Tag: surveillance

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First Amendment rights media and media people political challengers social media

The Ignorance of Censorship

Covid, censorship, surveillance, PSYOP, mind control

Why is Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, governor of Minnesota right now?

Perhaps because government censors — functioning through agents like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook — made it harder to hear his opponent, Dr. Scott Jensen, during Walz’s 2022 re-​election campaign.

A shift in a few percentage points would have tilted things in the challenger’s favor. But Jensen had made the government’s response to the pandemic — including the tyrannical policies of Walz’s state government — a central theme of his campaign.

And in those days (as in these), all-​out censorship of various deviations from the government line was de rigueur. Disagreement about COVID-​19, both the nature of the infection and the wisdom of the government’s response, was among the targets.

Jeffrey Tucker asks “Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess” to the fact that Facebook had done so little, in Zuckerberg’s words, to resist repeated pressure “from the Biden administration, including the White House … to censor certain COVID-​19 content”?

The answer to the uninteresting question “why now?” is standard CYApolitical calculus. In any case, the confession isn’t quite exhaustive; Zuckerberg doesn’t acknowledge the extent of the censorship. As Tucker notes, “every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels.”

The single COVID-​contrarian piece by Tucker himself that slipped through the social-​media censorship net “by mistake” got an atypical tsunami of response. So what if Dr. Jensen’s message and arguments had not been perpetually smothered by government-​pressured social-​media companies?

Jensen may still have lost (Walz got 52 percent) but the point of elections goes further than a horse race. Where there is free speech, voters can learn something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment partisanship

Who’s Afraid of Tulsi Gabbard?

Tulsi Gabbard, surveillance

Former Democratic congresswoman and anti-​warmonger gadfly Tulsi Gabbard is no terrorist. Yet, the government is treating her like one.

Last November, UncoverDC related the testimony of retired Air Marshal Sonya LaBosco, now executive director of the Air Marshal National Council, which works on behalf of Air Marshals.

LaBosco says that instead of tracking genuine threats, the TSA surveillance programs like Quiet Skies are focusing on political targets, such as those who entered the capitol (or just the capital) on January 6, 2021.

Air marshals are also being diverted to the southern border to perform mission-​unrelated tasks like dispensing water.

LaBosco says she’s been getting nowhere with requests for explanations from Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas and others with oversight of the surveillance programs. Shocker.

Now UncoverDC reports that according to an Air Marshal whistleblower, Tulsi Gabbard has been added to the Quiet Skies program, created to “protect traveling Americans from suspected domestic terrorists.”

Listing Gabbard, who is now accompanied by Air Marshals and other TSA personnel when she flies, certainly appears politically motivated. Marshals “were first assigned to Gabbard on July 23, a day after she criticized Kamala Harris, Biden, and the National Security State in an interview with Laura Ingraham.”

Such targeting of critics is very disturbing. Thanks to UncoverDC’s reporting and LaBosco’s testimony, it does not seem as implausible as it might have been a few years ago. Years of similar opposition-​targeting conduct by the Biden administration have helped us accept it, too.

Discussing the surveillance, Gabbard says: “No American deserves to live in fear of our own government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Bills of Suppression

censorship, misinformation, disinformation, surveillance

In 2021, Democrats took aim at persons who donate to Democrats’ opponents with legislation called the For the People Act, which Republicans successfully blocked.

Back then, Bradley Smith, chairman of Institute for Free Speech, observed that the legislation aimed to violate the rights of groups “who do nothing more than speak about policy issues before Congress.” It would also have limited political speech on the web.

Now the bill is being resurrected as two separate pieces of legislation, each with language purporting to counter the purported threat of artificial intelligence. They are the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the AI Transparency in Elections Act.

Some Republicans seem to be buying into the resuscitated anti-​speech agenda, even though the legislation incorporates many proposals — even much of the same language — from the earlier bill. Again, says Smith, the goal is to expose conservative donors to “to harassment and boycotts.” Also to outlaw content called “materially deceptive content” as judged by a “reasonable person.” 

Of course, “reasonable persons” can and do disagree about the meaning of various speech and whether it’s “deceptive.” It’s reasonable to assume that the legislation, if enacted, will be used against speech that enforcers happen to disagree with.

As for actually deceptive speech: all manner of jabberwocky is protected by the First Amendment unless uttered to rob or defraud someone. If I tell you the moon is green cheese and you believe it, that may be sad. But I haven’t picked your pocket … or made you eat lunar cheese.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom

ATF’s 115-​Year Mistake

mistaken identity, prison, guns

“Oops. Sorry about almost sending you away for 115 years. Case of mistaken identity and dishonest testimony.”

But Bryan Montiea Wilson did not get even a “sorry” from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) or local law enforcement.

Wilson, who works for a railroad equipment manufacturer, had never been arrested when ATF agents nabbed him in December 2023. Accused of gun and drug sales to local police officers said to be working with the ATF, Wilson could only repeatedly assert his innocence.

His looming punishment included up to 115 years in prison and millions in fines. Then, suddenly, he was released.

How did Wilson wind up being falsely accused? The Truth About Guns site reports that prosecutors realized their blunder after his court-​appointed lawyer investigated. But an uninformative request to dismiss the case is all ATF offered.

“Further review … reveals that the interests of justice would best be served by a dismissal of the pending charges as opposed to further prosecution.… The Government respectfully requests that the Court dismiss the pending charges against defendant Bryan Montiea Wilson.”

I guess we can thank the prosecutors for mentioning “justice.” But there should at least be an accounting in such cases; and this accounting, plus further consequences, should be mandatory.

“Something got messed up and they landed on me,” Wilson says. “I don’t know how this happened, but it can’t happen again. It shouldn’t happen again.”

Wilson has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Fourth Amendment rights general freedom privacy

GOP Fails on FISA

FISA, surveillance, privacy

“The House appears ready to reauthorize FISA 702 — which has been abused literally hundreds of thousands of times to spy on Americans without a warrant — without requiring the government to get a warrant,” tweeted Sen. Mike Lee (R – Utah) on X last weekend.

“The U.S. government uses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans without a warrant,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R – Ky.) seconded, also on X. “This week, the House will vote to require the Feds to get a warrant to snoop on Americans. Sadly this vote is likely to fail. I will demand a recorded vote & post results.”

The “sadly” indicates that the Republicans in Congress are split, despite years of complaining about how the FISA courts treated Trump … and us. (A common complaint has been that the courts almost never say No to a FISA request from the Deep State.) 

The Electronic Freedom Foundation explains the nitty-​gritty of Section 702: “As the law is written, the intelligence community cannot use Section 702 programs to target Americans, who are protected by the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. But the law gives the intelligence community space to target foreign intelligence in ways that inherently and intentionally sweep in Americans’ communications.”

So while de jure the Deep State is disallowed from peering into our digital data, de facto our paid government snoops do it all the time. 

Rep. Massie seeks to add a warrant process to FISA requests, but it looks like his amendment will fail. In that case, Massie urges Republicans not to re-​authorize the whole FISA program.

But that effort will probably fail, too.

Our representatives are just not that into the Fourth Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies political challengers

The RFK Challenge

Joe Biden, censorship, surveillance

Yes, but …

When contemplating a candidate for office we may like, we do a lot of “Yes, but” thinking. It’s impossible not to.

Yesterday I considered the candidacy of Bobby Kennedy, Jr., in the context of the Republican/​Democrat Duopoly™. Many of my readers may like his stances on COVID or war, but worry about other positions, like the Second Amendment and “climate change.”

Yes, but … there is another Yes, But context: the candidate forces mainstream voters and media manipulators to Yes, But their cherished positions.

Yes, Trump was “a threat to democracy” for trying to “overturn an election.” RFK, Jr. grants that Democrat talking point. 

But when pressed by Erin Burnett of CNN, his response was a challenge: “I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is the first candidate in history — the first president in history — that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent.”

Now your and my response might be, No, but …

As in, he was certainly not the first president in American history to directly censor political speech.

But the presidents who did that are all heroes to the CNN crowd, so they’ll have to say, “Yes, but …”

But what? What’s the response? 

The CNN article, linked above, was lame: “‘With a straight face Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that Joe Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump because he was barred from pushing conspiracy theories online,’ DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement. ‘There is no comparison to summoning a mob to the Capitol and promising to be a dictator on day one.…’”

What CNN and the DNC and the whole establishment ignore is the vast suppression of thousands, millions of voices online, organized by the government and ex-​government and close-​to-​government operatives.

Yes, but … they like censoring their competition!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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