An indicted Chinese businessman pumped millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank accounts of some of the most influential figures in MAGA World—including former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Jason Miller—according to a raft of documents filed in federal court in February.
Chinese Mogul Funneled Millions to Bannon, Fox, Gettr, Docs Show (archived)
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Steve Bannon’s bid to avoid prison heads to a federal appeals court Thursday as the onetime Trump White House strategist attempts to overturn his conviction.
Steve Bannon’s bid to avoid prison heads to appeals court
Records from the Department of Homeland Security show it sought to expand undercover operations online despite pushback from Facebook
Revealed: how US immigration uses fake social media profiles across investigations
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Meanwhile, social media surveillance continues uninterrupted. The documents show CBP is still allowed to create fake profiles to passively monitor public Facebook posts. ICE can go a bit further. It has been given explicit permission to create fake accounts to engage in undercover investigations as long as the tactics used online are somewhat analogous to undercover activities carried out in the real world.
Former Ukrainian diplomat and political insider Andrii Telizhenko — now under US sanctions on what he says are false grounds — speaks out.
Biden’s corruption led to Ukraine’s destruction: fmr. Kiev diplomat
The Coming Fight Over American Surveillance
But no threat of any kind is required to conduct surveillance under Section 702. The law permits surveillance of any foreigner abroad, as long as a significant purpose of the surveillance is to acquire “foreign intelligence information.” FISA defines this term extremely broadly to include any “information related to . . . the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs.” A conversation between friends about whether the United States should do more to support Ukraine would justify surveillance under this definition.
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House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan issued a subpoena to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Monday for documents as House Republicans investigate the circumstances surrounding a since-withdrawn memo from the bureau’s Richmond field office that focused on extremism in the Catholic Church.
Jordan issues subpoena to FBI director for documents over withdrawn memo on Catholic churches
H/T: Kim Iversen
Related:
FBI Investigations Of Radical Catholic Traditionalists Can Help The Church
Bill to Ban Tik Tok Would Give Government Sweeping Powers to Crackdown on Tech
A person who violates the act could be fined up to $1 million or punished with up to 20 years in prison. The broad and vague definitions in the legislation caused many to wonder if people could be handed such harsh punishments for using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to get around future government censorship that could come as a result of the bill.
A spokesperson for Warner insisted that the legislation wasn’t designed to target individual users and pointed to the language that says someone “must be engaged in ‘sabotage or subversion’ of American communications technology products and services, creating ‘catastrophic effects’ on US critical infrastructure, or ‘interfering in, or altering the result’ of a federal election, in order to be eligible for any kind of criminal penalty.”
But the bill will give the Commerce Secretary the authority to deem what is considered “sabotage or subversion” or any of the other threats listed above. The legislation has grave implications for civil liberties and could be used against any individuals or tech and media companies the Biden administration, or any future administration would want to target.
Previously:
Tik-Tok bills could dangerously expand national security state
Congressional proposals to address Chinese ownership of the popular app go well beyond the hearing soundbites. Let’s explore.
Tik-Tok bills could dangerously expand national security state
from the may-as-well-just-be-government-contractors dept
Most tech companies handling data requests from governments now publish transparency reports. As everything moves towards always-online status (including, you know, your fridge), social media platforms and other online services have become the favored targets of government data requests. It just makes sense to look there first rather than out there in the real world, where people (and their communications) are that much more difficult to locate.
US And EU Nations Request The Most User Data From Tech Companies, Obtain It More Than Two-Thirds Of The Time
Guo Wengui, arrested March 15 on fraud charges, was known to have invested, but the extent of his influence on the site has not been previously reported.
Indicted Chinese exile controls Gettr social media site, ex-employees say
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Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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