Free Republic

Where’s your car? Well, dude, it’s in a huge Orwellian police database. That might seem like the plot of a bad movie, but since around 2010, police agencies in San Diego County have quietly used a network of sophisticated devices called license-plate readers (LPR) to monitor and record the movements of thousands of everyday drivers. Even as you read this, police cars equipped with LPR are patrolling the streets, automatically scanning and photographing every license plate in sight, tagging each with a GPS coordinate and filing the information away. For years. With 36 million scans and counting—an average of 14...

InstaPoll: We Want To Hear From You! What is your reaction to last night's State of the Union address? I Agree with the President's Remarks I Disagree with the President's Remarks I Need More Details from the President Please provide any additional comments or reactions to the State of Union below. *By answering this survey, you are subscribing to my newsletter.

Imagine a vast registry that details every legal gun owner in the country, along with information about all of their firearms. Now imagine the gun lobby not making a fuss about it. That’s what has happened in Germany, where a new gun database went into service at the beginning of the year. Until recently, some records were kept on index cards across what used to be 551 separate local registries. Now, law enforcement officials can sit down at their computers and scroll through lists of owners and their guns in seconds. Hunting is popular in Germany, and gun manufacturers are...

Two key memos outlining the Justice Department’s views about when Americans can be surreptitiously tracked with GPS technology are being kept secret by the department despite a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU to force their release. The FBI’s general counsel discussed the existence of the two memos publicly last year, yet the Justice Department is refusing to release them without huge redactions. (You can see the heavily censored versions sent to the ACLU here and here, and our original FOIA request here.) The Justice Department’s unfortunate decision leaves Americans with no clear understanding of when we...

An on-again, off-again move by the Obama administration to scrap the federal gas tax in favor of a pay-per-mile fee would boost the tab to Americans as high as 250 percent, raising their current tax of 18.4 cents a gallon to as high as 46 cents, according to a new government study. But without a tax increase, said the Government Accountability Office study, the government's highway fund is going to go dry. One reason the fund is going broke: President Obama's push for fuel efficient cars has resulted in better mileage, and fewer stops at the pump. The GAO study...

(NaturalNews) The reports are absolutely true. Facebook suspended the Natural News account earlier today after we posted an historical quote from Mohandas Gandhi. The quote reads: "Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." - Mohandas Gandhi, an Autobiography, page 446. This historical quote was apparently too much for Facebook's censors to bear. They suspended our account and gave us a "final warning" that one more violation of their so-called "community guidelines" would result in our account being permanently deactivated. They then demanded we...

Bypassing Congress, the Obama administration has issued a proposed administrative rule, which if adopted, would mandate the installation of “black boxes” in all automobiles and light trucks beginning in 2014. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed the regulation on Dec. 7, which it said “would capture valuable safety-related data in the seconds before and during a motor vehicle crash.” The proposed standard would require automakers to install event data recorders (EDRs)—so-called “black box devices”—to collect specific safety-related data in all light passenger vehicles beginning Sept. 1, 2014. …

AFP - Denied the right to travel without consent from their male guardians and banned from driving, women in Saudi Arabia are now monitored by an electronic system that tracks any cross-border movements. Since last week, Saudi women's male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together. Manal al-Sherif, who became the symbol of a campaign launched last year urging Saudi women to defy a driving ban, began spreading the information on Twitter, after she was alerted by a couple.

For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif., photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe's Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library, parked at his friend's house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out of a car in his driveway. Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn't charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle—license plate, time and location. "Why are they keeping...

I too have been watching the polls at Real Clear Politics. I must admit that I have been concerned about what seems to have been the trend. But I haven't bothered to scrutinize the items closely. Tonight I took a close look at the Gallup Tracking Poll and realized that the data are available in greater depth than I realized. Of course we know that it is a rolling average of the last 7 days. We know that it is 3050 Registered Voters, unlike Rassmussens Likely Voters. When I clicked on the Gallup poll I realized for the first time,...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 47% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns the vote from 44%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

Today the ACLU is launching a nationwide effort to find out more about automatic license plate readers (ALPR). By snapping photographs of each license plate they encounter—up to three thousand per minute—and retaining records of who was where when, license plate readers are fundamentally threatening our freedom on the open road. You may have seen the recent New York Times op-ed that admonished us to start referring to our mobile devices as “trackers” instead of “phones.” Perhaps as ALPR technology spreads we should start saying “tracker” in place of “car,” too. We need statutory protections to limit the collection, retention,...

House Democrats tracking GOP congressmen and candidates are recording and posting videos online of the private homes of GOP families, pushing past traditional perimeters of campaign surveillance. Both parties employ staffers to record their opponents’ every public statement and appearance, but Democrats have unapologetically shown the public the often large and well-maintained homes of their Republican targets, and have even published addresses, Politico reports. Pointing out the prosperity of Republicans has become a popular jab from Democrats, who hope to show the GOP cannot relate to the middle class or anyone struggling to stay afloat financially. “House Republicans have spent...

Wristbands fitted with microchips have been worn by everyone at a UK festival for the first time. The technology, which designers claim will cut out fake tickets and queues, was used by 15,000 festival-goers at Wakestock, Cardigan Bay, Wales. Organiser Stuart Galbraith said: "The benefits are huge. This will be the future of festivals." Critics, however, have said they are "uncomfortable" to wear and go against the spirit of festivals. The bands look like standard material festival bands except they're fitted with an RFID (radio frequency identification) microchip, the same technology as London's Oyster card public transport swipe cards. Festival-goers...

Intensity of support or opposition can have an impact on campaigns. Currently, 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-five percent (45%) Strongly Disapprove, giving him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -22 (see trends).

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Mitt Romney attracting 46% of the vote, while President Obama earns 45%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. Consumer confidence has fallen to the lowest level of the past five months.

Just installed.....interesting. FR doesn't share. Nobody tracking. Only when clicking a link.

I fear for the loss of our freedoms and liberties under the Obama administration. We expect our government to be run by people we elect. If they don't perform well, we have the opportunity to throw them out. But with the proliferation of "czars" appointed by the president, we are out of the loop when it comes to controlling our own destinies. They are in charge of such areas as borders, Medicare, manufacturing, electronic health records, faith-based initiatives, workplace issues and so on. The list now contains about 35 czars, whose names, backgrounds and goals we know nothing about. Van...

Google, Microsoft, AOL and other big companies have agreed to install a "do not track" button in Web browsers to make sure that you can surf the Web with an assured amount of privacy. It's a big step for the industry -- but until this button arrives, how can you assure yourself a little more privacy online? The "No Track" button would stop companies from using data about your Web browsing habits to customize ads for you. They have also agreed not to use the data for employment, credit, health-care or insurance purposes. For obvious reasons, that type of usage...

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...