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President Biden signed a bill Saturday extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program another two years. The Senate passed the reauthorization bill early Saturday, after hours of intense debate, narrowly avoiding a key national intelligence gathering capability going dark. Senators voted 60-34 to send the bill to Biden’s desk shortly after the midnight deadline. The program looked as if it was headed for a lapse until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a breakthrough on the Senate floor.

“We have two parties, and only two,” the legendary journalist and conservative political activist M. Stanton Evans liked to say: “One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I’m very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.” I couldn’t help but think of that line on Friday when the House passed the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on Friday. 149 Republicans and 126 Democrats voted in favor of this act that...

Not even clear that reams of Jan. 6 bank customer information was useful to Treasury and FBI, hearing witnesses say. Jordan Peterson warns China model is coming. Congressional Democrats are so concerned about losing statutory workarounds for the Fourth Amendment that they appear willing to tolerate red states using financial transactions to track women who have abortions, a major concern after the Supreme Court struck down federal abortion rights. That's the impression from hearing Thursday of the House Judiciary Committee's Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee on alleged collusion between the federal government and banks for politically motivated surveillance in...

Who watches the watchmen? All of us, if we're smart. In the age of surveillance, that means monitoring how and where the snoops put us under scrutiny. Among the people and organizations doing such important work is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which recently updated one of its countersurveillance tools. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today unveiled its new Street Level Surveillance hub, a standalone website featuring expanded and updated content on various technologies that law enforcement agencies commonly use to invade Americans' privacy," the group announced January 10. Understanding How We're Being Watched The hub consolidates information about such evolving...

Browsing through social media but never liking or commenting on posts may be a sign of a mental health condition, a new study has revealed. Researchers at the Central China Normal University found that people who use platforms 'passively' are more likely suffer from social anxiety compared to people who use it actively - uploading posts and sharing life updates. The team surveyed more than 500 college students on their mental health and social media use, finding that 'voyeurs' were more afraid of unfamiliar situations in their physical lives. On the other hand, those who used social media actively found...

House and Senate conservatives on Wednesday sounded the alarm on a potential move by congressional leadership to extend a deep state surveillance law in a defense bill. “Reauthorization of FISA can’t be hooked to anything. The federal GOV has spied on Americans [who] decided to go to Church or you went to a school board meeting. This needs to end. Reauthorization needs to stand on its own, and have significant reform,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) said during a press conference with the House Freedom Caucus and Senate conservatives. The conservatives held their press conference as congressional leaders...

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Raymon Holmberg didn't know his new sedan came equipped with the long arm of the law. The dealer hadn't bothered to mention the "black box," a computer chip that stores information on speed and seat belt use. "When I bought my car," he said, "I didn't realize I was also buying a highway patrolman to sit in the back seat." Holmberg, a state senator, believes his privacy was violated and is taking aim at black boxes. Lawmakers in 10 other states are also hoping to regulate black boxes, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

AUSTIN –– Transportation Security Administration chief David Pekoske said the agency wants to use technology to reduce the number of screening officers in checkpoints and speed up travel processes as passenger volumes increase. At Tuesday’s panel at South by Southwest, which focused on accelerating aviation security, he boasted about the agency’s computed tomography technology and biometrics. Despite struggling with staffing a year ago, Pekoske said that nearly 2.4 million people are screened on a given day by TSA. Pekoske said that TSA’s purpose is to make sure it maintains its security and transportation system at the same time, while staying...

On March 2, 2023, the people in control of the Joe Biden administration officially announced that government control of internet content was now an officially a part of the national security apparatus. [White House Link] If you have followed the history of how the Fourth Branch of Government has been created, you will immediately recognize the intent of this new framework. The “National Cybersecurity Strategy” aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to “cybersecurity” and communication vectors. This policy is both a surveillance system and an information...

...When you do talk to other families about your child going to their home or riding in their car, you want to make sure you find out if any guns they have are stored safely — meaning they are secured in a safe and unloaded, Crifasi said. ...When her daughter is going to meet with a new friend, Thomas said she likes to lay out all the safety information for that family. She mentions how many dogs they have, that there’s an alarm on the pool, that guns are stored unloaded in a safe separate from ammunition, and that alcohol...

Three journalists from Finland's largest daily went on trial on Thursday charged with publishing classified defence intelligence, with the prosecutor demanding at least 18-month suspended sentences if found guilty. The report, entitled "Finland's most secret place", revealed the rough location and tasks of an intelligence unit of the defence forces at a time when parliament was debating whether to expand its powers to monitor private data in digital networks.According to the prosecutor, the article contained harmful information the publication of which was against the law.

JERUSALEM – In a series of highly unusual actions, the U.S. State Department and world leaders waded into the bitterly contentious domestic dispute over Friday's Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion. "As Secretary of State, I usually avoid commenting on Supreme Court rulings," America’s top diplomat Antony Blinken announced in a statement. "But today’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade has raised understandable questions and concerns across the world and within our [the Department of State’s] workforce." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, also took the Supreme Court to task for its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health...

Touted as an overdue (if duplicative) law that no one could disagree with, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act signed by President Biden last week includes a subtle provision that could boost the Biden administration’s war on wrongthink. The bill sailed through the U.S. Senate and the House with ease. The tactful naming made the bill radioactive to oppose, which is why 422 congressmen voted in favor while only three opposed. Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the three who voted against the bill, expressed a handful of concerns, including that there are a limited number of constitutionally specified federal crimes, that...

An 18-year-old Maine man and two other teens, one in Chicago and another in Kentucky, conspired to attack a Chicago mosque with homemade explosives this month, new court documents reveal - until the FBI unraveled the plot. The teens, agents said, concocted a scheme to massacre worshippers at the Shia mosque in the name of ISIS. The recently unsealed federal filing alleges that Xavier Pelkey of Waterville and two teens, who were not named in court papers because they are juveniles, communicated through Instagram and other platforms to plot the attack. They planned to convene in the Windy City for...

Republican Representative Jim Jordan is demanding FBI Director Christopher Wray appear before Congress to answer allegations the agency improperly spied on political figures and others. Jordan, along with two other GOP representatives, sent a letter to Wray on Monday in response to a Washington Times' report that the agency violated its own safeguards on preventing undue spying. Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and a close ally of former President Donald Trump, has previously accused the FBI of launching politically motivated investigations. The letter references a March 11 report by The Washington Times based on an audit...

A faint winter sun slides toward the frozen scrub as Stephen Graves guides his tractor-trailer across the cracked pavement of a truck stop parking lot in southern Oklahoma. Exhausted from another 400 miles behind the wheel, he needs the restroom. But mostly he needs an answer to the same question that dogs him nearly every day as darkness falls: Where can he park his rig for the night? Graves is nearing the 11-hour limit on driving before he is legally required to rest for 10 hours. He could push on for another hour, creep closer to the Texas border and...

People don’t want outsiders reading their private messages —not their physical mail, not their texts, not their DMs, nothing. It’s a clear and obvious point, but one place it doesn’t seem to have reached is the U.S. Senate. A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have re-introduced the EARN IT Act, an incredibly unpopular bill from 2020 that was dropped in the face of overwhelming opposition. Let’s be clear: the new EARN IT Act would pave the way for a massive new surveillance system, run by private companies, that would roll back...

The IRS will soon make taxpayers upload a selfie to access certain tax tools. “Starting in summer 2022, if you need to login to the IRS’s website to access the Child Tax Credit Update Portal, get your tax transcript or view a payment agreement with the agency, you will need to create an account with third-party identity verification company ID.me,” CNBC reported. “A simple username and password will no longer suffice: You will need to provide a government document with a photo, such as a driver’s license, state ID or passport, and take a video selfie with your smartphone or...

Fired FBI executive Andrew McCabe says America's conservatives are as bad as Islamic terrorists and the federal government needs vastly increased powers to spy on them. The stunning words from McCabe came during his recent speech at the University of Chicago, and were captured by a report in The Federalist about his comments on conservatives. "I can tell you from my perspective of spending a lot of time focused on the radicalization of international terrorists and Islamic extremist and extremists of all stripes … is that this group shares many of the same characteristics of those groups that we've seen...

A senior German Cardinal has warned that the likes of Bill Gates, George Soros and Davos Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab are using the coronavirus pandemic to force the world under “total control” of globalist “super-rich elites.” Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, who also serves as a high ranking judge at the Vatican court, made the comments during an interview with Austria’s St. Boniface Institute. Mueller urged that “People, who sit on the throne of their wealth,” are seizing an “opportunity to push through their agenda.” The Cardinal added that the pandemic has led to “chaos” and “turmoil” in part due...