Free Republic

Berlin has opened a shelter at the former headquarters of communist East Germany's feared Stasi secret police to help house a record influx of asylum seekers, weekend media reports said. Nearly 500 people, most of them from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have been staying in the foreign intelligence wing of the imposing former Ministry of State Security since late Friday, the daily Berliner Zeitung said. Up to 900 people will eventually be housed there temporarily. ...

Israel's prime minister is accusing a German department store of a "boycott" after it removed products made in Israeli settlements under new European Union labeling guidelines. Benjamin Netanyahu noted Sunday that Berlin's KaDeWe department store was once owned by Jews before the Nazis seized it. He says its decision to label products from Israeli communities and remove them from its shelves is "a boycott in every respect." ...

Merkel has come under fire within her own coalition government for her continued support for open borders, following the revelation that at least one of the terrorists involved in the atrocities in Paris on Friday posed as a Syrian refugee in order to gain entry into Europe. In August of this year Germany ignored European Union rules and threw open her doors to all Syrian refugees, promising them asylum. Hundreds of thousands came. She also urged the UK to follow her example. But far from backing away from the policy in light of the Paris attack, she has instead hit...

BERLIN (AP) -- Berlin police say they've raided 10 buildings in the German capital as part of a crackdown on far-right hate speech on social media networks. Police said Thursday that the morning raids involved 60 officers, who confiscated smartphones and computers as evidence, which are now being evaluated. They didn't have any immediate information on arrests.

Basically, google's full of crap. Apparently, they have two issues with FR. One is that a user (a long-time user not a hacker) posted a link to an image that (unknown to him) resides on a site google has registered in their database as a malware site. We've pulled the post and notified google. Have no idea when they'll stop flagging us. The other is that we have links to aim.org. NSS! Aim (Accuracy in Media) is a well known conservative site. Have no idea how many, but I'm sure we've had hundreds or even thousands of links posted to...

Basically, it's full of crap. Apparently, they have two issues with FR. One is that a user (a long-time user not a hacker) posted a link to an image that (unknown to him) resides on a site google has registered in their database as a malware site. We've pulled the post and notified google. Have no idea when they'll stop flagging us. The other is that we have links to aim.org. NSS. Aim is a conservative site. Have no idea how many, but I'm sure we've had hundreds or even thousands of links posted to aim.org. We're not going to...

http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/13/congressional-review-of-copyright-law-may-threaten-drudge-report/ Congressional Review Of Copyright Law May Threaten Drudge Report Photo of Kerry Picket Kerry Picket Reporter 5:20 PM 10/13/2015 WASHINGTON — Congress may update digital copyright law affecting aggregator sites, like the Drudge Report and Real Clear Politics, along with news sites in the near future. “Two years ago, the House Judiciary Committee launched a comprehensive review of our nation’s copyright laws, which have not been updated since 1976. As technology continues to rapidly advance, we have a responsibility to ensure that our laws are keeping pace with these developments,” Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a statement. Since...

Circulating on the web tonight: During an appearance on the Alex Jones Show, Drudge asserted that copyright laws which prevent websites from even linking to news stories were being advanced. “I had a Supreme Court Justice tell me it’s over for me,” said Drudge. “They’ve got the votes now to enforce copyright law, you’re out of there. They’re going to make it so you can’t even use headlines.” “To have a Supreme Court Justice say to me it’s over, they’ve got the votes, which means time is limited,” he added, noting that a day was coming when simply operating an...

President Obama's plan to "internationalize" the Internet may be unconstitutional, key members of Congress are claiming. The group of lawmakers sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office last week, saying the plan to relinquish oversight of Internet domain name functions to a global, multi-stakeholder body raised questions about the administration's "authority to transfer possession and control of critical components of the Internet's infrastructure to a third party."

Ever since Windows 10 launched back in July, one topic of conversation has overshadowed everything the new operating system does right: privacy concerns. Everyone with a Windows device is (rightfully) terrified that Microsoft is monitoring everything they do, so on Monday, Microsoft decided to finally issue an official response in order to clear the air. In a blog post on Windows.com, Microsoft executive VP Terry Myerson has taken the first step to earning back the trust of the individuals who are concerned about their privacy in regards to Windows 10. He noted that the data Microsoft collects “is encrypted in...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a system that can predict the “psychological status” of users with smartphones and hope to private companies to bring the invention to the market.The technology appeared on a list of NIH inventions published in the Federal Register that are now available to be licensed by private companies. The government allows companies to license inventions resulting from federal research in order to expedite their arrival on the marketplace.The system uses smartphones to ask people how they are doing mentally during the day and based on the results can “deliver an automated...

Facebook temporarily banned users from posting reports by an immigration watchdog analyzing federal statistics that show immigrants in general, and illegal immigrants specifically, are taking a big share of new jobs that come open in America, according to the group producing the reports. The giant website cited an "error" causing the ban and apologized. The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank relied upon by immigration critics, said Monday that the posting of four recent reports on jobs and immigration had been barred by Facebook. . .

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week. The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government. Minnesota senator Al Franken queried the DHS in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — IRS employees erased computer backup tapes a month after officials discovered that thousands of emails related to the tax agency's tea party scandal had been lost, according to government investigators. The investigators, however, concluded that employees erased the tapes by mistake, not as part of an attempt to destroy evidence. As many as 24,000 emails were lost because 422 backup tapes were erased, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The revelation is likely to fuel conspiracy theories among conservatives who say the IRS has obstructed congressional investigations into the scandal. George...

Google Chrome Listening In To Your Room Shows The Importance Of Privacy Defense In Depth Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with what amounts to “we can do that”.It looked like just another bug report. "When I start Chromium, it downloads something."...

Fifty years after the birth of the free speech movement at the University of California, Berkeley, officials across the UC system are encouraging faculty and students to purge mundane, potentially offensive words and phrases from their vocabularies. Administrators want members of campus to avoid the use of racist and sexist statements, though their notions about what kinds of statements qualify are completely bonkers. “America is a melting pot,” “Why are you so quiet?” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” are all phrases that should raise red flags, according to the UC speech police. Requests for...

A civil war is raging within the Republican Party, pitting House leaders against conservatives. And “fed up” conservatives have now decided to fight back in public. A congressional aide tells WND a group of House conservatives will discuss this week how to proceed, but a few of them have already decided to speak up publicly. One tactic conservatives might employ would be voting with Democrats on procedural motions to derail legislation favored by leadership. Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network. The behind-the-scenes battle broke into open view on...

A House subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday that would require the Obama administration to give Congress 30 days to review any final plan before handing off oversight of the back end of the Internet. A bipartisan compromise in the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications and Technology was reached after Democrats objected to a earlier version that barred the transition until the Government Accountability Office weighted in on the pros and cons of the final plan. Ranking Democrat Anna Eshoo (Calif.) said the revised bill "ensures there is a mechanism in place for public review before the transition is completed."...

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing liberal Kirsten Powers for C-SPAN about her new book, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, which takes on what she calls the “illiberal left” for using bullying, intimidation and political correctness to silence opinions that differ with their own. Really, she is criticizing the unAmerican and unconstitutional trend–whether by liberals or conservatives–to censor all opinions with which they disagree. She has amazing stories of the happenings on college campuses with kids being given “trigger” warnings on books and articles that might offend their sensitivities or give them PTSD by evoking...

Commonly used and unregulated internet discussions and videos about guns and ammo could be closed down under rules proposed by the State Department, amounting to a "gag order on firearm-related speech," the National Rifle Association is warning. In updating regulations governing international arms sales, State is demanding that anyone who puts technical details about arms and ammo on the web first get the OK from the federal government — or face a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail.According to the NRA, that would include blogs and web forums discussing technical details of common guns and...