The suspect tried to flee but was stopped by the victim and bystanders.

'Body language is going to be incredibly important'

In 2019, Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN’s Jake Tapper that social media companies “are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation and it has to stop.”  Does it?  Every two-bit authoritarian in history has justified censoring its citizens as a way of protecting them from the menace of disinformation.  But social media sites, contra the reliably illiberal Harris, aren’t “directly speaking” to anyone. Millions of individuals are interacting and speaking to millions of other individuals. Really, that’s what grinds the modern Left’s gears: unsupervised conversations.  Take the Brazilian Supreme Court panel that unanimously upheld the decision by one of its justices to shut down Elon Musk’s X over alleged “misinformation” fears.  We must assume that the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, who once promised to ban guns via an executive order, agrees with Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s decision to shut down a social media platform for refusing to bend to the state’s demands of censorship.  The Associated Press reports that the Brazilian high court’s decision “undermines the effort by Musk and his supporters to cast Justice Alexandre de Moraes as an authoritarian renegade who is intent on censoring political speech in Brazil.”  Really? Because it seems to me that the state shuttering one of the popular social media sites unmistakably qualifies as a ban on political speech, whether one person is responsible or an entire government.  And make no mistake, it is politically motivated. “Just because the guy has a lot of money doesn’t mean he can disrespect this (country),” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva argued. Well, the South American nation’s constitution, like ours, apparently protects free expression—making no distinction between the poor and rich: “Any and all censorship of a political, ideological, and artistic nature is prohibited.” You can tell Brazil is super serious about the matter because the bullet point appears in Chapter V, Article 220, or page 148 in my translated copy.  Let’s concede, however, that de Moraes isn’t any kind of renegade, merely a conventional Brazilian autocrat. In the same way, Musk isn’t merely another billionaire but a tech CEO who generally views free expression as a neutral principle.  I suppose the best evidence for this claim is the fact that even as Brazil bans Musk’s site, he allows the far-left Lula to have an account on X with 9 million followers.  In Europe, free expression is also ostensibly protected by the constitution. Well, the right is contingent on “national security,” “territorial disorder,” “crime,” “health,” and other highly malleable issues that ultimately allow police officers in the United Kingdom and Germany to show up at your door and throw you in prison for offensive posts.  As the now-deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once pointed out, “Every banana republic has a Bill of Rights.” The question is: How close are we to being one?  Uncomfortably close is the answer.  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted that senior Biden-Harris administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to “censor” COVID-19 content, including “humor and satire,” during the pandemic. Zuckerberg vowed that he would never let his company be pushed around again. I’m sorry if we don’t take him at his word.  Tech companies enjoy unencumbered free association rights and are free to keep or kick off anyone they desire from their platform, as they should. Before Musk’s purchase of Twitter, now known as X, contemporary left-wingers celebrated the independence of social media platforms. “If you don’t like it, build your own Twitter,” they would say.  OK. But when corporations, which often spend tens of millions each year in Washington rent-seeking and lobbying for favorable regulations, take marching orders from state officials and giant federal bureaucracies on the contours of permissible speech, we have a big problem.  If presidential candidates truly cared about “democracy,” they’d be advocating anti-cronyism laws and forbidding government officials from interfering with or pressuring private entities on speech.  But, these days, many Americans no longer view free expression as a neutral, liberal virtue worth defending. Foremost among them, apparently, is the Democratic presidential ticket.  COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here should be construed as the opinion of The Daily Signal. The post Kamala Harris’ Banana Republic on Free Speech appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A research paper, authored by Microsoft, OpenAI, and a host of influential universities, proposes developing “personhood credentials” (PHCs). It’s notable for the fact that the same companies that are developing and selling potentially “deceptive” AI models are now coming up with a fairly drastic “solution,” a form of digital ID. The goal would be to prevent deception by identifying people creating content on the internet as “real” – as opposed to that generated by AI. And, the paper freely admits that privacy is not included. Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda Instead, there’s talk of “cryptographic authentication” that is also described as “pseudonymous” as PHCs are not supposed to publicly identify a person – unless, that is, the demand comes from law enforcement. “Although PHCs prevent linking the credential across services, users should understand that their other online activities can still be tracked and potentially de-anonymized through existing methods,” said the paper’s authors. Here we arrive at what could be the gist of the story – come up with workable digital ID available to the government, while on the surface preserving anonymity. And wrap it all in a package supposedly righting the very wrongs Microsoft and co. are creating through their lucrative “AI” products. The paper treats online anonymity as the key “weapon” used by bad actors engaging in deceptive behavior. Microsoft product manager Shrey Jain suggested during an interview that while this was in the past acceptable for the sake of privacy and access to information – times have changed. The reason is AI – or rather, AI panic, thriving these days well before the world ever gets to experience and deal with, true AI (AGI). But it’s good enough for the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI, and over 30 others (including Harvard, Oxford, MIT…) to suggest PHCs. People are treated as not really different from websites in this scenario, where PHCs are likened to certificate authorities. But it remains unclear (although governments are mentioned as a possible “roots of trust”) which authority should “authenticate” and assign identifiers to humans, as proof that they are human. Since the paper doesn’t really represent a concrete blueprint on how to develop and implement PHCs, it could also be seen as a way for the industry to continue raking in revenues from “AI,” while pacifying restless governments, reassuring them that “something is being done.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Big Tech’s Latest “Fix” for AI Panic Is To Push a Digital ID Agenda appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A number of US House Republicans earlier this week asked the Biden-Harris administration to get behind legislation that would put an end to the current exploitation of surveillance carried out by data brokers – that happens to be warrantless. The letter signed by nine members of Congress came after news of a security breach that reportedly ended up with personal data from 2.7 billion people getting exposed in a hacking operation. We obtained a copy of the letter for you here. Clearly, that’s a number greater than the total number of US citizens, so what’s going on here? Related: Privacy-invasive Data Brokers Are Funded by the Federal Government It’s because of data brokers, the signatories of the letter suggest – the “super-state actors,” as some might describe them. The group said to be behind the breach, “USDoD”, is supposed to have released records such as names, home addresses, date of birth, and social security numbers, where this applies – of nearly 3 billion people in the world – simply because this data was centralized and available to one entity – National Public Data, “a major data broker.” In the US, such breaches in the end amount to warrantless searches – i.e., violations of the Fourth Amendment. The letter from House Republicans seeks to shed light on the shadowy industry of data brokers, how they may or may not be funded by taxpayer money – and what to do about it. Related: Ad Tracking Data Is Fueling The Intelligence Community There was a legislative effort last spring in the House – the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act – which the Biden-Harris administration chose not to support at the time. Now, those behind the letter would like to bring the bill back, in light of the latest incident. Meanwhile, the very practice of government (law enforcement, and spy agencies), going to data brokers to satiate their need for personal data (of Americans) is suspected to be a workaround for the Fourth Amendment. Regarding the alleged massive and global “USDoD” group hack, the House Republicans are worried that “this data could enable malicious actors to build a sophisticated dossier on every American that can cross-reference and validate other sensitive personal data obtained from the largely unregulated data broker industry.” The letter also makes a point of the alleged hack happening way back in April – “which means the hackers had four months to mine, sell, and otherwise exploit the data in the shadows before the American public was broadly alerted to the theft. This is unacceptable.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Surveillance for Sale? House Republicans Challenge Biden on Data Broker Exploitation appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post California’s Pro-Censorship AI Bill Explained appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Powerless In California

'He's Not Getting the Message': Justin Trudeau Is Turning Into Canada's Joe Biden

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is not shying away from the truth. As the legacy media try to rehabilitate Vice President Kamala Harris' far-left record, Sanders told NBC News on Sunday that any distance Harris tries to create between her policy proposals and her actual political views is nothing more than a ruse. 'I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.' "You have described Vice President Kamala Harris as a progressive. She has previously supported Medicare for all. Now, she does not. She's previously supported a ban on fracking. Now, she does not. These, Senator, are ideas that you have campaigned on. Do you think that she is abandoning her progressive ideals?" moderator Kristen Welker asked Sanders. "No, I don't think she's abandoning her ideals," Sanders revealed. In fact, Sanders believes that Harris is publicly downplaying her actual views to win the election, all in the name of pragmatics. "I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election," he said. When Welker followed up, asking Sanders if he believes that Harris remains a progressive despite policy flip-flops that happened only after she became the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, Sanders confirmed that he doesn't believe Harris has actually changed. "Do you still consider Vice President Kamala Harris to be progressive, Senator?" Welker queried. "I do," he said. The problem with Harris' "pragmatic" shift to the center is that her record speaks for itself. Not only is Harris a San Francisco liberal, but her four-year tenure in the U.S. Senate earned her the distinction of being more liberal than Sanders, a self-described "democratic socialist." Americans, moreover, don't need Sanders to remind them that Harris has not changed. She herself admitted in an interview last month that her "values have not changed." "I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed," she told CNN. After nearly two months in the race, Harris' campaign finally has released a comprehensive set of policy proposals on her campaign website. Harris is running on a "New Way Forward" agenda, never mind the fact that she has been vice president for almost four years and Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the last 16 years. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Not surprisingly, the shooter behind the Apalachee High School shooting was on the FBI’s radar. A day after Colt Gray was charged with murder, the father of the 14-year-old shooter was charged with four counts of manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children. “My first thought was crimes that the son commits, you don’t hold the father for. Crimes of the father, you don’t hold on the son. That was my first reaction, like what are we doing?” Glenn Beck asks. The charges came after it was revealed that the father purchased an AR-15 style rifle to give to his son as a Christmas gift last year. “I got my first gun from my grandfather when I was like, 12,” Glenn comments in disbelief, adding, “Now I’m thinking to myself, this is another way to get guns.” However, the case is more complicated than meets the eye, as authorities reportedly visited the pair before the father gifted his son the gun after receiving tips about online school shooting threats. “This is the information that the FBI had months before the shooting,” Glenn says, noting that the mother has a lengthy rap sheet, including abuse of her children. The shooter’s aunt, Annie Brown, also told the Washington Post that her nephew was struggling with mental health issues and had been “begging for help from everyone around him.” “So I want to ask. Why do we have an FBI? Why do we have one? You know they’re spying on us illegally for our own safety, but I don’t think it is for our safety, you know, cause they’re not protecting us,” he says, explaining that many of the shooters who carried out mass shootings were also already on the FBI’s radar. “FBI missed signals in four mass shootings. What the hell are they doing?” Glenn asks. Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.