Free Republic

Twitter is cracking down on hate speech and not just by looking at its own site. In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user's behavior "on and off the platform" and will suspend a user's account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter's Help Center on Friday. "You also may not affiliate with organizations that — whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform — use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes," the update...

For all of his success as a prosecutor, state legislator and congressman, it might have been his experience with a Black kid from Inglewood that has shaped Schiff most. In his mid-20s, fresh out of law school, he volunteered to become a “big brother” through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. He was paired with David McMillan, a child of a single mother who needed a male role model for her son. The two hit it off immediately, bonding over “The Big Lebowski,” Billy Joel and the beach. Three decades later, they are still part of each other’s...

Twitter vowed to crack down further on hate speech and sexual harassment, days after CEO Jack Dorsey said in a tweet-storm that the company was "still" not doing enough to protect its users. The policy changes were specifically aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online or were subject to unwanted sexual advances. They would also aim to shield groups subject to hateful imagery, symbols and threats of violence.

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." This slogan appeared on posters of the Party leader in the dystopian society of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It was a constant reminder of omnipresent government surveillance for “thoughtcrime” – independent thinking. In Orwell’s book, Ministry of Truth ‘history re-writer’ Winston Smith quietly rebelled against this oppression, starting a diary expressing forbidden thoughts. But government telescreens were everywhere. Watched constantly, Smith’s every move was monitored. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the consequences of being caught were dire; the stress on individuals enormous. As head of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), I have been feeling a...

These cameras do automatically start recording when an officer opens the door of their patrol vehicle. A blue tooth signal burst gets sent out and makes the camera start recording. The burst can also affect any phones within a 10 to 15 foot area.

"if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." Just two or three generations ago, most Americans understood that George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm and 1984 were written to explain how freedom is lost to totalitarianism and the intolerance that accompanies it. Big Brother, a term that many people still casually use to describe an all-knowing governing authority, comes right out of 1984. In the society that Orwell describes, all citizens are continually reminded that “Big Brother is watching you,” by way of a constant surveillance through the pervasive...

Parents of students at a New Jersey high school were ordered to get their children’s blood and urine tested after a can of beer was discovered at a football game. The can of beer reportedly landed on the ground and was spotted by a school official during a game at Randolph High School on Friday night.

USA Today is touting a report out this morning that “ID’ed 4500 Trump golf-club members through” their social media accounts as well as an online service that lets golfers track their handicaps: Do they not see how awful this looks?

Back in January, Food and Wine reported that KFC China would be introducing a facial recognition system that would predict your order (it’s not as creepy as it sounds). Now it looks like the brand is enhancing that technology with additional features. According to Reuters, the system lets customers pay by face, just by approaching one of the store's newly unveiled monitors. The new device is located at a KFC outpost in the city of Hangzhou. The facial recognition system is called Smile to Pay, and it’s being featured at a Yum Brands (the company behind KFC) so-called concept store...

Just in case your sensibilities haven’t been offended enough, the FBI wants you to know that your interest in Hillary Clinton’s emails is less important than protecting her privacy. Therefore, the FBI says it will not be releasing any more information on the subject. In effect, the FBI is telling you to go to hell and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. In March 2016, Ty Clevenger, a New York City lawyer sought government correspondence on the subject of Clinton’s emails under the Freedom of Information Act. Earlier this month, the head of the FBI’s Records...

How Google's Jigsaw is fighting the darkest parts of the internet BY KERRY FLYNN JUL 20, 2017 Fake news, terrorist propaganda, hateful comments — the internet is not the nicest place in the world. Jigsaw is trying to change that. Formerly under Google, Jigsaw now is a subsidiary within Alphabet. The company, under the direction of Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas founder Jared Cohen who serves as founder and CEO of Jigsaw, focuses on researching some of the darkest corners of the internet and implementing ways to address them. Yasmin Green, director of research and development at Jigsaw,...

Researchers said it was "trivial" to identify users and view their browsing habits in purchased 'anonymous' browsing data... After receiving her free trial data, Eckert partnered with Andreas Dewes, a data scientist who runs the company 7 Scientists, to see if they could identify individual users within the massive dataset. At first glance, the browsing data doesn't look like much, just a bunch of URLs with timestamps... During their investigation, Eckert and Dewes managed to find a handful of politicians in the dataset. The web browsing habits of these public servants, such as the apparent kinky porn browsing habits of...

From August, a train station in Berlin will be the testing ground for surveillance cameras with biometric face recognition capability. Here is an overview of the most important information and a look at the controversy. The test phase will take place at Berlin’s Südkreuz train station. It will include only selected participants and be conducted by the German federal police, Federal Criminal Police Office and the Interior Ministry in conjunction with Deutsche Bahn, the station operator. […] For the test phase, three specialized cameras have been installed that will film a particular entrance and an escalator leading to the station...

Who would want to be micro chipped? Many, apparently. Some people are begging for a micro chip to be implanted in their body – one that could do everything a smartphone can do and more.“I am so ready,” says Charlene Li. She’s a long-time author and principal analyst at the Altimeter Group. This week, science fiction came to the heartland when a small Wisconsin company announced that it would begin implanting microchips into its employee’s hands. The company had more than 50 volunteers too. The company sold the implantation to their employees as a convenience for them to ditch the...

A Wisconsin company is about to become the first in the U.S. to offer microchip implants to its employees. Yes, you read that right. Microchip implants. "It's the next thing that's inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it," Three Square Market Chief Executive Officer Todd Westby said. The company designs software for break room markets that are commonly found in office complexes. Just as people are able to purchase items at the market using phones, Westby wants to do the sam thing using a microchip implanted inside a person's hand. "We'll come up, scan...

Remember the bakers in Oregon who were driven out of business for refusing to bake a cake for a ceremony that was against their principles? They were fined $135,000 under Oregon law. Now the federal government is going even further, by pushing a bill to erode the First Amendment, which would criminalize opinions deemed as “hate speech.” Indeed, if House Bill 257 is passed into law, you could be jailed for an opinion that defies political orthodoxy with regards to sharia law, or radical Islam. The United States already has strict laws that protect against hate crimes, so one reasonably...

ALL PRIESTS AND BISHOPS ARE TO BE REQUIRED TO WEAR THE NEW HIGH-TECH COLLARSPosted on June 12, 2017 by abyssum Monday, 12 June 2017 Pope Francis approves electronic tagging for clergy As reported by Rorate Caeli, the Vatican is taking steps to keep its cardinals under control; if one of them is absent from Rome he is asked to let the Secretariat know where he is. Sensors indicate that Cardinal Burke is hiding somewhere round here. In phase 2, it is planned to extend this to all clergy, with the introduction of electronic tagging using the TAGLETM: this is a white collar...

During his final year in office, President Barack Obama's team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election. In all, government officials conducted 30,355 searches in 2016 seeking information about Americans in NSA intercept metadata, which include telephone numbers and email addresses. The government in 2016 also scoured the actual contents of NSA intercepted calls and emails for 5,288 Americans, an increase of 13 percent over the prior year and a massive...

Google has sprinkled some new ingredients into its search engine in an effort to prevent bogus information and offensive suggestions from souring its results. The changes have been in the works for four months, but Google hadn’t publicly discussed most of them until now. The announcement in a blog post Tuesday reflects Google’s confidence in a new screening system designed to reduce the chances that its influential search engine will highlight untrue stories about people and events, a phenomenon commonly referred to as “fake news.” “It’s not a problem that is going to go all the way to zero, but...

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday confirmed plans for his newest company, called Neuralink Corp., revealing he will be the chief executive of a startup that aims to merge computers with brains so humans could one day engage in “consensual telepathy.” Speaking to writer Tim Urban on the explainer website Wait but Why, Mr. Musk confirmed a Wall Street Journal report last month that Neuralink aims to implant a tiny brain...