150 Organizations Condemn Trump’s Call for Execution For Drug Offenses

"The US has never brought a death penalty case for a drug offense, but following the president's call for executions last spring, Attorney General Sessions sent a memo to prosecutors urging them to consider seeking the death penalty in some cases."

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Police databases, key to Trump’s opioid crackdown, push addicts into black market

"Civil rights advocates and medical groups are arguing the databases should be used to identify problem patients and get them into treatment. The American Medical Association calls for the databases to be placed under health departments rather than the police agencies and disciplinary boards that control most of them."

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Oklahoma Passes Most Progressive Medical Marijuana Initiative Since California’s Prop 215

"Oklahomans for Health, the folks behind the initiative ought to be feeling pretty good right about now. They have successfully passed a very enlightened medical marijuana law in the face of opposition from the state's Republican and religious establishment."

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Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition software to police

"The employees call out two specific businesses that Amazon should end: the sale of facial recognition software to law enforcement (marketed as Amazon Web Services Rekognition), and the sale of AWS cloud services to Palantir (a data analytics firm that provides 'mission critical' software to ICE)."

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Feds ran a money-laundering operation for over a year in $20M darknet sweep

"The core of the operation was an online money-laundering business seized by agents from Homeland Security Investigations and operated as a sting for over a year. By offering cash for bitcoin, HSI agents were able to identify specific drug dealers, ultimately tracing more than $20 million in drug-linked cryptocurrency transactions."

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California To Create A ‘Ministry of Truth’ To Combat Fake News

"The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposes the bill, calling it 'flawed' and 'misguided.' The group argues the measure would make the government and advisory group responsible for deciding what is true or false. It also points out the First Amendment prevents content-based restrictions, even if the statements of 'admittedly false.'"

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