Free Republic

Boston, Mass., Feb 1, 2023 / 13:31 pm Mark Houck, the pro-life father of seven who was acquitted Monday in federal court of charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, said he is planning to sue the FBI and other authorities following his ordeal. On a Jan. 31 episode of the podcast “War Room,” the host, Steve Bannon, asked Houck: “Do you intend to press charges for prosecutorial abuse? And are you going to press charges against the FBI agents and the state troopers?” “We most definitely will and we will be seeking counsel on that,”...

The House Judiciary Committee fired off its first subpoenas under the leadership of Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), targeting a trio of Biden administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland over a short-lived memo dealing with threats against school board members. The subpoenas, sent also to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, follow a series of more than 100 letters on the 2021 memo from Judiciary Republicans. Garland signed the memo in October of last year, noting a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff” amid broader discussion...

It took $44 billion of Elon Musk’s money to uncover how national-security agencies like the FBI and Homeland Security — as well as Adam Schiff — conducted censorship on Twitter. Those revelations are still continuing, even while not much else seems to be changing on that platform. But what about Facebook? Who’s got $100 billion or so to buy out Mark Zuckerberg and get a peek under Meta’s hood? Reason Magazine certainly doesn’t, but it turns out that all Robby Soave needed was a lawsuit and a court order or two. Internal documents show that Facebook essentially allowed the CDC...

The FBI revealed how the bureau uses the CIA and National Security Agency to probe the private lives of Americans without a warrant in its updated rulebook, which is the first version made public since the Obama administration. The handbook, rewritten in 2021, confirms a decade-old leak showcasing the bureau’s collaboration with the CIA and NSA for FBI probes that may involve surveillance without court orders against people not accused of any crimes. Such probes are known as “assessments” at the FBI. The revelations will fuel critics who have long accused the FBI of abusing its national security surveillance powers.

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for an overhaul of FBI rules after The Washington Times reported that agents used the CIA and National Security Agency to spy on Americans. The ACLU urged the bureau to impose new limits on agents’ power to investigate Americans without warrants. The FBI’s rule book, rewritten in 2021, revealed details about how the FBI tasks the CIA and NSA for help on matters including assessments, which are investigations that can involve surveillance without a court order against people not accused of a crime.

Another round of Elon Musk’s Twitter files were released on Saturday. The latest Twitter files were released by journalist Matt Taibbi on Christmas Eve. 1.THREAD: The Twitter Files TWITTER AND “OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES” — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022 After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports detailing close coordination between the FBI and Twitter in moderating social media content, the Bureau issued a statement Wednesday. 2. It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried “conspiracy theorists” publishing “misinformation,” whose “sole aim” is to “discredit the agency.” 3. They must think us unambitious, if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI....

The FBI may have violated the First Amendment rights of Twitter users when it flagged accounts for the social media platform to review, several legal experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter became an “agent of the government” when it worked with the FBI to silence specific accounts at the agency’s request, Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow, told the DCNF. Ari Cohn, free speech counsel at TechFreedom, told the DCNF that while the findings of the Twitter Files were “interesting,” he doesn’t believe there are “many legal...

For more than half-a-century, Uncle Sam has been giving banks the legal tools to snoop into the otherwise-private affairs of their customers. Now, they are monitoring the exercise of their Second Amendment rights. Thanks to a recent move by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, headquartered in Switzerland), U.S. banks are starting to build databases on their customers’ purchases of firearms and ammunition. And, of course, they are ready and quite willing to share that information with federal law enforcement in the name of providing a public service to identify “mass shooters.”This invasion of privacy began in earnest with enactment...

What the Rhine case reveals is the danger that a partnership between an equally politicized federal government and Big Tech presents to disfavored groups. Google gave the feds the personal data of nearly 1,500 individuals based on cell phone location data indicating their presence near the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021. The Department of Justice sought substantially more information, as well, according to a recent court filing, including data on Jan. 6 cell phone users wholly outside the Capitol. These facts, coupled with Google’s apparent disregard for the privacy rights of its customers, expose the potential for the government...

"Today I'm announcing my plan to shatter the left-wing censorship regime and to reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans" President Donald Trump Speaking Today 12/15/2022 President Trump proposing actions to preserve free speech in the US and go after collusion between the federal government and tech companies to censor speech online. In the short-term Trump asking Republicans in the US House to get involved parties to preserve their records that might show such collusion. Trump said that: "a sinister group of Deep State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, Left-Wing activists and Depraved Corporate news media have been conspiring...

More damning evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to stifle free speech and censor the public was revealed in the fourth batch of explosive documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released by the nonprofit organization America First Legal (AFL). Twitter allowed government officials and other “stakeholders” to use a secret portal called, “Partner Support Portal” to report anything they believed to be “misinformation.” Previously, back in July 2021, TGP reported on Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai and his investigation, where he uncovered Twitter’s “partner support portal.” Dr. Shiva discovered that Twitter...

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is facing a class action lawsuit after colluding with Google to repeatedly auto-install contact-tracing spyware on the smartphones of over a million Massachusetts residents without their permission or consent. According to a class action lawsuit filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan nonprofit civil rights organization, the Department of Public Health rolled out the contact tracing app it worked with Google to create in April 2021. “The App causes an Android mobile device to constantly connect and exchange information with other nearby devices via Bluetooth and creates a record of such other...

A federal judge in Minnesota has rejected Mike Lindell’s challenge to the FBI search and seizure of his phone in a 2020 election-related criminal probe.Judge Eric Tostrud said Lindell, CEO of My Pillow and a prominent backer of former President Donald Trump’s false voter fraud claims, had not shown that the search was unconstitutional, and said he could not have his phone returned or get more access to details from the search.“The Government has demonstrated a compelling interest in preventing the premature disclosure of search-warrant materials during its ongoing federal criminal investigation. Multiple factors here justify keeping the search warrant...

Government agencies and private security companies in the U.S. have found a cost-effective way to engage in warrantless surveillance of individuals, groups and places: a pay-for-access web tool called Fog Reveal. The tool enables law enforcement officers to see “patterns of life” – where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit. The tool’s maker, Fog Data Science, claims to have billions of data points from over 250 million U.S. mobile devices. Fog Reveal came to light when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit that advocates for online civil liberties, was investigating...

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) says there need to be “major changes” to the Justice Department and FBI, and FISA should be allowed to expire, if Republicans win control of Congress in November. “I think we should not even reauthorize FISA (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), which is going to come in the next Congress,” Rep. Jordan said in a Fox News Channel interview on Sunday. At the very least, Congress needs to change the FISA process, Jordan said. FISA was intended to facilitate the gathering of foreign, not domestic, intelligence information. But, conservatives have become increasing concerned about abuses of...

Orwell would be proud. Deliberately buried in the Friday evening news cycle, Biden released an Executive Order with dramatic implications for how signals intelligence is collected on individuals throughout the world. Specifically, Biden’s directive repeals restrictions on the use of signals intelligence collection implemented since the Obama Administration https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/07/national-security-memorandum-on-partial-revocation-of-presidential-policy-directive-28/ So what was so problematic about the Presidential Policy Directive 28 that Biden Admin had to repeal? https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/01/17/presidential-policy-directive-signals-intelligence-activities What could the Biden Administration be gearing up for? Why would they want to relax restrictions on intelligence collecting? Are they planning escalation in Ukraine, escalation in their Domestic War on American Patriots,...

Thirty-four US political prisoners of the Biden regime penned a very sad letter this week requesting a transfer to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba facility where they would receive meals, sunlight, freedom of religion, exercise, entertainment, and be treated like human beings. These thirty-four January 6 political prisoners have been held for over a year and a half without trial for misdemeanors and trumped-up felony charges. This group of men have been isolated, beaten viciously, abused, threatened, tormented, and belittled by the guards based on their political and religious beliefs. The men and women have been without medical assistance, medications, exercise, and...

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that his administration would push to end the immunity Big Tech platforms enjoy for third-party content, an effort Republicans previously backed. "I'm calling on Congress to get rid of special immunity for social media companies and impose much stronger transparency requirements on all of them," the president said, per the New York Post. Specifically, he called for the repeal of Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, echoing similar demands from Republicans in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, amid the outcry over tech company censorship of explosive allegations against Hunter Biden....

Here’s what you need to know about the United States: it’s a lie. All of those things we say we believe in, like individual liberty, the Bill of Rights, capitalism….the vast majority support them conditionally, at best. This haphazard adherence to basic civil liberties has been on full display recently as the Right and the Left seem to be in some kind of a race to see who can do the most damage to the First Amendment and principles of free speech. But while the Left works to implement dystopian “disinformation boards” and the Right passes laws giving states the...

VIDEOSix times in 95 seconds! That was how many times Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas robotically repeated "Best Practices" in order to assure the public that the new Ministry Of Truth will be harmless and not infringe on their free speech rights. You just know that they found a political consultant who probably poll tested a bunch of soothing (and fooling) phrases before settling upon "Best Practices." At the rate that Mayorkas repeated that phrase it came out to a recitation of one "Best Practices" every 16 seconds.Exit question: Will the Ministry Of Truth label this video as...