Free Republic

Last Thursday, Texas based email provider Lavabit suddenly shut down their encrypted email service, leaving behind a message for its customers on the company's website. The owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levinson, intimated that the company had received a secret search order from the government and shut his business down to avoid being "complicit in crimes against the American people."

The Texas Department of Public Safety reinstated a state trooper on Friday that it fired for conducting a roadside cavity search during a traffic stop for speeding. DPS Director Steve McCraw said he was rehiring Trooper Jennie Bui after a grand jury chose not to indict her for the incident in Brazoria County that has triggered a lawsuit by the two women involved. [Snip] McCraw said the she will be suspended for 60 days and undergo additional training. He added that he was requiring all state police officers to re-familiarize themselves with the department policy on strip searches and body...

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol. The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his neighbors said they heard...

With a .45 caliber legally strapped to his side, Jordan McManus decided to photograph the federal courthouse in Phoenix last night, realizing he would probably draw attention from police, especially after reading about Raymond Michael’s experience last May. But he was still a little surprised when a police helicopter hovered over him with a spotlight as two patrol cars pulled up next to him and another two cops approached him on foot. They immediately tried to disarm him, but he refused to let them do it as it is legal to open carry in Arizona. Then they tried to pat...

Prepare to be outraged.....Shocking Surveillance Video Captures Cop Brutally Beating Female Shoplifter In Front Of Her 1 Yr Old Child in Iowa. I worked in corporate loss prevention a long time ago...let me tell you...this is beyond lawsuit...these cops should be in prison. Video: http://www.ktrh.com/pages/michaelberry.html?article=11556885

<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, the U.S. spy agency charged with monitoring foreign electronic communications, told a cybersecurity conference in New York City that automating much of the work would improve security. "What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said. The remarks came as...

The email service reportedly used by surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden abruptly shut down on Thursday after its owner cryptically announced his refusal to become "complicit in crimes against the American people."Lavabit, an email service that boasted of its security features and claimed 350,000 customers, is no more, apparently after rejecting a court order for cooperation with the US government to participate in surveillance on its customers. It is the first such company known to have shuttered rather than comply with government surveillance."I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or...

DEKALB COUNTY, GA (CBS ATLANTA) A woman said her family got an aggressive wake up call from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department. The family told CBS Atlanta News they were startled at 1:30 a.m. when deputies beat on their front door. Fearing for their safety, the family said they took their time to open the door. Once inside an officer used excessive force and aggressive language, according to one family member. After the incident, the family posted the video on YouTube. Watch full video now The sheriff’s department claims they received a copy from an anonymous sender Wednesday morning. Both...

The discussion that will take place next year in the Utah Legislature over law enforcement raid-style search warrants is a necessary topic to debate. Certainly, the use of a battering rams to combat minor offenses is something that should not occur. A libertarian group, the Libertas Institute, and others, including the American Civil Liberties Institute, will lobby for limits on police use of force during search warrants for minor crimes. When this discussion occurs, it must focus on the safety aspects — to police and suspects — that these raids provide. These raids, as conducted now, are too dangerous. One...

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds. The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States. “The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the...

Surveillance Society: The government says spying on U.S. citizens is acceptable since it's merely a means of fighting foreign terrorists. But what if the government used espionage in investigations of common criminals? The program is so sneaky that officials are trying to cover it up. "Law enforcement agents," says Reuters, "have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin — not only from defense lawyers, but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges." Criminal investigations should be launched, and suspects deprived of liberty, only "when there's a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent...

The bad news is that governments do a lot of things they shouldn’t do. The good news is that I never run out of material.I’ve even created some sub-categories, such as my U.S. vs U.K. government stupidity contest and my great-moments-in-local-government series.But I never thought I would have a special category about bureaucrats vs. Bambi.1. Bureaucrats in Virginia filed three misdemeanor charges against a man for the horrible crime of rescuing a deer that was hit by a car.2. Bureaucrats in Maryland fined two men $90 each for not having life jackets when they had the gall to rescue a...

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. "It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up...

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that...

The Fourth Amendment protects us from random invasions of our homes by police, right? We know we're secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects" unless the cops demonstrate probable cause to a judge and get a warrant. Except... Except when they don't. The fact of the matter is that police have a lot of leeway to bust your door down and take a look around if they fear that waiting for a warrant could lead to loss of evidence or danger to people. Or lead to something, anyway. That end run around the Fourth Amendment is called "exigent circumstances,"...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

Illinois State Police have launched an investigation into why police in Park Forest shot a 95-year-old man with a bean bag round, leading to the man’s death. WBBM Newsradio’s John Waelti reports World War II veteran John Wrana met his demise at the hands of Park Forest police officers last week, after allegedly threatening nursing home staff and paramedics with a cane, butcher knife, and shoehorn at the Victory Centre assisted living center. But Wrana family attorney Nicholas Grapsas denied Wrana ever wielded a knife, and questioned why police needed to use force on an elderly man, when the staff...

This is AP, so no quoting. Gist of article in comment below.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Serial liar Barack Obama tells cereal maker General Mills to stop advertising the truth about Cheerios Barack Obama is a serial liar, which I have shown in Here are 226 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc.But when a cereal maker tells the truth, Obama tells it to stop telling the truth.For quite some time, advertisements for the breakfast cereal Cheerios made the true and accurate claim that eating Cheerios lowers a person’s cholesterol.However, even though this claim is true and accurate, the Obama administration ordered General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, to stop...

Google may not shield the identity of an anonymous blogger who claimed a Manhattan lawyer was a “crooked” and “shady” attorney, a judge ruled.

CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom "port reader" software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software. The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts. FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI's legal position during these discussions is that the software's real-time interception...

Today's high-end televisions are almost all equipped with "smart" PC-like features, including Internet connectivity, apps, microphones and cameras. But a recently discovered security hole in some Samsung Smart TVs shows that many of those bells and whistles aren't ready for prime time. The flaws in Samsung Smart TVs, which have now been patched, enabled hackers to remotely turn on the TVs' built-in cameras without leaving any trace of it on the screen. While you're watching TV, a hacker anywhere around the world could have been watching you. Hackers also could have easily rerouted an unsuspecting user to a malicious website...

Daylight checkpoints

Student forgotten in DEA holding cell gets $4.1M SAN DIEGO — A UCSD student scooped up in a drug raid and left in a Drug Enforcement Administration holding cell for 4 1/2 days without food or water will get $4.1 million to settle his claims, his attorneys announced Tuesday. Daniel Chong, 25, was among seven people detained in an April 21, 2012, raid on a University City home. Chong, an student at UCSD, was handcuffed and put in 5-by-10-foot cell, by an officer who told him, “Hang tight. We’ll come get you in a minute,” his attorney Julia Yoo said....

Very bad boys! When Detroit citizens found themselves held up at gunpoint by officers who demanded their valuables, they thought they were impersonators. But they were wrong. Some Detroit police officers are being accused of robbing citizens at gun point, in uniform. So what do you do if you are pulled over and don’t believe the officer has good intentions? Local police have issued a statement saying that you have permission not to stop if you don’t believe a real police officer is trying to pull you over. They say to call 911 and ask a dispatcher for assistance. But...

A federal judge has ruled that Nebraska cops must return over $1 million confiscated at a traffic stop from a woman who saved the money $1 at a time during her 15 year career as an exotic dancer. The money belongs to Tara Mishra, 33, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., who began putting aside her earnings when she started dancing at age 18, according to an opinion U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon wrote last week. The money was meant to start her business and get out of the stripping business, the judge wrote. State troopers confiscated the money in March 2012...

The defendants in Rob MacIver’s red-light ticket case are members of the police department and his town’s administration, but neither of them showed up to the hearing on Friday. MacIver, a 56-year-old Vermont man, is looking to win $2,000 for the damages he incurred while protesting a ticket he received for supposedly running a red light last December, according to WCAX.com. MacIver says he didn't go through a red light and the police’s video proved his point. However, police have insisted he violated the law.

He works at one of the three-letter intelligence agencies and oversees construction of a $1.2 billion surveillance data center in Utah that is 15 times the size of MetLife Stadium, home to the New York Giants and Jets. Long Island native Harvey Davis, a top National Security Agency official, needs that commanding presence. His role is to supervise infrastructure construction worldwide for NSA, which is part of the Defense Department. That involves tending to logistics, military installations, as well as power, space and cooling for all NSA data centers. In May, crews broke ground on a $792 million computing center...

A teenage motorist who is believed to have been racing when he caused a crash that killed two Brandeis High School students has been indicted — five months later — on manslaughter charges, court records show. Antonio Flores, 19, a Brandeis senior at the time, plowed his 2012 Mitsubishi Lancer into a 2011 Chevrolet pickup while he and a group of students were on their lunch break Feb. 19, police and school officials said. The wreck, which occurred at the northbound access road of Loop 1604 just before Hausman Road, killed back-seat passengers Gabriella “Gabby” Lerma, 17, and Georgina Rodriguez,...

The U.S. government’s growing surveillance of Americans has transformed the nation into an “electronic concentration camp,” top civil-liberties attorney John W. Whitehead says. “It’s moving so rapidly you have to feel creepy because you're being watched. Everybody has a file if you do anything electronically,” Whitehead, author the new book “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,” told Newsmax TV. … Whitehead—who founded the Rutherford Institute in Virginia, which helps promote civil liberties and human rights—has been researching the growth of the National Security Agency since the 1980s. The agency has been under fire for its collection of...

Confiscation? What are you talking about? We would never….. Posted on July 22, 2013 by Miguel Part of a letter from the friendly folks at NYPD, Licensing Division to NY City Gun Owners: See? If you surrender your weapon (under threat of coming down on your sorry ass with all the power that the City of NY and Mayor Bloomberg can exercise) , it cannot be confiscation! Now, who are you gonna believe? Us or them paranoid rednecks from the NRA? Related Article on Gun Watch: Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation 

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Dr. Imani Perry, Princeton professor, it’s YOUR fault that your sons cried at the George Zimmerman verdict Update: I sent an email to Dr. Perry with the link to this blog entry, and I told her, “I welcome you to show this to your students and anyone else whom you think might like to read it and comment on it.�Dr. Perry wrote back to me and said, “I will be reporting you to the police for harassment.� Princeton professor Dr. Imani Perry recently wrote:“My two sons, bright, creative and kind African American boys, aged 7 and 9,...

After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment. Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes. That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor. Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.” He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light...

Mohandas Gandhi, the greatest pacifist of the 20th century, is widely quoted as having said, “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look back upon the Act depriving the whole nation of arms as the blackest.” Gun controllers point to incidents such as the Ruby Ridge and Waco massacres to illustrate how violent gun owners can be, rather than acknowledging that gun control itself means violent confrontation. At trial, the jury acquitted the Davidians of all murder charges, although it convicted five of aiding and abetting the voluntary manslaughter of federal agents. It is telling...

Rochester, N.Y. -- She says she had no warning that someone was going to search her car after she left to catch her flight. So the woman contacted News10NBC. We found out it happened to her because she valet parked her car. Those are the only cars that get inspected. So if security feels it is necessary to search some cars in the name of safety, why not search all of them? Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it -- a notice saying...

New Jersey --(Ammoland.com)- The thing about a police state is that it tends to creep up on you. One day you think the Bill of Rights is intact and the freedoms you take for granted are intact, but the next day you find out that under the National Defense Authorization Act (HR 1540), signed into law by President Obama on December 31, 2011, you can be arrested and detained without recourse to an attorney or the courts. HR 1540 kills the concept of Habeas Corpus by permitting the detention of U.S. citizens without trail. In 2009 the National Emergency Centers...

As the Department of Labor (DOL) celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act this year, the department is sponsoring a Smartphone app contest to help consumers identify businesses who treat "their workers fairly and lawfully." The DOL requests [emphasis added] that contestants: develop a smartphone application that will transform the way the public is able to use departmental enforcement data. By providing consumers with information at their fingertips about which businesses have treated their workers fairly and lawfully, the creator of this application will help empower consumers to make informed choices about where to bring their business....

Radley Balko asks:Are cops constitutional? Radley Balko (born April 19, 1975 in Greenfield, Indiana) is an American libertarian journalist, blogger, and speaker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radley_Balko

Excerpted from "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" Sal Culosi is dead because he bet on a football game — but it wasn’t a bookie or a loan shark who killed him. His local government killed him, ostensibly to protect him from his gambling habit. Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. “To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,” a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after...

California prison doctors sterilized almost 150 women over a four-year period because they didn’t want the state to have to provide welfare funding to any children they might have in the future, one of the top doctors admitted this week. California taxpayers spent $147,460 on the procedures between 1997 and 2010. ”Over a 10-year period, that isn’t a huge amount of money,” Dr. James Heinrich, the OB-GYN at Valley State Prison for Women, told the Center for Investigative Reporting, “compared to what you save in welfare paying for these unwanted children – as they procreated more.” Heinrich’s argument recalls progressive...

Many people on social media websites said they thought the exercise was an actual incident. A counterterrorism exercise Wednesday sparked concern among drivers and caused traffic delays in Roanoke before officials called off the practice. The training, conducted near Fishburn Park on Brambleton Avenue in southwest Roanoke, was a test by federal authorities of new techniques to detect radiation learned by state agents and officials, according to Sgt. W.P. Marks, a supervisor with the Virginia State Police Counter-Terrorism and Criminal Interdiction Unit. State police spokesman Sgt. Rob Carpentieri said the training was conducted in conjunction with the federal Department of...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Here are 209 examples of Barack Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, etc. In the 2008 United States election, I wrote in Ron Paul for President. In the 2012 election, I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson. Those who are of a more leftist persuasion than myself might want to consider voting for the Green Party in future elections. Some of the things on this list are major events that should scare the daylights out of any true liberal who cares about civil liberties.Other things on this list are medium things that some Obama supporters may...

A surprising statement by a government official in eastern China's Jiangsu province has captured the attention of internet users after it was caught on video and posted online on Sunday. “If the police don’t beat people, what’s the point of keeping them?” said an unidentified official of a complaint bureau in Suzhou. “The police are the government’s violence machine.” The clip of the statement has gotten more than two million views and has set off a barrage of criticism against police violence. "He told the truth. The police are the government's thugs," a person posted on his Weibo microblog. Police...

A family is suing the city of Henderson, Nevada for violating their Third Amendment rights — the constitutional prohibition against quartering soldiers in a private home during peacetime without the owner’s consent. The Mitchell family says that’s essentially what happened when Henderson police allegedly arrested them for refusing to let officers use their homes for a “tactical advantage” in a domestic violence investigation into a neighbor, according to an official complaint. Police officers contacted Anthony Mitchell on July 10, 2011, with a request to use his house as a lookout while investigating his neighbor. When Mitchell told police that he...

Tuesday, dash cam video surfaced of an Iowa State Trooper pursuing a speeding black Chevy SUV on Highway 20 between Cedar Falls and Fort Dodge, back in April. In an audio recording, you can hear DCI Special Agent Larry Hedlund call a state dispatcher for help in pulling over the SUV that he was going a "hard 90." State Patrol started a pursuit, but backed off when they learned the SUV was being driven by a fellow officer and Governor Terry Branstad was a passenger. Five days later the DCI put Hedlund on administrative leave after he complained to his...

Boston cops crack down on after-hours parties Saturday, July 6, 2013PrintEmail Comments (9) By: O’Ryan Johnson Boston police are using social media, as well as old-fashioned walking beats, to find huge after-hours parties before they happen in an effort to tamp down summer violence. “It’s about trying to be proactive,” said Bureau of Field Services Superintendent William Evans. “If we find out about a party, we’re going to visit that house ahead of time. If they have a DJ, they need an entertainment license. If they’re going to serve alcohol, they need a liquor license.”Evans said police are spotting upcoming parties...

Video: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e3_1373034153

Get Cuffed for Filming Police; Your Dog Gets Upset; Cop Kills Your Dog Brian Doherty|Jul. 1, 2013 7:10 pm Here's the way it is, America: annoy a cop, even doing something perfectly legal, and he might cuff you. And if your dog sees it and gets upset, he might kill your dog. Latest example in this video uploaded to YouTube yesterday from Hawthorne, California of a man filming police on the street, when they then approach and cuff him. Warning: if watching a dog die would upset you, don't watch. It looks to me like the cop was approaching the...

From massive NSA spying, to IRS targeting of the administration's political opponents, to collection and sharing of our health care information as part of Obamacare, it seems every day we learn of another assault on our privacy. Sadly, this week the Senate took another significant, if little-noticed, step toward creating an authoritarian surveillance state. Buried in the immigration bill is a national identification system called mandatory E-Verify. The Senate did not spend much time discussing E-Verify, and what little discussion took place was mostly bipartisan praise for its effectiveness as a tool for preventing illegal immigrants from obtaining employment. It...