Free Republic

The EU is inching toward the biggest peacetime surveillance experiment in its history, with plans to quietly search every private message before you hit send. The European Union is still wrestling with a controversial plan that would turn private messaging services into surveillance tools. For over three years, talks have stalled over whether providers should be forced to scan every user’s messages for possible illegal material and forward anything suspicious to law enforcement. The European Commission is still pushing for a universal scanning requirement. In contrast, the European Parliament insists any checks should apply only to unencrypted messages from people...

A controversial European Union proposal dubbed “Chat Control” is regaining momentum, with 19 out of 27 EU member states reportedly backing the measure. The plan would mandate that messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, must scan every message, photo and video sent by users starting in October, even if end-to-end encryption is in place, popular French tech blogger Korben wrote on Monday. Denmark reintroduced the proposal on July 1, the first day of its EU Council presidency. France, once opposed, is now in favor, Korben said, citing Patrick Breyer, a former member of the European Parliament for Germany and...

Beale Air Force Base, Calif. – On the evening of July 31st, a TU-2S Dragon Lady from the 9th Reconnaissance Wing took off from Beale Air Force Base (AFB) to begin a flight unlike any the U-2 airframe had done before. Seventy years after the very first Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady’s accidental maiden flight in 1955 by Tony LeVier over Groom Lake, Nevada, the U-2 would finish the longest single flight this platform had ever attempted, flying across all 48 contiguous states of the United States. An icon of the Cold War, the U-2 continues to provide high altitude intelligence,...

Executive Summary: - The PRC is exporting an integrated system of smart devices, data infrastructure, and governance standards. Through industrial policy, state-backed overproduction, and strategic data asymmetry, Beijing is building a global IoT architecture designed to embed PRC standards, influence, and governance into the connected environments of other countries. - By dominating core components like cellular IoT modules and steering global standards through initiatives like China Standards 2035, Beijing is creating long-term supply chain dependencies and rewriting the rules of digital interoperability. - Devices manufactured by PRC firms often carry embedded risks: unpatched vulnerabilities, mandated government access under China’s Data...

Toll Aviation has signed a deal to bring a new AI-based uncrewed aerial system (UAS) to Australia. V-BAT, made by US-based company Shield AI, is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS that its manufacturer says can meet “a broad array of civil and defence mission requirements” through its capacity for multi-mission payload sets.

House Republicans are calling on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to expedite a national security review of Chinese drone manufacturers like Shenzhen Da-Jiang Innovations Sciences and Technologies Company Limited (DJI Technologies) pursuant to the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. In a letter to ODNI signed by representatives Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.; Rick Crawford, R-Ark.; and John Moolenaar, R-Mich., the lawmakers requested timely execution of the review as drone technology quickly accelerates. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month prioritizing the accelerated integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into U.S. national airspace. But before that fully...

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

A Queens woman found what looked like a phone buried in her front lawn — but it wasn’t just lost property. Mary Kehoe, who’s lived in her Forest Hills home for 35 years, spotted the strange device outside. It looked like an Android phone wrapped in black tape, with only the camera exposed — like it was made to watch, not call. “Why us? I had lots of things going through my head as to why they chose our lawn but realized we are in the middle of the block,” Kehoe told KTVZ 21. Experts warn that these kinds of...

A bombshell report shows the depths of the Clinton campaign’s criminal activity. Special Counsel John Durham has filed a motion showing that lawyers for the Clinton campaign paid a technology company to “infiltrate” servers belonging to Trump Tower and later the White House. The purpose of this corrupt and illegal infiltration was to establish an “inference” and “narrative” to bring to government agencies linking Donald Trump to Russia. Durham filed a motion on Feb. 11 against former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman. Sussman has already been charged with making a false statement to a federal agent. He allegedly told then-FBI...

Earlier this month authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras while looking for a woman who they said had a self-administered abortion, including cameras in states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois, according to multiple datasets obtained by 404 Media. The news shows in stark terms how police in one state are able to take the ALPR technology, made by a company called Flock and usually marketed to individual communities to stop carjackings or find missing people, and turn it into a tool for finding people who...

In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm. The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed that federal air marshals surveilled now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during domestic flights last year, according to documents reviewed by the senator’s office. The Kentucky lawmaker made the revelation during a Capitol Hill hearing on Tuesday involving Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, who was testifying about her department’s budget request for the fiscal year 2026. “I commend you and the Trump administration for ending all government-sponsored censorship using DHS personnel. Just last night, I received the first set of records from the department regarding Tulsi Gabbard’s placement on the TSA Quiet...

Have you ever just had a family dinner conversation over a group holiday or spoken with friends about going to Ibiza to party, and minutes later, relevant ads appear on Facebook or other applications or websites? More than likely you answered yes, and that’s simply because all smart devices are permanently listening in on everything you say and keep track of everything you do. They are constantly gathering behavioural data, mostly for commercial and marketing purposes. In the case of vehicles with built-in smart devices, including sensors, they build complete profiles of the drivers and their passengers. They map their...

Privacy is essential to individual liberty.

Just a hair over a week ago (ten days to be exact), an official arm of the German government declared the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party - now polling as Germany's most popular party in the country - a 'right-wing extremist' group. Yeah, right - so big deal, no? I mean, they've been calling them that forever. Actually, it was a big deal. It made the epithet an official label, opening the party and every last one of its members to constant, sanctioned (instead of surreptitious) government surveillance. It was also the first necessary step in the process of...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has delivered a knockout punch to Google, securing a record-shattering $1.375 billion settlement for the Big Tech’s covert surveillance of everyday Americans. This staggering sum is nearly a billion dollars more than what 40 states combined were able to wring from Google for similar offenses — a testament to Paxton’s unrelenting crusade against Big Tech tyranny.

Facial recognition technology is creeping into Ireland fast – and not everyone’s grinning about it. Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan has announced that controversial facial recognition legislation will be introduced before the summer, after years of political wrangling, privacy fears and digital drama. The tech – already rolled out across parts of the UK – is being hailed as the Gardaí’s new secret weapon in crime-fighting. But critics say it’s a step too far into Big Brother territory. Are we gradually sliding into that dystopian future? All we can say is, it edges a little closer every day. Back from the...

Yesterday, conservative Australian political commentator, Andrew Bolt discussed a proposal for British-style AI intelligence cameras in Melbourne. Mr Bolt asked his audience: “Do you want to be safer or do you want to be spied on?” and said that rising crime and terrorism is turning Australia into a “surveillance state, Chinese-style, you know where they even have a system of recognising you in the street and if they don’t like, if you’ve got a bad social credit, they can stop you doing things like catching a train.” The Lord Mayor told Bolt: “As Lord Mayor, I am very firmly committed...

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) on Wednesday proposed legislation to eliminate the intelligence community’s surveillance tools that “erode” Americans’ civil liberties.“For over two decades, rogue actors within our U.S. intelligence agencies have used the PATRIOT Act to create the most sophisticated, unaccountable surveillance apparatus in the Western world,” Luna said in a written statement to Breitbart News.Luna introduced the American Privacy Restoration Act, a bill that would repeal the USA PATRIOT Act, a sweeping September 11th, 2001 terrorist bill that drastically expanded government surveillance.

The Biden administration authorized federal law enforcement four years ago to target Americans engaged in "concerning non-criminal behavior" in the name of fighting domestic terrorism, with a specific eye on those serving in the military, owning firearms, or spreading what officials considered to be "xenophobic" disinformation, according to newly declassified documents. The stunning breadth of the mandate was disclosed when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently released a fully unredacted version of the prior administration’s "Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism." The June 2021 memo exposed for the first time the law enforcement and intelligence framework that led...