Orwellian

Spain Dismisses Catalonian Government, Dissolves Parliament, Fires Police Chief

"Spain dismissed Catalonia's president and Cabinet and dissolved its Parliament on Friday hours after lawmakers in the autonomous region defied Madrid and voted overwhelmingly to declare independence. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called new elections and fired the Catalan police chief, as part of an unprecedented package of measures to seize control of the renegade administration in Barcelona. The European Union has backed Madrid in its handling of the crisis. The United States also voiced its support for the Madrid government."

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Rand Paul’s USA Rights Act Would Protect Us From NSA Spying

"It fixes the 'backdoor search loophole,' which now allows warrantless searches of the NSA-collected contents of Americans’ communications. It extends broad oversight powers to an independent agency. It guarantees the end of a controversial type of data search (called “about” searches) that the NSA suspended earlier this year. It improves judicial oversight of the government’s surveillance regime. It provides better transparency and requires stricter reporting."

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U.S. widens surveillance to include individuals with no foreign connection

"The change last year to a Department of Defense manual on procedures governing its intelligence activities was made possible by a decades-old presidential executive order, bypassing congressional and court review. The new manual, released in August 2016, now permits the collection of information about Americans for counterintelligence purposes 'when no specific connection to foreign terrorist(s) has been established,' according to training slides created last year by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI)."

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She’s a Mom and a Sex Offender for Life

"Shawna is a 35-year-old woman who is legally prohibited from taking her kids to the park. That's because she's a sex offender. Years earlier, on her 19th birthday, Shawna and her friends were drinking and celebrating. A teen boy expressed interest in her, and they slept together. He turned out to be 14 years old. His mother notified the authorities. Now Shawna is spending the rest of her life on the sex offender registry, even though the mother of two is obviously no threat to children."

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Feds ‘Rescue’ Women From Their Freedom, Money In Sting Operations

"Everyone will ignore the real victims of Operation Cross Country: the vulnerable women and girls tricked, frightened, robbed, detained, arrested, incarcerated, and otherwise mistreated by police and federal agents as part of this sick charade that claims to help them."

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Boycott Israel & you won’t get aid donations, Hurricane Harvey victims told

"The city of Dickinson, Texas, told individuals and businesses on Monday that they are now accepting applications for 'grants from the fund generously donated to the Dickinson Harvey Relief Fund' for storm damage repair. In order to apply for the grant, however, applicants must agree to a number of clauses, one of which is asserting that they do not boycott Israel. The clause stems from a Texas law passed in May, which became effective on September 1, that requires all state contractors to verify in writing that they are not participating in boycotts of Israel."

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Researchers: Government shouldn’t use AI if it can’t explain decisions

"Government institutions are already blindly following the direction the algorithms give. A report by ProPublica found that an algorithmic system for criminal sentencing was biased against black people—not by understanding the color of their skin but by using flawed data correlated with race. Teachers in Texas recently won a case where their job performance was being evaluated by an algorithm—a circuit court found that the unexplainable software violated the teachers’ 14th amendment rights to due process."

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Wrong Facebook translation gets man arrested for posting ‘good morning’

"Facebook has apologized after a Palestinian man was arrested by Israeli police for a post saying 'good morning' that its automatic-translation service erroneously translated as 'attack them' in Hebrew and 'hurt them' in English."

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