Amidst all the talk about defunding the police, notice something important: No one talks about defunding the military. That’s because the military establishment is too powerful and has come to be accepted as a permanent feature in American life. Except for libertarians, everyone treats the military as their god.
There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.
This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.
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Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.
But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.
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I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following
SpaceX’s launch services have already become an invaluable resource for the U.S. government, but the company is now jumping into the deep end of the pool it had heretofore only splashed around in. Starshield, a new vertical within SpaceX, will provide “government entities” (think three-letter agencies) with secure communications and bespoke satellite designs.
The senator [Sherrod Brown] also pointed to numerous incidents to back up his claims, not just the recent collapse of FTX but also issues such as “the threat to national security from Korean cyber criminals to drug trafficking and human trafficking and financing of terrorism and all the things that can come out of crypto.”
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Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a new bill governing cryptocurrencies earlier this month, dubbed the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act.
Warren’s bill would look to force crypto asset providers to offer audited financial statements and impose bank-like capital requirements more in line with what is expected of traditional financial institutions. The act would also give the SEC increased powers to regulate the asset class.
In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. He was referring to the right to be left alone from the government — a right that today we call privacy.
The FBI has a long history of misconduct, dating back to the J. Edgar Hoover years when agents were writing letters to civil rights leaders encouraging them to kill themselves.
“We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction.”—Harry Truman
With every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.
The COINTELPRO era never ended, as Black people bear the brunt of FBI surveillance. The war on terror gave a new rationale for using paid informants to entrap Black people. Romeo Langhorne is the latest victim of a government created crime.
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