Police State

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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In Baltimore, Residents Support Martial Law

"Neighborhoods are rotting away as the local economy crumbles giving way to a surge in homicides. Baltimore is on track for the worse year ever with a homicide rate the highest in the United States. Baltimore is home to about 615,000 people, but the city has more homicides than New York or Los Angeles, both of which have far larger populations. Earlier this year, Mayor Catherine Pugh called in the Federal Government in hopes to restore order. She was even quoted, 'violence in the city is out of control'…"

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Federal judge says St. Louis police targeted protesters for retaliation

"Police made mass arrests that swept up journalists, onlookers and even a black undercover officer, who was reportedly beaten. This also seems like one of those 'How would we view this if it happened in another country?' moments. A judge just found the police guilty of using chemical agents on protesters because those protesters were criticizing the police."

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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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Abolish the Drug Enforcement Administration, Help The Poor Instead

"The DEA oversees a multibillion-dollar enterprise whose primary purpose is to criminalize millions of people for the use of drugs. Nearly half of those incarcerated in federal prison are there for drug violations, including 60 percent of all female inmates. The DEA has kept marijuana on the list of Schedule 1 drugs in the face of widespread evidence of its benign nature. Racial disparities in the policing of the drug war remain profound."

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‘We the People’: The New Permanent Underclass in America

"It’s not just the government’s endless wars that are bleeding us dry. We’re also being forced to shell out money for surveillance systems to track our movements, money to further militarize our already militarized police, money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts, money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply, and on and on. Are you getting the picture yet? The government isn’t taking our money to make our lives better."

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Calif. Mother Threatened With Arrest At Bus Stop For Not Vaccinating Children

"One morning she walked her kids to the bus stop and she was approached by an official from the Claremont school district and a police officer. In very intimidating fashion, they began questioning her about whether or not her children had been vaccinated. When she refused to answer and started recording the interaction they walked away, but that wasn’t the end of it. Later she called the police department and explained what was going on, and she was told that she could be arrested for refusing to vaccinate her children."

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Russian Police arrests Libertarians during Adam Smith forum

"Last weekend, the Libertarian Party of Russia was co-organising the Adam Smith Forum, an annual conference on classical liberalism, in Moscow. The topics discussed included railway nationalisation, universal basic income, smart contracts and many more — by no means anyone called for an armed anti-government riot. However, when a group of guests and speakers were going on a lunch break they were brutally searched, arrested and taken to the police station. Once again: in 2017, in the centre of Moscow, police arrest the participants of an academic conference!"

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Criminalizing Hate Speech Causes More Problems than It Solves

"The Spanish government decided that criticizing the actions of state agents is hateful and therefore punishable as hate speech. This is by no means an isolated incident. Many countries that American progressives admire and make calls for the US to emulate have stringent hate speech prohibitions and are using those prohibitions to crack down not on racial or gendered attacks, but on political speech. Recent examples include France, Canada, Germany, and the UK."

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