Orwellian

White House Planning Private Spies to Counter “Deep State” Enemies

"The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals."

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A Government That Gives Licenses Won’t Hesitate to Take Them Away

"Without a license, one is no longer legally permitted to work. This is to say, barbers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and pilots (the list is extensive) who are otherwise skilled at their occupations can be removed from the legal workforce if the governing body deems their student loan repayment unsatisfactory."

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With Gun and Medical Marijuana Registries, Hawaii Starts Disarming Patients

"Hawaii is one of 29 states that allow medical use of marijuana, but it is the only state that requires registration of all firearms. If you are familiar with the criteria that bar people from owning guns under federal law, you can probably surmise what the conjunction of these two facts means for patients who use cannabis as a medicine, which Hawaii allows them to do only if they register with the state. Some of them recently received a letter from Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard, instructing them to turn in their guns."

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NSA Secretly Helped Convict Defendants in U.S. Courts

"The undisclosed use of warrantless surveillance to win prosecutions is also troubling from a constitutional standpoint, foreclosing a rare opportunity to discover Section 702 abuses and challenge the law, which civil liberties advocates have argued is unconstitutional."

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U.K. Pressured Over Secret Base’s Role in Trump’s Drone Strikes

"The U.K. Government is facing fresh calls to clarify its role in U.S. drone strikes after acknowledging that there are potentially hundreds of British spy agency personnel working inside a U.S.-controlled surveillance base that has played a key role in so-called targeted killings."

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What If You’re Innocent But Your Attorney Pleads Guilty?

"Over McCoy’s express objection, the trial court permitted his attorney, Larry English, to tell the jury that McCoy was guilty of murder. With the court’s approval, English even purported to relieve the state of its burden to prove McCoy guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Following this brazen violation of McCoy’s autonomy, the jury returned a unanimous verdict for first-degree murder and sentenced McCoy to death."

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Georgia high schoolers win $3M settlement over fruitless drug sweep

"Each Worth County High School student will receive between $1,000 and $6,000, but students who attorneys say suffered more invasive violations will receive higher amounts. Hobby's attorney, Raleigh Rollins, said the settlement will be paid through the county's insurance policy rather than directly from public funds."

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Congress poised to jam through reauthorization of mass surveillance

"The current authorization for Section 702 expires on December 31, and it’s the first time Congress has faced this reauthorization since Edward Snowden’s earth-shattering disclosures about the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance apparatus. Committees in the Senate and House have competing proposals to reauthorize the program. But with the clock running out, Congress once again appears to be poised to jam through reauthorization."

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Pre-Internet Laws Are Jeopardizing Today’s Electronic Privacy

"Under the 1986 law, email that has been stored for 180 or more days is considered to be ‘abandoned’ and can be perused by federal authorities sans a warrant. But in an era of cloud computing and services like Dropbox, most Americans certainly would beg to differ that any emails stored online had been abandoned."

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