Who Watches The Watchers

Police Chief Arrested After Soliciting Cop Posing Online As 14-Year-Old

"A Pennsylvania police chief—who gained widespread attention after losing his arm in a summer fireworks accident—was arrested after soliciting sex from a teenage girl during an online sting. Forty-year-old Chief Mike Diebold is being charged with two felonies: unlawful contact with a minor and criminal attempt to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, WPXI, an NBC-affiliate in Pittsburgh reported. Diebold reportedly sent inappropriate photos through an online messaging app while soliciting sexual contact, under the name 'KuteCop4You'. Little did he know, he was in contact with a fellow police officer - albeit undercover."

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Jury rules cops were justified in SWAT raid over family’s loose-leaf tea

"No one disputes that the Hartes are innocent of any criminal wrongdoing. No one disputes that the officers conducted a raid on their home after mistaking tea for marijuana. And no one disputes that the officers improperly used the results of notoriously unreliable field tests as probable cause for the mistaken raid, instead of sending the tea to a lab for more rigorous testing. No one disputes any of these things. Yet the system failed to compensate the Hartes for what happened to them, and the system failed to hold any of the law enforcement officers accountable for their mistakes."

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Thousands of Americans’ Electronics Illegally Searched at Border

"Over 30,000 people had their electronic devices searched without probable cause or a warrant by Customs and Border Protection in 2017. This is a 50% increase from 2016. Most of the searches took place at airports when travelers were leaving the country. Imagine the helplessness of having your phone taken by an Agent, and searched without your consent. No suspicion of any crime. No probable cause. Just some thug using brute force to violate your privacy. In these settings, travelers are powerless. You just want to get home or continue to your destination, but the American police state shakes you down. Hundreds of traveler complaints about such oppression have now surfaced thanks to a Freedom of Information Request."

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Renewal of FISA Section 702 with ‘abouts’ collection slated for Thursday

"The powers in question allow the government to target foreigners overseas, collecting their communications. But Americans’ communications — even those in the U.S. — can be snared if they are part of conversations that the targets are having. The bill allows 'abouts' collection, which is when the government scoops up communications that mention a target, even if he or she isn’t the sender or receiver."

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An Ex-Cop Talks About Police Shootings

"The graphic video from the killing of Daniel Shiver was released after the jury decided to acquit ex-Mesa police officer Philip Brailsford of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter. The Mesa police department and Mesa police union both supported Brailsford, but it’s important to receive feedback from police sources who don’t have a vested interest in the case."

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Cliven Bundy-FBI debacle: Another example of why Feds need to be leashed

"Judge Navarro slammed the FBI for withholding key evidence. Unfortunately, this seems to be standard procedure for the FBI — including in their investigations of both the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns as well as the Las Vegas shooter who slaughtered concert goers last October. FBI officials have also been caught routinely twisting the truth to burnish prosecutions. False FBI trial testimony may have helped sentence 32 innocent people to death, as the Washington Post reported in 2015. How many other innocent people have been put behind bars because of federal misconduct?"

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Homeland Security suffers data leak on 240,000 employees

"The information in the file also included names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, positions, grades and duty stations. The agency said it 'did not include any information about employees’ spouses, children, family members and/or close associates.' The agency confirmed that the incident was not due to an external cyber-attack from unknown sources but stemmed from a leak inside the DHS itself. The breach was eventually categorized as a 'privacy incident.'"

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Will ABC really tell us what happened at Waco in 1993?

"If there was a way to characterize the government's actions against the Davidians as something other than mass murder that has been covered-up with rigged political inquiries, government biased experts, lackey judges, official lies and the intimidation of question askers, we, the producers of WTRE could not find it."

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James Bovard: Why Ruby Ridge Still Matters

"If the government is entitled to effectively label certain individuals or groups or notions as public enemies, it is naive to expect due process and fair play to follow. Ruby Ridge illustrates the folly of treating noxious ideas like ticking time bombs. The vast majority of devotees of deluded dogmas will be duds — unless the government detonates the scene."

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Deadly ‘swatting’ hoaxes and the dangerous conditioning of cops

"Sometimes a rifle really is just a pellet gun. Sometimes a hostage situation is a prank. Sometimes a dispatcher gets it wrong. And sometimes a man 'reaching for his waistband' is just trying to pull up his pants. But these stories also show that what the police claim to have seen isn’t what happened."

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