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At the NRA Annual Meeting in Atlanta in 2025, noted researcher and author John Lott gave several seminars. They included three seminars on “Gun Control Myths”, a seminar on “Hollywood’s Bias Against Guns”, and two seminars on “The FBI Crime Data is Politicized and a Mess”. This correspondent considers John a colleague and a friend and has read and studied John’s academic work for decades.When attending the seminar on The FBI Crime Data is Politicized and a Mess on Sunday, April 27th, much of the material was familiar. Some material was unfamiliar. This correspondent accepted that the FBI had refused...

I’ll keep this short and sweet so I can get this out faster to you. As headline says, 16,000,000,000 passwords have been leaked. Most likely the biggest password leak in history. It would probably be a good idea to change your passwords. If you have Google, maybe start there and change your Google password, since a lot of people have numerous saved passwords to bank accounts, social media accounts, email, etc, all under Google. Forbes: Update, June 19, 2025: This story, originally published on June 18, has been updated with comments from the founders of Keeper Security regarding the 16...

The researchers, from the cybersecurity firm Cybernews, initially found a database containing 184 million records sitting unprotected on a web server last month. However, as they delved deeper, they realized that this was just one of many unsecured databases full of private information. Further investigation revealed an additional 29 datasets, each containing tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records. In total, the researchers uncovered a staggering 16 billion records, making this one of the biggest stolen login discoveries of all time. What sets this breach apart from others is the freshness and organization of the data. The researchers emphasized...

The New Jersey Senate is set to consider a bill on Thursday that would require families who homeschool their children to register with their local governments and the governments to publish their data. Senate Bill 1796 (SB 1796), sponsored by New Jersey state Sen. Angela McKnight (D) would require a “parent or guardian to annually notify” their local school district, in written form, of their intention to homeschool their children. “The letter shall include the name, date of birth, and grade level of the child, and the name of the person who will provide instruction to the child,” the latest...

Gun violence in New York City has spiked along with the mercury, with shootings up more than 50% last week compared to the same time last year — indicating that the Big Apple could be in for a bloody summer. A total of 23 shootings were reported across the five boroughs in the week starting April 21, according to new NYPD statistics — an increase of 53% from the 15 shootings tallied over the same period in 2024. Temperatures in Gotham hit a high of 82 degrees last Tuesday, making it the second-warmest day in April, according to Accuweather. Last...

Health insurance giant Blue Shield of California is notifying millions of people of a data breach. The company confirmed on Wednesday that it had been sharing patients’ private health information with tech and advertising giant Google since 2021. The insurer said that the data sharing stopped in January 2024, but it only learned this February that the years-long collection contained patients’ personal and sensitive health information. Blue Shield said it used Google Analytics to track how its customers used its websites, but a misconfiguration had allowed for personal and health information to be collected as well, such as the search...

The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek is allegedly syphoning American user data to China’s communist government, according to a new congressional report. Released on Wednesday by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the 16-page analysis contends that the China-based AI firm “collects detailed user data, which it transmits via backend infrastructure that is connected to China Mobile.” A state-owned telecommunications giant, China Mobile was flagged by the Pentagon earlier this year for having ties to Beijing’s military. In 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibited the firm from operating within the U.S. over concerns that...

The acting head of the Internal Revenue Service plans to resign over a new agreement to share tax data of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security personnel, according to two people familiar with the situation. Acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause — the tax agency’s third leader since President Donald Trump’s inauguration — will participate in the deferred resignation program the Trump administration offered to agency employees in recent days

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed to help homeland security officials find immigrants they are trying to deport, according to court records, committing to sharing information in what would be a fundamental change in how the tax collector uses its tightly regulated records.In a court filing, the Trump administration said that the I.R.S. and Immigration and Customs Enforcement had reached the agreement on Monday and that the two agencies had not yet shared any information. Under the terms of the deal, a redacted version of which was submitted in the case, ICE officials can ask the I.R.S. for information about...

After back and forth between two federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reached a deal to aid in the deportation efforts of illegal immigrants.The agreement will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to access taxpayer information to locate illegal immigrants subject to deportation.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed the agreement, which allows the IRS to turn over information about undocumented immigrants already facing deportation orders and are under federal criminal investigation.Under the agreement, ICE can submit names and request address confirmations for illegals who have been...

Federal immigration authorities may soon gain access to Internal Revenue Service data under a pending agreement that would allow them to verify the names and addresses of individuals suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, according to multiple reports. Newsweek has contacted the IRS for further comment. Why It Matters Undocumented immigrants can file taxes and register with the IRS, which is legally required to keep their information confidential, except in limited, specific cases. Border security and immigration are central to President Donald Trump's policy agenda, as he has vowed to deport millions of migrants without legal status, particularly those...

California’s attorney general has urgently warned customers of 23andMe to purge their genetic data from the company’s databases over uncertainty where it may end up if the firm goes bankrupt. “Given 23andMe’s reported financial distress, I remind Californians to consider invoking their rights and directing 23andMe to delete their data and destroy any samples of genetic material held by the company,” AG Rob Bonta said in a statement Friday. The company had been synonymous with at-home genetic testing for more than a decade, providing more than 15 million customers with a wide range of personal health and ancestry data. Users...

The IRS is nearing a data-sharing agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that would allow immigration officials to use tax data to support the Trump administration's deportation agenda, two sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. After weeks of negotiations, administration officials are close to reaching an agreement that would enable ICE officials to submit names and addresses of suspected immigrants lacking legal status for the IRS to check against its confidential databases. Section 6103 of the federal tax code requires the IRS to keep individual taxpayer information confidential with certain limited exceptions, which includes law enforcement agencies...

New York City has broken a 30-year record for the fewest number of shootings in the first two months of the year, police revealed Monday. The city saw 93 incidents of gun violence between January and February, the fewest for those months since 1993, officials said. Newly released NYPD statistics for February not only showed that dramatic drop in shootings, but also a 14.5% decline in overall serious crimes compared to the same month last year. “In the first two months of 2025, New York City experienced the fewest number of shooting incidents in the past 30 years, and the...

Senate Democrats are very worried about just one Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aide set to gain access to an IRS system after the Biden administration authorized 53 researchers and student volunteers – and hundreds of additional individuals – to access unmasked IRS data, an inspector general report detailed in September. The contradiction underscores the political success of DOGE’s initiative to cut waste, fraud, and abuse. Not only is the Trump administration seeking to save taxpayers money, but it is also forcing Democrats into a corner to presumably support waste, fraud, and abuse. Democrat Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Elizabeth...

A journalist with The Associated Press thought she had a big scoop. Little did she know she would have to be scooped off the ground after being obliterated in a fact-check by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.FAA staff fired over the weekend included personnel that worked radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, among others. Hundreds were fired, just weeks after a fatal mid-air collision in DC killed 67. One employee said they were harassed on Facebook by @DOGE… — Tara Copp (@TaraCopp) February 17, 2025 More fake news from the @AP 1. DOGE doesn’t even have a Facebook page...

... The problem with that starts with the fact that it's not in a database. It's a wildly heterogeneous collection of different databases, ISAM files, and card images, and I would bet money that a lot of it is on old 7-track tapes. Some of these are probably stored in Iron Mountain or a similar installation. Also, some of the data may still be just on paper, as, apparently, government retirement records are. So what Big Balls and the other wizards are going to need to do to start with is find the data. I'm willing to bet there's no...

Four young coders sat in Treasury’s basement. Their screens cast blue light across government desks. Their mission? Crack the deep state. “We’re in,” Akash typed. “All of it.” Within hours: $17 billion in waste exposed. No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with a bunch of laptops. Moving faster than bureaucracy could react. By the time resistance drafted its first memo… Three more systems were already mapped.

The U.S. economy created 598,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months through March than previously estimated, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said on Friday. The final nonfarm payrolls benchmark revision was less than the 818,000 reduction the BLS estimated in August. The numbers are not seasonally adjusted. Economists had expected the level of employment over the 12-month period would be reduced by about 668,000 jobs following updates to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data for the first quarter from which the BLS based the payrolls benchmark revision.

What the thread title says. I know there's a lot floating around on the internet, but I'd like to get an official list from DOGE. It's hard to distinguish between truth and fiction here. I'd like to see a downloadable file I could load into a spreadsheet or database so I could do my own searches and analysis. The fields I'd like to see are recipient, amount, date, description, justification, decision maker (they probably won't allow that, but I'd like to see it), what types of verification were required, what types of verification were completed. I could probably think of...