Who Watches The Watchers

The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages

"Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened."

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Disturbing Trend of Police Wanting Drones for Routine Infractions

"After lulling the public into believing that using drones in the U.S. would be confined to border patrol or for counter-terrorism in the event of an imminent threat, we are beginning to see police calling for far wider implementation of drone surveillance. I’d like to remind readers that up until 2010 it was a conspiracy theory to suggest that drones would be used in the U.S. at all. Until, of course, it came out that there had been a domestic drone program in the works for years. Subsequently, it became understood that the 'border' actually extends 100 miles inland through an area that the ACLU dubbed the 'Constitution-free Zone.'"

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Congress Needs to Put a Stop to Asset Forfeiture

"Revenues generated through forfeiture may be spent with virtually no oversight. Funds distributed to local or state agencies via the equitable sharing program are similarly beyond the reach of state or local lawmakers. Perhaps this lack of accountability explains how funds supposedly reserved for 'law enforcement purposes' wind up getting spent on margarita machines, training trips to Hawaii, and chrome accents for Harley Davidson motorcycles."

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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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The Pentagon, CIA, and NSA Are in Charge

"Surrounding himself with generals and giving the national-security establishment carte blanche to do anything it wants to protect 'national security,' Trump, for all practical purposes, has been absorbed by the national-security establishment, even permitting the CIA to continue keeping its long-secret, 50-year-old JFK-assassination records secret from the American people. It is safe to say that for the balance of Trump’s term in office, his actions in foreign affairs will be no different than anything that Hillary Clinton, who undoubtedly would have been a loyal servant of the national-security establishment, would have done with respect to foreign affairs. What gives? Why the dramatic shift in Trump?"

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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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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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Cop Arrested for Tampering With Breathalyzers In 20,000 DWI Cases

"The state police have insisted the part of the calibration process that Dennis skipped is 'legally required but not scientifically necessary.' However, legal experts have voiced concerns about how important every part of the calibration process is, saying that these measures are 'legally required' for good reason. Just a small percentage point on a breathalyzer could mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment."

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