Category: Surveillance State

Let That Sink In

National Review;

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring social-media platforms to censor posts about Covid-19 and elections.

The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling says that the White House likely “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences.” The panel of three judges found that the administration “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

A lower court previously placed restrictions on the Biden administration’s communications with social-media platforms; those restrictions applied to a number of government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department, Homeland Security, and the U.S. Census Bureau.

After temporarily blocking the order, the Fifth Circuit judges have now modified the order to apply only to the White House, the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI.

More here.

Plus, a blow by blow from Tracy Beanz: I want to stop for a second (again) and go over how monumental this actually is. This is the first time ever that a normal “user” or American has submitted evidence of social media censorship and had their concerns ADDRESSED at all by a COURT OF LAW.

Consent of the Governed

Daily Mail- Nine out of 10 ULEZ cameras have been vandalized in southeast London

From next week, the controversial scheme will cover all London boroughs and will force drivers of non-compliant vehicles to shell out £12.50 a day. The pricey plans have been met with much resistance and armour plating is now being used to protect the cameras.

TfL has said the vandalism will not stop the Ulez changes going ahead next week as planned and that all vandalised cameras will be replaced or repaired. A spokesperson added that more than 1,900 cameras are in place in outer London.

Activists have also put stickers over the cameras so that drivers aren’t caught out by the new rules.

When The FBI Does It, That Means That It’s Not Illegal

Via Instapundit;

“Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that an unknown federal agency had breached official White House policy and used secretive methods to conduct a business deal with the NSO Group, a blacklisted spyware vendor known for selling powerful surveillance tools. The agency in question not only brazenly disobeyed the government’s official policy, but had also used a front company to facilitate the deal, suggesting that it knew what was happening was not exactly kosher. After the Times’ story was published, the FBI was ordered by the Biden administration to investigate. Now, several months later, the bureau’s investigation is complete, and it turns out that the agency that disobeyed the White House and purchased the creepy NSO tool was…the FBI.”

We Don’t Like Your Cat Pictures

No bank account for you.

The Telegraph- Major banks’ privacy policies allow them to monitor customers’ social media accounts

The country’s biggest banks have quietly introduced the right to monitor customers’ social media into their privacy policies, The Telegraph can disclose.
Despite public denials that they carry out checks on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, the four biggest high street lenders and several others have buried in the small print of their privacy policies that they may obtain information from social media accounts.

Bad Information, mass formation

Thank God the CBC has our back when it comes to misinformation and “media-literacy”. Anyone with even a tenuous grasp of basic logic can ferret out the double standards contained in the article. To add to the putrid mix, the bizarrely named MediaSmarts spokesman is invited to weigh in with these examples of twisted logic:

“Disinformation quite often is true information that is presented in a misleading context, like a genuine photo that’s presented as being from a different time and place than it actually was,” he said.

“Knowing how to use fact-checking tools is one of the quickest and most efficient ways of finding out whether a claim has already been verified or debunked.”

Fact-checkers? Anyone with a Facebook account already knows what their purpose is, and it’s not to add to the free flow of information.

 

I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

“Alexa, say the n-word”

The sequence of events that led to this digital exile began innocuously enough. A package was delivered to my house on Wednesday, May 24, and everything seemed fine. The following day, however, I found that my Echo Show had signed out, and I was unable to interact with my smart home devices. My initial assumption was that someone might have attempted to access my account repeatedly, triggering a lockout. I use a fairly old email address for my Amazon account, and it’s plausible that an old password might have been exposed in a past data breach. However, I currently use strong, auto-generated passwords via Apple and employ two-factor authentication with an authenticator app, so unauthorized access seemed unlikely.

I swiftly checked my other accounts (social media, streaming apps, etc.) to ensure I hadn’t been compromised. All seemed normal, with no flood of notifications from Microsoft Authenticator that would indicate an attempted breach. Puzzled, I followed the advice of the Amazon app and dialed the customer service number it provided. That’s when things began to take a surreal turn.

The Great Reset

China is the pilot project.

Whatsisname’s Britain

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and you are not to stray from the Primrose Path.

British counter-terror police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival at London’s Luton airport and subjected him to an extended interrogation about his political views and reporting for The Grayzone.

As soon as journalist Kit Klarenberg landed in his home country of Britain on May 17, 2023, six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers detained him. They quickly escorted him to a back room, where they grilled him for over five hours about his reporting for this outlet. They also inquired about his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Let That Sink In

The Power To Regulate Is The Power To Control

Established in June 1934, early in FDR’s first term as POTUS, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed radio spectrum a mere six months at a time. That gave it the power to harass radio stations that criticized the New Deal, or FDR himself. The FCC soon developed a reputation for denying licenses or causing major paperwork headaches for radio stations daft enough to question the New Deal Order or the administration’s official narratives.

One particularly stunning example of government censorship via corporate proxy occurred in February 1934, when the nation’s radio spectrum was still under the control of the FCC’s bureaucratic precursor, the Federal Radio Commission. Like more recent censorship-by-proxy, it led to death and destruction.

Eager to further his version of a Great Reset, FDR announced that contracts with private airlines to deliver the public mails were abrogated (as gold clauses in bonds had been) and the routes turned over to the US Army Air Corps. Unfortunately, the military’s pilots back then were far from being candidates for Top Gun school. As predicted, they began crashing. Soon, a dozen had died, along with many of the messages they had been entrusted to carry.

To hide his failed policy, FDR censored veteran pilot Eddie Rickenbacker, who took to the airwaves to bring public attention to the matter. NBC Radio’s William B. Miller warned Eddie that if he said anything controversial on air, he would be pulled off, on orders from Washington. Instead of criticizing FDR as intended, Eddie dissembled.

The Twitter Files saga proves that the US federal government is still using its regulatory powers to coerce corporations into censoring critics, despite the fact that doing so is patently unconstitutional. As the US Supreme Court ruled in 1960 in Bates v. City of Little Rock (361 US 516), First Amendment rights “are protected not only against heavy-handed frontal attack, but also from being stifled by more subtle governmental interference.”

Recycled politicians

In other news, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is gearing up for a new role: spouting bromides and promoting a veritable blizzard of non-concepts. Hard to say, though, if that’s actually anything new.

“The Christchurch Call is a foreign policy priority for the government and Jacinda Ardern is uniquely placed to keep pushing forward with the goal of eliminating violent extremist content online,” Hipkins said.

Let That Sink In

“Straight out of 1984”.

Full interview on Rumble.
Related: A bipartisan Senate bill that would rein in the Chinese-owned app is facing its first real headwinds.

“Have you no sense of decency?”

Hamilton 68 and the Hoax Of The Century.

In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era.

For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.

Until 2017, that is…

But it’s about much more than that. Grab a coffee, send it on.

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