Page 373 - Tim Cushing News Today

Thu, Dec 17th 2020 11:00am — Tim Cushing According to the Department of Justice (and countless other law enforcement agencies), civil asset forfeiture is a valuable tool that harms criminal organizations and lowers crime rates. Its a deterrent they assert actually exists, despite there being no accompanying arrests of these supposed criminals. I dont know what criminal organizations are being dismantled at less than $1,000/seizure, but thats the reality of asset forfeiture. A large majority o...

Thu, Dec 17th 2020 3:36am — Tim Cushing To the detriment of our nations future, the future of our nation is increasingly being subjected to law enforcements presents (and presence). On the plus side, it will help students grow up with a healthy distrust of their government. Weve put cops in schools so kids can be subjected to the same brutality adults receive. Disciplinary problems long-handled by schools and parents are now handled with handcuffs and criminal charges. The same questionable s...

Wed, Dec 16th 2020 3:27am — Tim Cushing As was noted here earlier, up to 18,000 customers of globally-dominant network infrastructure vendor SolarWinds may have been compromised by malicious hackers. The hackers -- presumed to be operating on behalf of the Russian government -- deployed tainted updates (served up by SolarWinds) that gave them backdoors to snoop on internal communications and exfiltrate sensitive data. The attack was so widespread and potentially catastrophic, the DHSs cyber w...

- US Supreme Court, There is no legal obligation for police officers to protect citizens. There may be a moral obligation. And there may be the obligation thrust on certain departments whove adopted mottos or decorated their badges with "protection" niceties, but that obligation only goes as far as the courts demand… which is nowhere. Seventy-year-old Bill Norkunas, a childhood polio survivor, headed over to the light and flicked it on hoping to scare away whoever was there. Instead, the lig...

Tue, Dec 15th 2020 12:04pm — Tim Cushing The Chinese governments war against its own citizens continues. The repression and persecution of Chinas Uighur population has been well-documented. The Chinese government is fighting a surveillance war on multiple fronts, beginning with its own citizens, who must maintain a positive "citizen score" to live life without too much government harassment. Its attempt to hold Hong Kong to the same oppressive standard has been met with significant resistance...

Hackers believed to be working for Russia have been monitoring internal email traffic at the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, according to people familiar with the matter, adding they feared the hacks uncovered so far may be the tip of the iceberg. [...] The cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds, which serves government customers across the executive branch, the military, and the intelligence services, accor...

Fri, Dec 11th 2020 10:48am — Tim Cushing Were one step closer to free access to federal court documents. The House has passed the Open Courts Act of 2020, moving it on to the Senate, which will decide whether the bill lands on the presidents desk. Yes, this sort of thing has happened before. And previous efforts have always died on their way to the Oval Office. But this one might be different. A growing collection of case law says the US Courts system has been overcharging users and illegally...

The FBI really enjoys its take on the War on Terror. Starting with the hassling of Muslims at airports and border entries, the FBI cultivates a large collection of confidential informants. These informants then find pliable individuals to target with extra attention, pushing them towards threatening to engage in violence. Then the FBI swoops in…

They say "sunshine is the best disinfectant." Sometimes, though, sunshine is the best RAID. When you've got government cockroaches (feel free to pronounce it like Tony Montana) trying to crawl all over your stuff, the best thing you can do is point all the wattage/candlepower you can on its indiscretions. Earlier this month, ICE tried…

Thu, Dec 10th 2020 3:14am — Tim Cushing The TSAs "Quiet Skies" program continues to suffer under scrutiny. When details first leaked out about the TSAs suspicionless surveillance program, even the air marshals tasked with tailing non-terrorists all over the nation seemed concerned. Marshals questioned the "legality and validity" of the program that sent them after people no government agency had conclusively tied to terrorist organizations or activities. Simply changing flights in the wrong c...