“The NSA headquarters is located just off a major Washington-area highway and investigators believe it is possible the three men made a wrong turn.”
Read more: http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20180214/NEWS07/180219602
“From Abu Ghraib in Iraq to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the U.S. has engaged in brutal and violent abuse toward detainees suspected of terrorism — despite the fact that such brutality and abuse is what may have motivated many of those detainees to begin with.”
Read more: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/12/torture-terrorists-guantanamo-abu-ghraib/
“Lyn Ulbricht is Ross Ulbricht’s mother. Ross was the creator of the Silk Road website, which had a very important role in the history of bitcoin. Currently, Ross is serving a double life sentence without parole for all non-violent charges. Lyn has worked to bring awareness to the case and raise funds for Ross’s defense through www.FreeRoss.org. She has had many media interviews and public appearances and has helped bring awareness to the public of the case and Ross’s appeals. Her efforts have shined light into the darkness of the justice system, proving it to be a darker place than anywhere found on the dark web.”
“Anna assumed it was a simple case: Two cops had sex with a woman in their custody in the middle of their shift. But Anna didn’t know that in New York, there is no law specifically stating that it is illegal for police officers or sheriff’s deputies in the field to have sex with someone in their custody. It is one of 35 states where armed law enforcement officers can evade sexual assault charges by claiming that such an encounter — from groping to intercourse — was consensual.”
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/this-teenager-accused-two-on-duty-cops-of-rape-she-had-no
“Minor missteps—a traffic violation or a workplace dispute—can turn lethal for unauthorized immigrants.”
Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/when-deportation-is-a-death-sentence
“Personal information, along with your biometric data, resides in a database tied to your ID number. The system crunches all of this into a composite score that ranks you as ‘safe,’ ‘normal’ or ‘unsafe.’ Based on those categories, you may or may not be allowed to visit a museum, pass through certain neighborhoods, go to the mall, check into a hotel, rent an apartment, apply for a job or buy a train ticket. Or you may be detained to undergo re-education, like many thousands of other people. A science-fiction dystopia? No. This is life in northwestern China today if you are Uighur.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/china-surveillance-state-uighurs.html
“It’s true that the federal government used to consist of three branches. Bu that quaint notion disintegrated when the federal government was converted to what is known as a ‘national-security state’ after World War II. Even though it was done without a constitutional amendment, that conversion effectively added a fourth branch of government to the federal government — the national-security branch, which consists of the NSA, the CIA, and the Pentagon. The addition of that fourth branch fundamentally altered the original three-branch concept, especially because the fourth branch quickly became the most powerful branch. The reason is because ultimately government is force, and the fourth branch is where the most force was concentrated within the new, altered governmental structure.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2018/02/05/america-military-nation/
“Where is the logic in conducting the raid at night, when no one can see anything, and shouting ‘put the fucking gun down’ at a confused, half-asleep old woman? Police put her in a position where she might have reasonably thought she was fighting for her life against robbers, giving her no choice but to fire and them with no choice but to retaliate with deadly force—all to bust her son for selling some weed.”
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/01/cops-raid-house-kill-72-year-old-woman-w
“It’s a felony to leave water for thirsty people? Meanwhile, ICE has run wild. They are busting parents while their kids are at school. They’re publicizing ‘sweeps’ in cities like they’re chasing down Capone or someone. And there’s a very good possibility that, in the so-called ‘sanctuary cities,’ we will see confrontations between ICE agents and local law enforcement. And now we have this latest insanity, whereby technology will be handed to an agency sliding swiftly toward a very dangerous point.”
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a15898207/ice-border-patrol-trump/
“These local governments are basically extortion rackets. And the targets are usually the less fortunate.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/the-latest-in-local-government-pettiness/