System in 2020. The aim? To judge the trustworthiness – or otherwise – of its 1.3 billion residents. Could this be coming to country near you?
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

🎬  Trey Gowdy - Comey's Testimony Does Not Add Up

from LibertyPen: The FBI confirms that James Comey drafted his public statement about the results of the Hillary Clinton investigation months before it was completed. Dozens of witnesses had not yet been questioned, including Hillary herself.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

October 25, 2017


Britain says no the term "pregnant woman" as it excludes transgender people

from FoxNews: For those suffering from gender dysphoria, it is apparently considered unkind to suggest a womb is necessary
in order to be pregnant.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

California's six-figure pension club has 62,000 members

from Reason: And seven retirees in Los Angeles pulled down more than $1 million each in retirement benefits last year. "Public service" has its privileges.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

Lies and manipulation: The sorry state of global climate alarmism

from WattsUpWithThat?: While practitioners of environmental religion fret about one-tenth of one degree, India has real concerns: food and water.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Europe: journalists against free speech

from GatestoneInstitute: Gone is all pretense that journalism is about reporting the facts.
Media Bias on Parade

Sens. Rand Paul and Ron Wyden unveil privacy-protecting surveillance reform bill

from Reason: Two senators fight back against the surveillance society and the police state to protect individual from their government.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Don’t call the cops if you’re autistic, deaf, mentally ill, disabled or old

from Rutherford Institute: Sometimes it’s dangerous enough calling the cops when you’re not contending with a disability. Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.
Police State America

October 23, 2017


America has built the most comfortable civilization in the world

from PJMedia: Human civilization can be described as a long crawl away from a life that was nasty, brutal and short.
America is winning that race.
The Pursuit of Happiness

3 stories that show Big Brother is alive and well

from The Daily Bell: 1. Getting Clever with Fear to Restrict the Internet. 2. Prosecutors pick a target, THEN find a crime.
3. Fitbit and pacemaker info used to catch criminals.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Why you may need a passport next year to fly from city to city within the United States 

from Reason: A passport to fly within the country, but no ID to vote. Government serves the politician not the people.
Regulation Nation

U.S. ran $666 billion deficit in fiscal 2017, sixth highest on record

from Wall Street Journal: "U.S. revenue and spending both hit record highs in fiscal 2017.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

Alabama police use asset forfeiture to ruin an innocent small business owner

from Reason: How government has set things up so police departments can take anything they want with impunity.
Police State America    The Government is Not Us

Former NFL players say league should allow players to use marijuana to treat pain, injuries

from Reason: Former player: If there's any sport or league that should be leading the way in experiments with cannibis,
of course it's the NFL.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

October 21, 2017


Federal court ponders Constitutionality of prostitution ban

from Reason: "Why should it be illegal to sell something that you can give away for free?"
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

USA Liberty Act won’t fix what’s most broken with NSA internet surveillance

from EFF: The bill doesn’t end the practice of “backdoor searching,” when government agents — including domestic law enforcement — search through the NSA-gathered communications of Americans without any form of warrant from a judge.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Republicans officially give up trying to cut spending

from Reason: After all that fuss from 2009 onward, Rand Paul is the last Republican left objecting to the continued growth of government.
Economic Policy: Statism vs. The Free Market

DHS pays police millions to ticket and prosecute motorists

from MassPrivatei: Police pull over more than 50,000 drivers on a typical day, more than 20 million motorists every year. So why do they need more money still?
Police State America

50 state study shows that more requirements lead to less jobs

from Will-Law: States with more burdensome licensure requirements (fees, training hours, exams, and age requirements) had significantly lower employment in the ten professional occupations.
Regulation Nation

The media blackout of Clinton-uranium scandal senate probe

from CNS News: Media bias is currently “on full display,” Media Research Center President Brent Bozell warned Thursday as network news continued to ignore the Senate probe into the Clinton-Uranium scandal.
Media Bias on Parade

October 19, 2017


This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: The experiment in freedom is failing

from Rutherford Institute: We are being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.
The Government is Not Us

Government may ‘seize’ citizens’ fingerprints to unlock Apple devices, federal court rules

from ShadowProof: How a robe-draped tyrant made cops warm and fuzzy for Apple's iTouch technology.
Police State America

Chicago politician pushes ban on businesses banning cash

from ZeroHedge: Politicians fights back against VISA push for merchants to stop taking cash. A cashless society is a slave society. What do you do in cashless society when the power goes out?
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Cities are getting paid to turn street lights into spying SmartNodes

from MassPrivatei: The future of privacy in big cities is bleak, cities are now getting paid to convert street lights into spying SmartNodes (cameras, microphones, speakers etc., all-in-one light pole).
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

John Stossel: A CNN Smear

from Creators: Stossel finds Anderson Cooper's claims that Donald Trump's EPA director had conspired with the CEO of a mining company to "withdraw environmental restrictions so the company could dig "the largest open pit mine in the world in an extremely sensitive watershed in wild Alaska" has a big problem.
Media Bias on Parade

Cannabis credit union sues the creature from Jekyll Island 

from Gov'tSlaves: A credit union serving the marijuana industry has sued the Federal Reserve, asking a federal judge to enforce the 10th Circuit’s order to grant the credit union a master account despite its ties to pot.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

October 14, 2017


A nigger and an Uncle Tom

from SlowtoWrite: Samuel Sey: The term Uncle Tom is a racial slur for Black men perceived as submissive to White people—Black men like me. I am perceived as submissive to White people because I do not submit to Black people.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

How we learned not to care about America's wars

from Common Dreams: Sixteen years of autopilot wars, but who’s counting?
Defense vs. The War Machine

⭐️ John Stossel: Let Them Leave

from Creators: America was founded on an act of secession from England. So why do so many people now see secession as a terrible thing?
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

How the minimum wage entrenches inequality and economic privilege

from the Federalist: Early minimum wage proponents knew what they were doing, by pricing “undesirable” workers out of the labor force to perpetuate minority poverty. Let’s not finish their work for them.
Regulation Nation

New TSA screening means airport security hell is about to get worse 

from The Manual: “Well, at least it can’t get any worse.” These days, that seems to be the mantra for most air travelers just before the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) enacts some new program that does just that.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

The federal government never lets a serious crisis go to waste

from Reason: "The expansion of federal power has not been steady and inexorable; it has grown through sudden, quantum leaps in times of emergency, most especially war. The crises eventually subside, but many of the powers remain—to be built upon later when the next crisis unfolds."
The Government is Not Us

October 4, 2017


Feds Give Americans the frog treatment

from Reason: A plan by the Department of Homeland Security to collect social media information on American citizens,
including their "handles" and even their search results.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

CNN continues to solidify its place atop the fake news dung heap

from American Spectator: 24/7 party politics disguised as news.
Media Bias on Parade

Studies confirm, free people are happier

from TheDailyBell: Even people who think that the government should be less involved in daily life are happier than
people who think society needs more rules.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

⭐️  The deep theory behind stifling speech

from The Savvy Street: A brilliant, but long, piece on how philosophy is responsible for the rise in political correctness and
how philosophy can also fix it.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Stop manipulating the worst shooting in U.S. history to support your political views

from LongRoom: Those eager to make this tragedy about gun control are going to run into a lot of factual difficulties,
not just political ones.
2nd Amendment Assaults

John Stossel: Disabled by Government

from Creators: After government nitwittery removes 20,000 university lectures from access, an entrepreneur comes
to the rescue.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

October 3, 2017


Freedom of conscience is the foundation of all freedom

from Liberty.me: The essence of freedom is the ability to be true to oneself.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

⭐️  Flip-flopping on free speech

from NewYorker: Great piece on the fight for the First Amendment, on campuses and football fields, from the sixties to today.
Indoctrination and Censorship

Marijuana prohibition turns 80

from NORML: The government propaganda that has dictated marijuana policy for the past eight decades is withering, but still prevails in some of the union's most backward states.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

California seeks ban on fossil fuel cars, laying the groundwork to ban human driven cars

from Activist Post: Looks like the nitwits who make up California's ruling class would have out-of-state drivers check their cars at the border since no fuel will be sold. That should be great for tourism.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Smart billboards target individual motorists and spy on license plates and cellphones 

from MassPrivatel: A new age of "advertised spying" is dawning.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

PC Stalinism: the EU bans cartoons critical of the EU

from Spiked!: In a move totally unsurprising to anyone who has been paying attention, the EU has shown its authoritarian colors by banning cartoons from one of its own exhibitions.
Indoctrination and Censorship

September 29, 2017


Why we need to shrink the national debt, and fast!

from ReasonTV: It was big news when our national debt passed the $20 trillion mark. What's less understood is exactly why having such a massive debt is a bad thing. The short answer is that too much debt slows economic growth, reducing living standards.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

The new electronic police state

from TechCrunch: According to the government, your privacy protections evaporate the moment you set foot in an airport.
Police State America

Poll finds most young people worry about government surveillance ‘tracking their communications’

from Newsweek: As well they should.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make.

U.S. tech giants slowly introduce censorship online

from National Review: Companies adopt communist Chinese censorship ideology. YouTube, the worst offender, is owned by Google who fires employees with unacceptable ideas and strips “offensive” channels of their ad-earnings.
Indoctrination and Censorship

ISIS fanatics show baby-faced child suicide bomber blowing himself up new propaganda video

from The Sun: Stills from a video show a twisted adult jihadi teaching the young teenager how to operate the controls of a suicide car. Americans can hardly contemplate such evil.
Defense vs The War Machine

RIP Hugh “Hef” Hefner, a patriot, hero, and testament to the American dream

from Milo: He was not just the man that created America’s most iconic adult-oriented, sexually-liberated publication, Playboy, as he actively fought against both censorship and discrimination of all stripes.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

September 25, 2017


Has asset forfeiture gone too far? Damn right Skippy!

from FoxNews: How the legalized theft of one man's truck brings the morality of civil asset forfeiture to light.
Police State America

Oklahoma is imprisoning so many people it can’t hire enough guards to keep up

from In These Times: “Prison guard unions often have a strong incentive to push back against reforms, because so much of what we spend on incarceration goes to correctional officers,” explains John Pfaff, a Fordham Law School professor.
Police State America

Scientists go after the media for highlighting a study showing IPCC climate models were wrong

from Watts Up With That!: Sadly, these scientists cannot rejoice that things are not as bad as they thought because the new finding threatens their funding.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

UC Berkeley’s ‘Free Speech Week’ officially canceled, appeared to be set-up from the start

from The Mercury News: Email suggests organizers didn’t intend for the event to happen
Indoctrination and Censorship

Sweden's 'man-free' music festival prompts response from transgender people

from Fox News: The ban on men, it turns out, only applies to what Knyckare described as “cisgender men”—which is a term for men whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth. That's not very PC.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Judge approves surveillance on Reno buses

from Mohave Valley Daily News: If you are in public, you are in government's space and will be monitored and recorded. That is what public means these days.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 5, 2017


Prices should rise during crises like Hurricane Harvey

from Reason:  Prices serve an important function. They attract resources to where they are needed most. This is not price gouging, it is the beauty of capitalism at work.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

Trump quietly nominates mass surveillance advocate to “protect” your privacy rights

from Activist Post: Like those who came before him, Trump is an authoritarian and as such wants to empower the state at the expense of the individual. The government is not us.
The Government is Watching Every Move You Make

The Utah nurse is not alone — police have a history of abusing professionals rendering aid

from The Free Thought Project: The Body Cam footage of a nurse being violent arrested for doing her job and refusing to break the law may be shocking, but it's not uncommon. Badges do not put one above the law.
Police State America

REPORT: America’s top universities deny students fair hearings

from FIRE: A new survey reveals that the overwhelming majority of America’s top universities fail to provide students accused of serious misconduct with the most basic elements of fair procedure.
Indoctrination and Censorship

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Congress Created a Monster

Those of us who believe that the Constitution means what it says have been arguing since the late 1970s that congressional efforts to strengthen national security by weakening personal liberty are unconstitutional, un-American and ineffective. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in the aftermath of President Richard Nixon's use of the CIA and the FBI to spy on his political opponents, has unleashed demons that now seem beyond the government's control and are more pervasive than anything Nixon could have dreamed of.  ... MORE

The Case for Trump's Wiretap Claims

   
      Mark Levin - Trump's Wiretap Claims                          Tucker Carlson - Trumps Wiretap Claims

Government Eyes Are Watching Every Move You Make

by John W. Whitehead.  Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in   ... MORE

The Profit Incentives Driving The Police State

by John W. Whitehead. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. Not only are American taxpayers forced to “spend more on state, municipal, and federal taxes than the annual financial burdens of food, clothing, and housing combined,” but we’re  ... MORE

Red Light Cams Linked To Rear-End Collisions In Chicago

by Dan Kedmey.   New study casts doubts on the claims that cameras improve road safety. A new Chicago-focused study links red light cameras to a coinciding rise in rear-end collisions, casting doubts on claims that the mounted cameras improve safety at intersections. The study’s findings, published by the Chicago Tribune Friday, found that while   ... MORE