Free Republic

The Biden administration is looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms after U.S. intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, according to a senior administration official and a congressional official briefed on the matter. The possible change in the intelligence-gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked but also how to prevent another damaging incident. President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were briefed about the disclosure last week, administration officials say, but the secret documents appeared online in early...

After the past several years it should come as no surprise that intelligence agencies are not mere servants to their government masters, but rather sophisticated and nefarious political players of both the domestic and international political game.The history of the FBI and CIA meddling in domestic politics is long and not especially heartwarming. Despite being lionized by the media, “Deep Throat” was nothing more than a disaffected FBI bureaucrat named Mark Felt who despised Nixon because he didn’t get the promotion to FBI director he wanted. He started leaking right after he was passed over for the directorship after J....

Congressman Jim Jordan and the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government delivered a demand to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday for his cooperation in their oversight of what appears to be a massive sting operation on Catholics across the country. The “FBI’s Richmond Document” reveals the Feds have infiltrated at least one Catholic church in hopes of finding domestic terrorists among those with “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.” The document, officially titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities” and referred to by the Subcommittee...

In an April 10 Press Release, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced that his committee has subpoenaed the FBI for documents relating the FBI’s move to infiltrate Latin Mass communities in search of any “radical extremism” that could potentially signal domestic terrorism. Vatican journalist, Diane Montagna tweeted out the latest on the FBI’s efforts to weaponize the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decades-old witch hunt against Latin Mass Catholics: House Judiciary Committee Chairman @Jim_Jordan confirms FBI planned to “engage in outreach to leadership” of SSPX chapels in Richmond area “to sensitize these congregations to warning signs of radicalization & to enlist their...

Google, Twitter, Meta and TikTok’s executive ranks have included over 200 former employees of surveillance government agencies, creating an employment pipeline between the government and Big Tech companies, a Daily Caller investigation found. The technology companies recruited 248 employees from the DOJ, FBI, CIA and DHS, a LinkedIn search revealed. The hiring occurred mostly between 2017-2022, with several filling top director positions after having decade-long careers in the surveillance agencies. Google hired 130 former DOJ, DHS, CIA and FBI employees, the Daily Caller’s key term cursory search on LinkedIn found. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, employed 47...

It’s no secret anymore. Nearly everything you do online is tracked or recorded and used to learn more about you. Many of your data points ends up on creepy people search sites. You’ll be shocked to find your full name, address, relatives, phone number, and more. Here’s a list of sites where you can opt out of this invasion of privacy. On your phone, apps are likely watching — and reporting — more than you realize. Take back control with just a few minutes in your settings. Navigation apps use your phone’s GPS location to determine exactly where you are....

The CDC proposed the codes in 2021. “There has been interest expressed in being able to track people who are not immunized or who are only partially immunized,” Dr. David Berglund, a CDC medical officer, said during a meeting about the proposal. One code is for being “unvaccinated for COVID-19.” Another is for being partially vaccinated, or not having received a primary series of a COVID-19 vaccine. In comments to the CDC about the proposal, health care providers said they supported adding the codes—with some detailing how they’d be used. Identifying people who are unvaccinated or undervaccinated for COVID-19 “will...

Once again, politicians use popular fears to push for open-ended power.Even if you believe that governments should be in the business of banning things such as popular communications tools, the details of the effort to eject TikTok from the United States should give you pause. Predictably, politicians are using fears that the popular social media service is spying on behalf of the Chinese government to propose broad legislation that threatens to affect much more than one app. The Rattler is a weekly newsletter from J.D. Tuccille. If you care about government overreach and tangible threats to everyday liberty, this is...

Would the RESTRICT Act—a.k.a. the TikTok ban bill—criminalize the use of VPNs? That's the rumor floating around about the legislation, which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) earlier this month. Warner's office has said his bill wouldn't do this… but its broad language leaves room for doubt. And the act is still insanely far-reaching and could have a huge range of deleterious effects, even if it doesn't criminalize people using a VPN to access TikTok. VPN stands for virtual private network, and there are several different kinds, but their general aim is the same: keeping your...

Fox News Host Tucker Carlson did everyone a favor today by sending the warning about The Restrict Act, also known as Senate Bill 686 [SB686 HERE], also known as the bipartisan bill to empower the executive branch to shut down TikTok. {Direct Rumble Link} The Restrict Act, has very little to do with TikTok and everything to do with the United States government controlling online content. If you read the bill what you quickly discover is that congress is giving the Commerce Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the power to shut down internet content they...

Big Brother is closer than you think. According to this disturbing report in the Epoch Times: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms. The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users. The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions related to evaluating the impact of visits to key points...

The Supreme Court will issue at least one opinion this week while it weighs a packed docket of cases, including a request by the IRS to allow its agents to secretly obtain financial records without the need to notify account holders. Wednesday will mark the day when the nine justices consider Polselli v. IRS, which is expected to have sweeping implications for Fourth Amendment right protections against unreasonable searches and seizures as it pertains to the federal tax collecting agency. This case comes just months after the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year injected $45 billion to ramp...

The federal government has been using Americans’ income and gun purchases to conduct warrantless tracking and deny Second Amendment rights. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gave salary estimates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the reason to have people’s firearms purchases monitored.Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America (GOA), told The Epoch Times that the ATF’s activities “monitoring innocent people” is a serious problem. “Congress needs to rein in this rogue agency by either exercising oversight over it or abolishing the unconstitutional agency altogether,” said Pratt.These revelations come from...

Ready to read about a real-life Orwellian nightmare that happened right here in the good ol' US of A? The bureaucrats at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention bought data from tracking companies to monitor Americans' locations in real-time during the reign of COVID, according to contracts obtained by the Epoch Times. The CDC paid $420,000 to one company and $208,000 to another, gaining access to location data from a minimum of 55 million cellphone users, the purchase orders show.

Enforcers of the county’s rules reported the number of cars in the parking lot, whether or not masks were being worn, and even instances of hugging.SAN JOSE, California (LifeSiteNews) — A Christian church in California’s Santa Clara County was hit with hefty fines and its members were surveilled via stakeouts, cell phone monitoring, and other measures “reminiscent of totalitarian regimes” after the church defied the county’s draconian COVID-19 lockdown rules in 2020, according to a March 5 report by independent journalist David Zweig. San Jose’s Calvary Christian Fellowship, headed by pastor Mike McClure, openly defied the Silicon Valley county’s harsh...

Dr Bradford David Ferrick, 32, appeared at a Boston federal court on Tuesday and was ordered held without bail over the disturbing allegations. Raids at his apartment in Amherst and at his parents' $1.1 million Winchester mansion are said to have turned up thousands of child porn images held on 60 electronic devices. Ferrick is also accused of secretly recording medical examinations on children as young as six using a piece of jewelry that concealed a camera lens. During one recording obtained by police, he was heard discussing a young male patient's genitals with the boy's mom, although they cannot...

Under this new digital currency, any transfer of funds to family, friends, charities, or clients would be able to be tracked by the nation's central bank that issued this virtual money. Big Brother will be in your wallet every hour or every day. You will not be able to buy a stick of gum without a Federal Reserve computer knowing where, when, and to whom you just put down a buck. We should be rightfully concerned about inflation, energy independence, aggressor nations armed with nuclear weapons, and woke public policies that denigrate the very foundation of this great country. But...

Visa and Mastercard dropped their plans to track firearm and ammunition purchases because of my legislation. When conservatives fight, we win. pic.twitter.com/m1rOfJSoVU— Riley Moore (@RileyMooreWV) March 9, 2023 NEW YORK (AP) — Visa and Mastercard paused their decision to start categorizing purchases at gun shops, a significant win for conservative groups and Second Amendment advocates who felt that tracking gun shop purchases would inadvertently discriminate against legal firearms purchases. The decision is, at the same time, also a defeat for gun control groups. There had been hope that categorizing credit and debit card purchases would allow authorities to potentially see...

“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. BrandeisThere was a time when the census was just a head count.That is no longer the case.The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.If you haven’t already received an ACS, it’s just a matter of time.A far cry from the traditional census, which is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in...

‘Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,’ whistleblower George Hill told the House Judiciary Committee.An FBI whistleblower told congressional investigators that the D.C. field office pushed local offices to open criminal investigations into Americans based solely on financial transactions Bank of America tracked and voluntarily provided to the bureau, according to testimony reviewed by The Federalist.“Bank of America, with no directive from the FBI, datamined its customer base,” whistleblower and recently retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill told investigators for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Hill’s testimony. Hill had identified himself last...