Free Republic

A law that became the subject of scrutiny following surveillance on 2016 Trump campaign aide Carter Page is up for renewal with an April 20 deadline, and the debate is creating unusual battle lines. The debate centers on whether reforms should be made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Section 702, or if there should be a “clean” extension of the law. FISA allows for the federal government to gather foreign intelligence, but some critics have warned that it opens the door for Americans to be spied on in the process. President Donald Trump is asking for a “clean...

nti-liberty/gun cracktivists find themselves stuck on recycling old, failed narratives because there is really nothing new in the distortions and lies they tell in trying to obliterate the Second Amendment. Among those failed narratives is microstamping, a nonsensical measure about which I last wrote in Microstamping And Zombies, 2024 in June of 2024 at my home blog. Microstamping is laser engraving a unique, identifying code on the tips of firing pins which will “stamp” that code—letters, numbers, etc—on the primers of fired cases. Some microstamping schemes also demand a second stamp elsewhere on a fired case. California has always been...

Recently, a researcher working for the large AI company Anthropic was sitting in a park near its San Francisco headquarters, enjoying a lunchtime sandwich. Scrolling on his phone, he suddenly received an email that must have instantly ruined his appetite. It was from a new AI model the company was testing: a program that was meant to have no access to the internet, let alone be able to send emails. Chillingly, the AI informed the researcher that it had successfully broken its way out of its digital 'sandbox' – a supposedly secure enclosure used to test potentially dangerous software without...

A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday denied Anthropic’s request to temporarily block the Department of Defense’s blacklisting of the artificial intelligence company as a lawsuit challenging that sanction plays out. The ruling comes after a judge in San Francisco federal court late last month, in a separate but related case, granted Anthropic a preliminary injunction that bars the Trump administration from enforcing a ban on the use of its Claude model. “In our view, the equitable balance here cuts in favor of the government,” the appeals court said in its decision. “On one side is a relatively...

GLYNN COUNTY, Ga. — A Secret Service agent in training in South Georgia has been arrested on felony charges of eavesdropping at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement training academy in Glynn County. ABC News confirmed that Joel Lara Canvasser secretly recorded his roommate’s every move with a spy camera hidden in a phone charger. Canvasser had been spying on his roommate for weeks, and barraged him with text messages like he was being watched by a stalker who could see into his suite and bathroom, investigators said. Canvasser was arrested on Wednesday and charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance....

Mexico now requires all cell phone users to register with CURP and photo ID by June 2026. Learn how expats can comply, registration deadlines, and what happens if you don't register. If you have a Mexican cell phone number, you need to pay attention. Starting January 9, 2026, Mexico now requires all cell phone lines to be linked to official identification. This new mandate affects an estimated 137 million mobile lines across the country—and that includes the phones of American and Canadian expats living in Mexico. If you fail to register your line by the deadline, your cell phone service...

Americans’ personal data could be collected and stored overseas — even if they’ve never downloaded a foreign-developed app themselves — according to a new FBI alert warning about the risks tied to popular mobile platforms. That means information like a person’s name, email address or phone number could be pulled from someone else’s contact list and potentially stored abroad if a friend or family member grants an app access to their device. The warning comes after years of scrutiny over TikTok’s ties to China, but the FBI alert suggests the concerns extend beyond any single platform to a broader range...

Louis Rossmann opens by greeting viewers and introducing a discussion about televisions that now require a Walmart account for full functionality, highlighting how this has become a real trend. He references a Consumer Rights Wiki article explaining that certain newer Vizio TVs—and other brands using the Vizio operating system—require users to create or log into a Walmart account just to complete setup and access smart features. Walmart frames this as a way to streamline setup and connect streaming activity with retail behavior, but he argues the real motivation is clear: companies now make more money from advertising and user data...

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s targeting of Kash Patel and numerous congressional Republicans as part of his lawfare against Donald Trump was worse than originally thought, new records show. Released Tuesday by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the new documents demonstrate that Smith and his team’s efforts to acquire Patel’s phone records during his time as a private citizen were far more extensive than previously reported. The bid to acquire such information came as part of Smith’s Arctic Frost investigation, which ultimately became his elector lawfare against Trump. Now-FBI Director Patel originally told Reuters last...

Alleged Iranian spies with ties to regime bigwigs have been charged with infiltrating Silicon Valley. Last month, a federal grand jury indicted three Iranian software engineers for allegedly stealing trade secrets from tech companies, including Google. Two of the suspects are sisters, Samaneh Ghandali, 41, and Sorvoor Ghandali, 32. They were charged alongside Mohammadjavad Khosravi,40, who is Samaneh’s husband, with allegedly using their employment at unidentified technology companies to “obtain access to confidential and sensitive information,” according to the Department of Justice. The tech workers then allegedly “exfiltrated confidential and sensitive documents, including trade secrets related to processor security and...

“A federal judge has struck down some of the Defense Department's strict controls on how journalists with access to the Pentagon are allowed to report — ending a policy that caused many news outlets to leave the Pentagon. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman sided with the New York Times and a reporter at the newspaper, Julian E. Barnes, who sued in December, arguing the new Pentagon policy violated the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment and due process provision of the Constitution.”

he United States expressed outrage when Great Britain revealed two years ago that its voter registration databases were hacked by China in what became a global scandal. But it turns out the U.S. intelligence harbored its own secret at the time, knowing since 2020 that Beijing also gained access to American voter registration data, according to documents reviewed by Just the News and interviews with officials with direct knowledge. “[Redacted] Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple U.S. states' [Redacted] election voter registration data, [Redacted] to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election,” stated a once highly classified April...

Millions of Americans depend on medical devices — pacemakers, infusion pumps and patient monitors — to stay alive. But some of that equipment is made in China and it may be spying on us – or worse. In January 2025, the Food and Drug Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a stark joint warning: patient monitors made by Contec Medical Systems, a Chinese company based in Qinhuangdao, contain a hidden backdoor. These devices, used in hospitals across the United States, can transmit sensitive patient data to a hard-coded IP address in China. Even more troubling, the backdoor...

Your next car purchase comes with an unwelcome passenger: a federal mandate requiring surveillance technology that monitors your every blink, glance, and head nod. Thanks to Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, NHTSA must finalize rules forcing all new passenger vehicles to include “advanced impaired driving prevention technology”—essentially turning your dashboard into a judgment-free zone that’s anything but judgment-free. The Technology That’s Watching Infrared cameras and sensors create a constant biometric assessment of driver alertness and sobriety. The tech involves infrared cameras mounted on steering columns or A-pillars, tracking eye movement, pupil dilation, and drowsiness patterns....

To understand how China has corrupted academic research in the West, including in the United States, begin at the top. China is currently headed by a man, Xi Jinping, who is himself an academic fraud. While serving in various government posts between 1998 and 2002, Xi was enrolled in an “in-service” doctoral program at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His dissertation on the marketization of rural areas was ghost-written by one of his staff members in a local government in southern Fujian Province, Liu Huiyu. She was later given a plum post at Jiangxia University in Fujian handling “library materials.” Xi’s...

Spain will launch a tool to measure hate speech on digital ‌platforms as part of a broader strategy ‌to increase oversight of social media companies, Prime Minister Pedro ​Sanchez said on Wednesday. The country announced a wider plan last month to regulate social media, including a ban on its use for younger teenagers and ‌measures to hold ⁠platform executives accountable for illegal or hateful content hosted on their services. The new ⁠tool, called HODIO — an acronym in Spanish for Footprint of Hatred and Polarisation — will allow the ​government to ​systematically track the presence, ​amplification and impact of ‌hate...

The bipartisan push to remove anonymity from the internet is ushering in an era of unprecedented mass surveillance and censorship.

Planning to tie the knot in Spain? It’s highly expensive wherever you wed. But, if you are, you had better take it into account Hacienda (the tax agency). Newlyweds across Spain now face unexpected tax demands as Hacienda intensifies scrutiny on wedding gifts. Authorities now actively remind couples that cash and presents from guests qualify as taxable donations, potentially adding thousands to post-wedding bills. The idea behind this move is to close loopholes in revenue collection with digital transfers becoming more prevalent. Average weddings in Spain exceed €24,000, everything taken into consideration, including wedding meals alone consuming €13,000 to €14,000,...

The war in Iran is not only going to show us how evil the regime actually is, but it's also going to open the eyes of Western nations to just how many sleeper terrorists they've imported thanks to their lax immigration policies. There is real concern that Iranian and other Islamic sleeper cells may retaliate for the Iran strikes, while Democrats continue to keep the Department of Homeland Security shut down. In Austin, a Senegalese immigrant named Ndiaga Diagne killed several at a bar before being taken out by police. Diagne was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that read "Property of...

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