Free Republic

The internet has become a powerful catalyst for international violent jihad, according to a new report from the Dutch security service AIVD.

SNIPPET: "Reckless doesn't mean not dangerous. Quite the opposite. They may fail spectacularly, or be wildly successful. One thing I believe we can count on is that they will take risks, act swiftly, and burn as many assets as they have to along the way in order to do what Khamenei wants."

Anybody having a problem with ad.doubleclick redirecting to an error page. I was having this problem on Hotair and now it is on the Daily Caller. Ran spybot and malewarebytes to no avail. I can get to the home page but when I click on article it redirects to a error page saying internet explorer cannot display the webpage. Any ideas out there? Thanks

Between online banking, Online shopping, credit card payments, e- mail, cell phones and texting...it's been so long since I've actually sent *anything* "snail mail", that I literally had to check online to find out that the postal rate for a letter has gone up twice since the last time I sent a letter USPS. Fortunately I has a roll of 1 cebt stamps to cover the increase without having to go to the post office, but it still felt weird.

Less than a month after announcing a controversial new privacy policy that shares user data across all its sites with no opt-out option, Google is introducing a system to monitor all online activity of those who participate in a program called Screenwise. In exchange for unrestricted access to information on your every online move, the search and software giant is offering financial compensation...

Yesterday, MSNBC's Today Show started its new feature, the "Rossen Reports," by Jeff Rossen. Rossen's first story: "Anyone can buy guns, no questions asked." The implication, of course, is that for Americans to exercise their Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right to keep and bear arms--the right, not to put too fine a point on it, that shall not be infringed--we should be subjected to a battery of questions. Rossen breathlessly reports: Hundreds of thousands of guns are for sale, on hundreds of websites. We responded and set up meetings at popular shopping malls. We bought everything from a police-grade pistol...

The door has closed on Sarah Palin running for president as a Republican. Even if she changed her mind and threw in her hat, the calendar and delegate count would put the GOP nomination out of reach. She has also said repeatedly she's not interested, and threw passive support to Newt Gingrich. But consider for a moment that Palin was running, how would she do? With so many media and voter variables at play, it's hard to know for sure. But the Election Oracle shows something unique for Palin. She enjoys extremely high regard online – on Wednesday her favorability...

Police in Tennessee have arrested the jilted woman's father and another man and charged them with murder. Billy Clay Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth were killed last month after they deleted Jenelle Potter, the daughter of one of the suspects, from their "friends" list. Both were shot in the head and Mr Payne's throat was cut. The couple's eight-month-old baby was found in the mother's arms, unharmed, when the bodies were discovered. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen," said Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece, who has worked in local law enforcement for 27 years. "We've had murders, but nothing...

Today is so yesterday. While the show remains a cash cow, Today’s production team can’t show up at J-school lecture halls without the cloying smell of 80′s happy talk overpowering their intellectual pretensions. And so Today is dipping its collective toe into . . . wait for it . . . investigative journalism. What better way to kick off their new venture than a cookie-cutter piece of EAT-G (Easy Access to Guns)? Did you know you can buy guns over the Internet without an FFL and FBI background check? Only one problem . . . YOU CAN’T. But that kind...

UC Berkeley, in an apparent attempt to stave off any association with, well, sexy co-eds doing naughty things on camera has bought a handful of .xxx domain names that could link to the school. In other words, domains like goldenbears.xxx, uc-berkeley.xxx and calbears.xxx won’t offer any titillating bits, just a dark screen that says “this domain has been reserved from registration.” “We wouldn’t want to be associated with the kind of industries that would use that domain name,” . . .

HE digital tsunami that swept over the Capitol last month, forcing Congress to set aside legislation to combat the online piracy of American music, movies, books and other creative works, raised questions about how the democratic process functions in the digital age. Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs. They knew that music sales in the United States are less than half of what they were in 1999, when the...

Despite overwhelming evidence that memos and letters were sent to Eric Holder regarding Fast and Furious as early as July of 2010, he still used ignorance as his defense in the most recent Congressional hearing. As frustration was apparent on the faces of Republican Committee members, there was a certain smugness on the faces of Holder and his assistants, who were seated behind him.

Executive Director of the Gun Owners of America, Larry Pratt has been following the Fast and Furious scandal, practically from the time it broke early last year. One of his concerns is that without the support of...

SNIPPET: "Moeed Abdul Salam didn't descend into radical Islam for lack of other options. He grew up in a well-off Texas household, attended a pricey boarding school and graduated from one of the state's most respected universities." SNIPPET: "It is not clear to what extent Salam's family knew of his radicalism, but on his Facebook page the month before he died, he posted an image of Anwar al-Awalki, the American al-Qaida leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen, beside a burning American flag." SNIPPET: "The family, originally from Pakistan, immigrated to the U.S. decades ago."

GRAND RAPIDS – A Comstock Park man has been charged with criminal copyright infringement for allegedly streaming live sporting events and pay-per-view events on the Internet.

Richard L. Bushman...wrote in 2005 "Rough Stone Rolling..." "I first became aware of the problems shortly after 'Rough Stone Rolling' came out...I thought I was getting these emails asking for help..." Then Bushman heard that many other scholars were also being beset with queries from members of the LDS Church who had encountered something on the Internet that had shaken their faith. He began to hear the same thing from ordinary Mormons who had friends or family who were having problems. He also heard from people at BYU how it was a problem there as well. People were encountering things...

SNIPPET: "Chicago gangs are still spray-painting their graffiti on alley walls, train cars and viaducts — but they’re also using their smart phones and computers for “cyber-tagging,” according to the Chicago Crime Commission, which released an updated book on the city’s street gangs Thursday. They’re provoking their rivals with Internet graffiti and using social media to keep in touch with their associates, according to the commission. “They’re tagging websites with information that is provocative and incites violence,” said Jody Weis, former Chicago Police superintendent and president of the commission." SNIPPET: "Web chatter is a valuable tool for law enforcement officials...

Gaydar for Android **SNIP** From QSoft Consulting Limited: Discreetly take pictures to judge whether a person is straight, metrosexual, or gay! Picture is automatically saved to your phone so you can view it at any time! The most accurate Gaydar on Android! Recent changes:Version 1.0.1 features larger "Straight", "Metro" and "Gay" graphics.

Facebook IPO Filing: All the DirtWall St. Cheat Sheet – 4 hours ago The much anticipated initial public offering for Facebook could be filed for as early as Wednesday. But as for the actual date for the IPO, an anonymous source says, “timing is still being discussed.” The article reports that the estimated valuation for the company will be between $75 and $100 billion, raising $10 billion. **SNIP** Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February of 2004. The website claims more than 800 million members and has changed the way the world communicates. According to Dealogic, a $10 billion Facebook offering...

Censoring Twitter Are you worried about Twitter's new guidelines? Yes, I think it's a huge blow to freedom of speech around the world No, I think they're doing it responsibly I'm not sure

Fast forward to today and we suddenly find that an interesting situation has arisen in the Untied States in regards to ACTA. It seems that President signed the ACTA treaty a few months ago, with apparently little or no fanfare, but questions are now being asked by those who do keep a very close eye on this – was Obama even allowed to sign ACTA?

The Drudge Report saw a drop in traffic yesterday of two million hits in the wake of proprietor Matt Drudge's two-day attack on Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.Drudge started his attack on Gingrich Wednesday evening with a banner headline accusing Gingrich of insulting former President Ronald Reagan. Drudge carried on the attack all through Thursday, at one time having fourteen anti-Newt headlines at once.The assault on Gingrich prompted many supporters to announce they were swearing off the Drudge Report with some saying they would stop using it as their home page.According to statistics posted by the Drudge Report, the site's...

In another example of how little Barack Obama cares about the United States Constitution and the role of Congress -as bad as it can be- the current U.S. president ratified the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. President Obama had signed the first binding draft of ACTA last October 1, 2011, also in secret. As we reported yesterday, ACTA is much more dangerous than SOPA, PIPA or OPEN, because it is the accord that legalizes internet censorship on a global basis. That is why presidents around the planet have received an signed the agreement without any review from their congresses or...

Google said Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a radical shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices. The information will enable Google to develop a fuller picture of how people use its growing empire of Web sites. Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes. 247 The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones....

I was just editing my YT channel an noticed something new: A red telephone icon in the upper left corner of the screen next to the YT logo. I clicked it and found it links to "YOUR INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT A post SOTU conversation" Where questions can be posted, ostensibly for Fearless Reader himself to answer. Shall we have some fun?

Long ago, Jefferson warned, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” The exceptions to that rule have been few and far between recently, and ought to be celebrated when they occur. One did this past week with the announcement that supporters of the so-called “Stop On-Line Privacy Act” and the “Protect Intellectual Property Act” have indefinitely postponed their measures after an unprecedented protest across the Internet. SOPA and PIPA pose a crippling danger to the Internet because they use the legitimate concern over copy-right infringement as an excuse for government to intrude...

SNIPPET: "While these various elements of the jihadist network are distinct, the Internet brings them together, especially at the grassroots level. Videos, websites and online magazines indoctrinate aspiring militants in the jihadist ideology and provide a forum for like-minded individuals and groups."

Maybe you're sick to death of all the to-do over SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate buddy the Protect Intellectual Property Act or PIPA) or you just really needed your Wikipedia fix today (don't worry, you can still read their SOPA page!). But really, isn't it awesome that people won't shut up about something actually important for once? Reason didn't participate, but don't take that as any sort of endorsement of nosy government activities. Nick Gillespie reported earlier today on the protest and how it has drawn support from all sides of the political spectrum. What's interesting...

Last November I wrote an article titled 'The Advent of Internet Censorship in America' (http://www.free-marketing-tips-blog.com/ 2011/11/advent-of-internet-censorship-in.html). To recap: "The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith [R-TX] and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The aim of the bill is to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online transmission of restricted intellectual property." (Source: Wikipedia) Opponents of the bill says it goes too far and threatens to shut down or censor legitimate websites that might inadvertently link to...

Linky Here

This is the fourth of a series of five essays on the Internet and Social Dynamics. In Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part I: Everybody is someone else’s weirdo was concerned with the treatment of how internet groups (focusing on Free Republic) dealt with posters (I almost typed “posers” which on second thought would not have been a bad typo to leave in place) who do not share the prevailing views. The second part, Internet Forums and Social Dynamics: Part II: Snapbacks, was concerned with the psychological reactions when a poster who had been considered safely “one of the group”...

Israel Terrorism Information Center: Iran Participates In PR For IHH, Turkey Sponsored Gaza Flotilla By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem, Israel ---- June 12, 2011 .... As the International Red Cross declares that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the true motives for a "Freedom Flotilla" to Gaza now emerge. Iran, which has declared war on Israel and Western democracy, is taking Islamic Jihad to new depths of propaganda that has not been seen since the days of the Nazis. According to the The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in Israel a delegation from Iran participated...

from the sickening dept Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else: "Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk...

The stink of differential justice is yet again smelled surrounding a massive "anti-piracy" effort There are a number of things curious about the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations and U.S. Department of Justice's haphazard takedown of the popular content storage site Megaupload among them: + If the site was truly involved in $500M USD in copyright threat, what took the FBI so long to act?  The site has been live for seven years now and used by millions of Americans. + How is Megaupload fundamentally any different than Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube?  Like YouTube users upload content which the site cannot control.  Megauploads...

On Wednesday, some of the Internet's largest entities blacked out their websites --or their logos or some of their content --in a protest against the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills making their way through Congress. If you're wondering whether all of this had an effect, the answer is yes. Big time. Wikipedia, the largest Web player to block access to its pages for a full 24 hours, reports that a whopping 162 million people experienced the blackout on the online encyclopedia's landing page. In addition, 8 million U.S. readers took Wikipedia's suggestion and looked up their congressional reps from the...

Capping a dramatic week of protests and legislative maneuvering, leaders in the Senate and the House announced on Friday that they are backing off efforts to pass a pair of controversial bills to crack down on foreign websites that use pirated content. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced that he will postpone a cloture vote on the Senate’s Protect IP Act, originally scheduled for Tuesday. And in the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said he will postpone consideration of the House version until more agreement can be found. Congress backed off the legislation after an unprecedented online...

McLEAN, Va. –  Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world's largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws -- a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue. "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States," the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment. The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations -- Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited -- of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was...

What if the Mayans were right when they predicted that the world was coming to an end in 2012? Some people are always prepared for the apocalypse. Last year, a group of misguided Christians believed the end was nigh. A dozen years ago, Y2K was all the rage. Back when the Mayans were making predictions, so were the Essenes, a reclusive Jewish sect during Christ’s time on Earth. They thought the final battle between good and evil was coming any day now — more than 2,000 years ago. Today, some people in the Arizona desert are reportedly preparing for the...

News flash: Wikipedia isn’t always correct. The online encyclopedia’s penchant for posting inaccuracies isn’t helping U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, whose parents are listed on Wikipedia as being two fallen public figures in Broward. “She is the daughter of former Broward Commissioner Diana Wasserman-Rubin, and her stepfather is Richard Rubin,” the entry about the congresswoman reads.

Free Speech: In the name of stopping online piracy of copyrighted material, some propose giving the federal government power to shut down websites without due process and control the greatest mode of free speech ever invented. Call them "sons of net neutrality," for while the Software Online Piracy Act (SOPA) working its way through the House of Representatives and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), are shrouded in seemingly worthy goals, they would grant government power it should not have and arguably pose a threat to our First Amendment rights. Online piracy is a real problem, and the...

Note: The following text is a quote: IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 917-09 November 20, 2009 DOD Announces Military Commissions Actions Today, prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions announced they intend to ask the convening authority to refer new charges under the recently-enacted Military Commissions Act of 2009 against Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri, in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 17 sailors and injuries to many more. This announcement follows the attorney general's determination on Nov. 13, 2009, that a military...

There certainly hasn’t been any lack of attempts by the U.S. government — elected Representatives and Senators, and White House — to try to regulate/control the Internet in this session of Congress. It seems a new cybersecurity bill pops up at least once a week. The latest one catching all the attention is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261. SOPA is a beefed-up version of the failed Protect IP Act.... David Ulevich, an expert in Internet security calls the legislation “dangerous” for three reasons: 1) “there is no way to censor only illegal content without harming legitimate uses...

Congressional support for controversial online piracy legislation eroded dramatically on Wednesday in the face of an unprecedented online protest supported by tech titans such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook. Several key senators withdrew their support from the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA), including Tea Party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), an elected member of his party's leadership. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who leads the Senate GOP's campaign team, said the legislation should be put on hold, while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, retreated from the...

Tell Congress: Don’t censor the Web Fighting online piracy is important. The most effective way to shut down pirate websites is through targeted legislation that cuts off their funding. There’s no need to make American social networks, blogs and search engines censor the Internet or undermine the existing laws that have enabled the Web to thrive, creating millions of U.S. jobs. Too much is at stake – please vote NO on PIPA and SOPA.

Don't worry, your Internet isn't running slow. Some of your favorite websites like Craigslist and Wikipedia have gone black for the next 24 hours in protest of anti-piracy legislation. If you have been trying to find the most correct answer on Wikipedia's English site about who won the Oscar for "Best Leading Lady" at the 1980 Academy Award this morning, nine times out of 10 you have realized the site isn't currently working. How about how many Harry S. Truman parks there are in the United States? Looking for an apartment for rent in the City of Hazelwood on Craigslist...

For all the talk from some that SOPA was "dead," it appears it's alive and well and getting ready for its big re-entrance. Lamar Smith has just sent out a press release saying that he intends to resume the markup in February...

Do not try to look up "Internet Censorship" or "SOPA" or "PIPA" on Wikipedia, the giant online encyclopedia, on Wednesday. SOPA and PIPA are two bills in Congress meant to stop the illegal copying and sharing of movies and music on the Internet, but major Internet companies say the bills would put them in the impossible position of policing the online world. Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, now says his site will go dark for the day on Wednesday, joining a budding movement to protest the two bills. Google vs. China Watch Video Craigslist Censored? Watch Video China Hackers Stealing U.S....

Web addicts have brain changes similar to those hooked on drugs or alcohol, preliminary research suggests. Experts in China scanned the brains of 17 young web addicts and found disruption in the way their brains were wired up. [...]

It’s like a political blindside to the American voter. Somehow, with virtually no coverage in the press, the White House has managed to close in on the unthinkable… bending online piracy laws to give the Department of Justice abusive power over the Internet. Sound farfetched? Constitutionalist attorney Gary Kreep, President of the United States Justice Foundation (USJF), not only has a firm grasp on the legislation that would grant this authority, but he also has inside sources informing him that the Senate is scheduled to make this potential nightmare a reality when they pass S. 968 into law on January...

The Barack Obama Administration has, since its inception, been moving the United States dramatically leftward, trying to (at the very least) make us a western European socialist entity. Ideologically, a full-on participant in – rather than a rational outlier of – the patently absurd United Nations (UN). Perhaps the greatest – and worst – example of President Obama’s UN-ing of America was his Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 2010 illegal Network Neutrality Internet power grab. The Administration going to these unlawful lengths to commandeer control of the ‘Net makes it a little more difficult to persuade international autocrats and dictators...

“...[M]ust suppress our desire to be overly prescriptive to derive some predetermined outcome.” Yet, “overly prescriptive” rules to “derive a predetermined outcome” are exactly what they and the FCC want. An unconditional green light to the Commission to auction spectrum will result in restrictions on which companies can bid for spectrum, along with regulations and mandates on how the spectrum can be used. The FCC consistently pushes rules focused on achieving outcomes during spectrum auctions with mixed or failed results. This is exactly how Net Neutrality came to be, and how the FCC botched the D Block and devalued the...