Free Republic

This is like something out of ‘Black Mirror’The 2022 Qatar World Cup is an exercise in two things: How much horror FIFA is willing to tolerate for money, and how many personal liberties people are willing to give up in order to see the event live. Oh, also global soccer prowess, I guess — but that feels tertiary at this point. Adding to the laundry list of rules foreigners will be required to follow while in Qatar is a new Covid app called “Ehteraz,” which must be downloaded by every visitor over the age of 18. It’s being billed as...

One of the biggest social media platforms in the world has allegedly been spying on the private messages and personal data of users who believe that voter fraud took place in the 2020 election, and has subsequently been handing this information over to the FBI. According to the New York Post, the alleged surveillance operation by Facebook and its coordination with the government was confirmed by several anonymous sources in the Department of Justice (DOJ). The sources allege that employees at Facebook have been red-flagging any suspicious private messages over the last 19 months, sending the information directly to the...

Two journalists surface today with two different aspects to the same big picture story. First, Julie Kelly notes the DOJ is using social media chat messages as evidence in court against J6 detainees: “DOJ and Big Tech are working seamlessly to excavate private messages and info from deleted accounts to use as incriminating evidence for J6ers.” (link) Second, Miranda Devine is writing in the New York Post about Facebook spying on private messages to identify people who questioned the outcome of the 2020 election (link) This ‘surveillance system‘ has been of great interest to CTH for several years, in part...

Show of hands- True or false: The moment that force will become necessary to maintain freedom in America will be easy to identify.

Twenty-one years on, and where are we? What do our children know about 9/11 and the Islamic terrorists who attacked our country in the worst attack on our homeland in American history? In a word, nothing. Or worse. Why did the attackers do this? Discussing their motive today, twenty-one years later, is tantamount to a hate crime. The jihadis’ last letters have all but been scrubbed from the public record. Read the “martyrdom” letters left by the Muslim terrorists. Allah is mentioned over ninety times. “Remind your brothers that this act is for Almighty Allah,” done for the cause of...

Flynn pointed to his own military experiences in his assessment, describing instances in which the U.S government had used information warfare against terrorist organizations such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. “One of the things that I do know about our government is our government’s ability to project, and our government’s ability to put together disinformation campaigns, psychological operations and psychological campaigns Flynn pointed to his own military experiences in his assessment, describing instances in which the U.S government had used information warfare against terrorist organizations such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. “One of the things that I do know about our government...

On August 9, The Gateway Pundit posted an article on a planned demonstration outside the FBI headquarters in Washington DC to protest the “out of control FBI.” The protest was organized by Special Ops Veteran Adam Hardage who said he sees his current mission clear as day; Defending America against Tyranny. TGP later updated the report that the protest was canceled due to the possibility of bad actors and unpredictable actions of law enforcement agencies. The article received hundreds of responses from patriots, 892 people in total. The FBI also flagged a comment posted by a commenter at The Gateway...

It was recently reported that the World Economic Forum (WEF) wants a system of people and Artificial Intelligence (AI; computers that are programmed to think like humans) to track and censor “misinformation” and “hate speech” all over the world. According to the report, Twitter only monitors information on Twitter; Facebook only monitors information on Facebook; people that speak just English are unable to monitor content in French or Spanish; people that speak just French are unable to monitor content in Italian or Pakistani, etc. So, the WEF wants a system of people and AI that can track and censor “misinformation”...

Visa, Mastercard and American Express will separately categorize sales at gun shops...The decision is a win for gun control advocates who say it will help track gun sales...Until Friday, gun store sales were considered general merchandise.

From branding parents speaking out against critical race theory and sexual ideology in schools as terrorists to the Mar-a-Lago raid, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s radicalized Justice Department transforms pre-election political opposition into national security threats. The infamous DOJ letter on schools was sent out a month before the gubernatorial election in Virginia, where the National School Board Association, not to mention much of the D.C. establishment, is based. Much as Garland’s DOJ operatives feared, the school protests helped elect Gov. Glenn Younkin and nearly toppled New Jersey’s Democrat governor in the bargain. The Mar-a-Lago raid was carefully timed around the...

A 41-year-old woman is facing felony charges in Nebraska for allegedly helping her teenage daughter illegally abort a pregnancy, and the case highlights how law enforcement can make use of online communications in the post-Roe v. Wade era. Police in Norfolk, Neb., had been investigating the woman, Jessica Burgess, and her daughter, Celeste Burgess, for allegedly mishandling the fetal remains of what they'd told police was Celeste's stillbirth in late April. They faced charges of concealing a death and disposing of human remains illegally. But in mid-June, police also sent a warrant to Facebook requesting the Burgess' private messages. Authorities...

Leaders in the Democratic Party are backing legislation to reduce carbon emissions. Some of them are also sponsoring bills that would expand the cannabis industry, ranging from the MORE Act to the Safe Banking Act and now the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act just introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Co-sponsors have publicly chastised President Joe Biden for not doing enough to help in their effort. They are seemingly unaware that although today’s cannabis may seem “green” - after all, it traps carbon dioxide in organic material and generates oxygen in the process - its similarity to other...

Every day seems to bring a new Liberal attack on our freedom. The Trudeau Liberals have launched yet another front in their assault on freedom: Going after your private communications. As reported by Blacklock’s, Liberal-appointed censorship advisors are now talking about putting “misleading political communications” under government regulation: “Misleading political communications” should be federally regulated, say censorship advisors appointed by Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez. Unregulated political discussion and disinformation was a kind of pollution that “erodes the foundations of democracy,” said the group: “By polluting the information environment with false, deceptive or misleading information, disinformation undermines citizens’ rights to form...

Under the newest version of a code of conduct originally established in 2018, nearly three dozen entities vowed to step up efforts to detect false claims, to label political advertising more transparently and to restrict advertising around disinformation, among other moves. Demonetizing disinformation is the “cornerstone” of the new initiative, said Thierry Breton, a European commissioner and one of the EU’s top digital regulators. Many of the biggest platforms signing onto Thursday’s agreement had already been operating under the older set of 21 commitments, which ranged from supporting fact-checking to scrutinizing ad placement. This week’s expansion grows the list of...

Statistics Norway wants to receive several million daily receipts from food stores, signalling a new era in state data collection. Privacy advocates and the supermarkets themselves are unhappy. People living in Norway are used to big government. But the latest news coming out of Oslo is a surprising new step down the road of data collection that not everyone is happy with. Statistics Norway (SSB) is the state-owned entity responsible for collecting, producing and communicating statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels. Because everything about an individual living in Norway is linked to...

Trudeau’s Justice Minister and Canadian Attorney General David Lametti announced this week that Canadians do not have an “absolute right to own private property.”

Today in 1949, George Orwell's '1984' was published.

Almost 4,000 passengers were fined for breaking COVID-19 mask rules on London’s public transport, Mayor Sadiq Khan revealed on Monday. Khan, who also chairs Transport for London (TfL)—a local government body responsible for most aspects of London’s transport system—said more than 7,000 people were denied service for not wearing face coverings. During the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, face coverings were twice made mandatory on England’s public transport, first for around a year between July 4, 2020 and July 18, 2021; then for eight weeks between Nov. 30, 2021 and Jan. 26, 2022. Rule-breakers would be issued a Fixed...

Top House Republicans are demanding answers from the FBI after court-ordered information came to light showing that the federal agency had collected the information of over 3 million Americans without a warrant. In a May 25 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant (pdf). Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Specifically, section 702 of the bill says: “the Attorney General (AG) and...

Weibo showed Bill Gates as being in Henan, Messi in ShanghaiChinese social media platforms began rolling out geolocation features in late April, triggering heated discussion among the country’s netizens. Using their IP address, Weibo started displaying the location of users from Thursday, April 28, for the sake of creating a “healthy online environment,” according to WhatsonWeibo. In the days that followed, Douyin, Toutiao, Xiaohongshu and Zhihu all followed. The user’s location is not only visible on account pages, but also alongside any comments or posts they make. The function cannot be turned off in the settings section. The new...