Free Republic

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...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday that cigarette prices in the city would go up $2.50 to $13 which, de Blasio bragged, would be "the highest price in the country." . . . Council Member Fernando Cabrera, who introduced the bill to create the licensing requirement for e-cigarette retailers, described the proposal as "a major step to limit the use of e-cigarettes, which are dangerous nicotine delivery systems that can lead to nicotine and potentially drug addiction."

A new report finds that, under the guise of “personalized learning,” school-issued computer devices — now distributed to one-third of K-12 students in schools across the United States — are serving to collect and store an unprecedented amount of personal data on children without their parents’ notice or consent. A newly released investigation by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reveals student use of technology in school has grown at a profound rate, especially with free or low-fee devices issued by schools.

Obama aide talks about gathering intelligence on trump aides starting after 5 minutes. She says "That's why you have leaking...People are WORRIED."

And no surveillance (including wiretapping) on Trump?

A facial recognition app that can identify strangers from a photograph has been created by a British entrepreneur.Facezam can identify people by matching a photo of them with their Facebook profile. All users have to do is take a picture of someone on the street and run it through the app, which will tell them who it thinks the person in the photo is.

WikiLeaks' release of documents that provide details of alleged CIA hacking operations will be investigated by federal authorities, CNN reports. Citing several U.S. officials, CNN claims the FBI and the CIA will coordinate their reviews of how WikiLeaks acquired the documents, which officials said are in CNN's words "largely genuine," and if more will follow. The officials have yet to determine how much of the release is accurate or if any have been altered before being released.

The Environmental Protection Agency will announce a change in automobile emissions standards next week, undoing a last minute effort by the Obama administration to lock in the rules through 2025. The NY Times reports: The tailpipe pollution regulations were among Mr. Obama’s major initiatives to reduce global warming and were put forth jointly by the E.P.A. and the Transportation Department. They would have forced automakers to build passenger cars that achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, compared with about 36 miles per gallon today

For some 15 years, airport security has become steadily more invasive. There are ever more checkpoints, ever more requests for documents as you make your way from the airport entrance to the airplane. Passengers adapt to the new changes as they come. But my latest flight to Mexico, originating in Atlanta, presented all passengers with something I had never seen before. We had already been through boarding pass checks, passport checks, scanners, and pat downs. At the gate, each passenger had already had their tickets scanned and we were all walking on the jet bridge to board. It’s at this...

A federal appeals court has ruled that a Florida law restricting doctors from asking patients whether they own guns restricts the right to free speech. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law violated doctors’ First Amendment right to free speech, and concluded that the state failed to prove that physicians were infringing on patients’ Second Amendment rights. A previous decision by a three-judge panel by the 11th Circuit upheld the law, but those suing the state asked for the full circuit court to re-consider the case. ... The Republican-controlled Florida state legislature passed a law in...