'nothing can combat her being exposed as an incompetent leader'

'Massive migrant populations'

'It's not necessarily the way I envisioned it'

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