Free Republic

Orwell's Big Brother is definitely peering into every aspect of one's life in the United Kingdom.The latest step into dystopian hell is the so-called Online Safety Act, and it was enacted into law in the name of, again, as you might imagine, FOR THE CHILDREN.As these sorts of things tend to be.The way people in the UK might navigate the internet is changing.Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must take action - such as carrying out age checks - to stop children seeing illegal and harmful material from July.Services face large fines if they fail to comply with UK's sweeping...

Officials from the first Trump administration are alleging they received notices from Google shortly before they returned to office that they were being probed by the FBI under the Biden administration and the web giant was unable to tell them because of a court order. Dan Scavino, who is now White House Deputy Chief of Staff and assistant to the president, described the matter as "Biden lawfare" kicking in after he "patriotically and proudly" served during Trump’s first term. "Google received and responded to a legal process issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation compelling the release of information related...

The White House has warned Sir Keir Starmer to stop threatening American tech companies amid mounting backlash over Britain’s online safety law. Members of Donald Trump’s administration are monitoring the Online Safety Act with “great interest and concern” after key allies said it was censoring free speech and imposing unfair burdens on US businesses. The law, which regulates online speech, allows the British government to levy massive fines on companies like Apple, Truth Social, and X if it finds that rules on hate speech have been broken. Those in the president’s inner circle see the potential penalties as an unwarranted...

The British government has reportedly tasked a specialist police unit to surveil social media for anti-mass migration opinions as it braces for another potential summer of unrest. Rather than address the concerns of the public, such as removing the mostly young male illegal migrants from the taxpayer-funded hotel accommodations in communities across the country, the UK Home Office has formed the National Internet Intelligence Investigations to “maximise social media intelligence” about anti-mass migration sentiment on social media, according to The Telegraph. The team will work out of the Covid lockdown-enforcing National Police Coordination Centre (NPoCC) in London. It comes amid...

When FBI agents arrived outside William Spearman's home in the quiet suburb of Madison, Alabama, in November 2022, they were prepared for danger. Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman's door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach. The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called "one of the most successful" prosecutions of its kind.

Remember during Trump's first term when he used Twitter as a tool to communicate to the people? This was done to avoid having his words manipulated and filtered by corrupt big media and their pro-big government propaganda machine. Genius! Remember when a certain segment of the country protested and mocked Trump using the Internet in this manner? They told us Tweets were not presidential! They told us it was an undignified...A juvenile way to speak to the people! Trump was an embarrassment according to these people! The reality is most of those people did not want Trump speaking directly to...

A federal appeals court has struck down a sweeping gag order that prevented X from notifying users when their data was sought by the US government, declaring that the order failed to meet legal standards under federal privacy law. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in favor of X, finding that the lower court authorized nondisclosure orders without providing the specific findings required by the Stored Communications Act. [link to order] The ruling addressed a case where X had been barred from revealing to users that their personal data had been subpoenaed. The conflict began when the federal...

Choose wisely. Your PC could end up vulnerable to online threats otherwise. This fall, Windows 10 will reach its end of life—at least, as defined by Microsoft. On October 14, the company ends feature updates to the operating system. Security and stability updates also become restricted—a potential liability, depending on the choices you make now. To help users successfully navigate Windows 10’s extinction event, Adam Patrick Murray sat down with ethical hacker Mike Danseglio to talk options. The goal: To find the best option for your PC to stay current with security updates and patches, no matter the age of...

Shop security guards have complained of a 'massive' rise in antisocial behaviour by teenage tearaways harassing staff and customers for social media views. Supermarkets have started turning off their WiFi to stop mobs gathering at in-store cafes to use the Internet while passing time filming themselves 'trying to get a rise' out of employees. They also face the scourge of influencers carrying out 'pranks' with the aim of going viral on TikTok, as well as other platforms such as YouTube and Instagram.

Department of Government Efficiency @DOGE Unused website update! DOGE continues to partner with agencies to delete unused/obsolete websites. In the last few weeks, 69 sites have been deleted, including: -@NASA: deleted 26 sites for total savings of $500k/yr -@NSF: deleted 8 sites for total savings of $868k/yr -@Interior: deleted 5 sites for total savings of $4.1M/year See before/after images for a recently cut@Energy: site which, until a few weeks ago, was advertising a science workshop that took place in 2004, over 20 years ago! Jul 7, 2025

WILLIAMSPORT - The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that eight Chinese nationals who obtained student visas to attend college in the United States were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Those indicated include: Yankun Jiang, 24, of State College, PA, Hanlin Yang, 24, of State College; Chenhao Chen, 25, of California; Xiaoqing Tu, 24, of California; Dongjie Lu, 35, of California; Lei Bao, 22, of New York; Kuo Zhang, 31, of New Jersey; and Jiacheng Zhang, 25, of Florida.According to Acting United States Attorney John Gurganus, the indictment...

A far-left LGBTQ+ activist in France is alleged to have been at the heart of an underground pedophile network that drugged and raped children as young as three years old. Pierre-Alain Cottineau, a former candidate for the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI/France in Rebellion) party during the 2021 regional elections and a former head of an LGBTQ+ activist group, faces accusations of orchestrating a darknet child rape network. French newspaper Le Parisien reported having obtained internal communications as well as video footage from Cottineau’s group, which the paper described as being “unbearably violent” and nausea-inducing. This included footage of a...

(LifeSiteNews) — A leading and highly influential Catholic site, Messa in Latino, was deleted by Google on Friday for alleged and unspecified violations of its “hate speech” policy. In a brief email sent from blogger.com, run by Google, the editors of Messa in Latino (MIL) were informed that the site had been taken offline with immediate effect. The email stated that “your blog titled ‘MiL – Messainlatino.it’ was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have made the URL https://blog.messainlatino.it unavailable to blog readers.” The reason given for the sudden removal was due...

Australians will soon be subjected to mandatory age checks across the internet landscape, in what has been described as a huge and unprecedented change. Search engines are next in line for the same controversial age-assurance technology behind the teen social media ban, and other parts of the internet are likely to follow suit. At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of logged-in users, in an effort to limit children's access to harmful content such as pornography. But experts have warned the move could compromise Australians' privacy online...

A U.S. District Court judge granted a preliminary injunction Thursday that halts the Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act of 2024. NetChoice, a trade organization representing apps like Facebook and Instagram, is challenging the law in a case in the U.S. Northern District of Georgia. It would have required submitting proof of age before accessing social media sites. Judge Amy Totenberg said in the 50-page ruling that the law is constitutionally infirm. "The State seeks to erect barriers to speech that cannot withstand the rigorous scrutiny that the Constitution requires, and the inapt tailoring of the law – which...

SNIP On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search." You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal. "If Google makes AI Mode the default in its current...

Three weeks after sparking a war of words with anti-trans activist Riley Gaines, apologizing for her targeted remarks, and being inundated with comments about the incident since, seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles has deleted her account on X, formerly Twitter. Biles de-activated her account, which had nearly two million followers, after she came to the defense of a transgender high school athlete that Gaines had been attacking. But after Biles personally insulted Gaines (for which she later apologized), it opened up a flood gate of attacks which appears to have led the 28-year-old gymnast - considered the greatest of...

At the moment, a virtual private network (VPN) is a great way to protect your data from hackers. It offers sophisticated encryption that will keep your data hidden from third parties, including cyber criminals, government bodies, and advertisers.However, not even all the best VPNs offer protection that’s future-proofed. You may not be aware of them yet, but there are already highly sophisticated quantum computers that use quantum physics to render their computations significantly more efficient than those performed by classical computers. Because of their superior processing power, these quantum computers have the ability to break encryption methods used to protect...

[H/T bitt]In what experts are calling the largest data breach ever recorded, researchers have confirmed the exposure of a staggering 16 billion password leaks, affecting platforms including Apple, Facebook, Google, Telegram, GitHub, VPN services, and even government portals. This unprecedented breach is believed to be the result of multiple infostealer malware campaigns operating at a massive scale throughout 2025. If the recently reported 184 million credential leak was alarming, this latest development represents a full-scale cybersecurity disaster that demands immediate action.What Happened? Understanding the 16 Billion Credential LeakAccording to an ongoing investigation by cybersecurity researchers at Cybernews, led by analyst...

I saved this image to imgur.com yesterday: Today when I wanted to link to it I got this: Evidently the meme hits a nerve. We'll see how long it lasts this time.