police state

(ANTIMEDIA) In the waning years of the Obama administration, Customs and Border Protection agents had a bad habit of conducting warrantless searches of cellphones and laptops. Documents released to the American Civil Liberties Union under Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that Border Patrol agents searched over 6,500 people from October 2008 to June 2010.

(ANTIMEDIA) As team Trump gears up to welcome the Chinese president at the end of the week — and as it’s forced to deal with a profound piece of anti-government vandalism burned into a Donald Trump property — nearly 200 theaters around the world simultaneously screened the film version of Orwell’s 1984 on Tuesday.

(ANTIMEDIA) Instances of police brutality often make their way through the news cycle in clusters. A string of controversial police shootings will dominate the news cycle for several weeks, as they did last summer, and after sparking headlines, angry Facebook conversations, and further societal rifts, these attention-grabbing stories tend to away from the spotlight.

(ANTIMEDIA) Hurst, TX — A family in Texas is saying it’s unacceptable that local police hovered a drone over their back yard without warning.
Bobbie Sanchez, of Hurst, says her privacy was violated the day one of her children walked up to her and said, “Mommy, there’s a drone over our roof.”

(ANTIMEDIA) California could soon codify resistance to federal marijuana prohibition if state lawmakers pass a recently introduced bill. Assembly Bill 1578 seeks to bar law enforcement in California from cooperating with federal authorities in ways that violate the state’s cannabis laws.

(ANTIMEDIA) A story last week highlights the fact that undocumented people in America aren’t the only ones affected by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On Friday, The Daily Beast reported that a U.S. citizen is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after being wrongfully held for nearly three weeks.

(ANTIMEDIA) Connecticut — It was only a matter of time. On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that lawmakers in Connecticut are currently considering allowing police to use weaponized drones.

(ANTIMEDIA) Garland, TX — As ISIS continues to terrify much of the American populace, a recent investigation by CBS’ 60 Minutes discovered that an undercover FBI agent was involved in an attempted shooting in Garland, Texas, in 2015. That attack, the news outlet reports, was the first major ISIS-linked terror plot to unfold in the United States, but there appears to be much more to the story than was initially reported.

Last week, the UK’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that WhatsApp risked becoming a “place for terrorists to hide.” Then, like many others that have used this tired old trope, she went on to call for the development of some magic unicorn key to unlock all encrypted communications, one that was somehow available only to those on the side of truth, beauty, law and order, and not to the other lot. In doing so, her cluelessness was particularly evident, as her invocation of the “necessary hashtags” emphasized, but she’s not alone in that.

(ANTIMEDIA) Brooklyn, NY — In a clear-cut case of abuse of authority, a former assistant district attorney in New York is now facing federal charges for allegedly using government resources to spy on a love interest.