Tag: American Civil Liberties Union

[2019] US military begins testing flying surveillance balloons across the country to TRACK people’s movements

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Screenshot from YouTube.

US military begins testing flying surveillance balloons across the country to TRACK people’s movements

The tests were carried out by U.S. Southern Command, or Southcom, which is part of the Department of Defense and is responsible for intelligence operations, security cooperation and disaster response in Central and South America. It’s a joint effort by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army and other forces whose main task is finding and intercepting drug shipments that are destined for the U.S. According to the Guardian, as many as 25 unmanned solar powered balloons were launched from rural South Dakota and made their way 250 miles across the neighboring states in tests.

Related:

Worldview Stratollites are commercial high altitude balloons like Google Loon – Worldview had an explosion December 2017

Stratollites can maintain position over specific areas of interest for days, weeks, and eventually months on end. This allows for more sustained measurements and monitoring capabilities over a targeted area. Stratollites can carry a wide variety of commercial payloads (sensors, telescopes, communications arrays, etc.), launch rapidly on demand, and safely return payloads back to earth after mission completion.

Some interesting ‘coincidences’:

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More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

If it can conceivably be considered a “third party record,” the government is going to seek warrantless access to it. The Third Party Doctrine — ushered into existence by the Supreme Court in 1979 — says there’s no expectation of privacy in information shared with third parties. That case dealt with phone records. People may prefer the government stay out of their personal conversations, but the Smith v. Maryland ruling said that if people shared this info with phone companies (an involuntary “sharing” since this information was needed to connect calls and bill phone users), the government could obtain this information without a warrant.

More Mass Surveillance: FOIA Docs Reveal Illegal Snooping On US Residents’ Financial Transactions

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia + More [Abraham Accords]

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Netanyahu Says US Must ‘Reaffirm’ Alliance With Saudi Arabia

The incoming prime minister said that he wants to build on the Abraham Accords, which his former government signed in 2020 to establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain and the UAE. Netanyahu said it’s “up to the leadership of Saudi Arabia if they want to partake in this effort.”

Saudi officials recently reaffirmed that they seek a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing with Israel. But in order to form a coalition government, Netanyahu gave Religious Zionism party leader Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler, sweeping powers over the West Bank.

Related:

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Disinformation, Absolutely + Sharp wind from the Bundestag

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

1. Everything you will read in this commentary is disinformation.

2. To say that this commentary contains disinformation is disinformation.

3. To say statements calling this commentary disinformation are disinformation is disinformation.

Disinformation, Absolutely

Related:

Sharp wind from the Bundestag

People who try to report on the war in Ukraine from the Russian side or who try to provide humanitarian aid to those in need in the new Russian territories are excluded from public discourse. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are becoming hollow concepts. In the future, anyone who says something that looks like a “playing down of Russian war crimes” can be punished for “incitement of the people” according to a legislative amendment passed by the Bundestag in summary proceedings on Thursday. By Ulrich Heyden.

TRUTH COPS: Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks, Freedom of Information Act requests, and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public reports — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

TRUTH COPS: Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation

Related:

Disrupt The Cognitive Infrastructure

H/T: Unorthodox Truth

Project Veritas Ruling Endangers Journalism

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

H/T: Hard Lens Media

Related:

Project Veritas loses jury verdict to Democratic consulting firm

Jury Rules Project Veritas Violated Wiretapping Laws and Fraudulently Misrepresented Themselves

[Allison] Maas reportedly joined Democracy Partners as part of an unpaid internship using a fake name and a fabricated resume. That act of subterfuge, according to the jury, “amounted to fraudulent misrepresentation,” according to Politico.

Personally, this doesn’t look like a First Amendment case. It looks like a case of resume fraud. 🤷🏼‍♀️

The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

from the put-the-onion’s-editorial-board-on-the-supreme-court dept

Tue, Oct 4th 2022 10:45am – Mike Masnick

In most cases, it does not do you any good to try to be funny in legal filings. In most cases, judges will not be that amused (even if those same judges sometimes try to make jokey rulings). In the world of the courts, the judges can be funny, but no one else should try. But every so often it works. The ACLU’s Eat Shit, Bob filing, for example, was pretty good.

The Onion Files Hilarious Amicus Brief In An Important Case, And Actually Makes A Key Point In The Best Way Possible

H/T: Steve Lehto

Related:

The man who wrote the Onion’s Supreme Court brief takes parody very seriously

Ohio Man Arrested and Prosecuted for Facebook Joke Appeals to Supreme Court