However, on Wednesday their authenticity appeared to be confirmed after the regions prison chief, the head of the prison infirmary and several other officials were dismissed, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service.

It added that everyone implicated in those crimes will face justice.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which deals with high-profile crimes, has also launched an investigation into "violent acts of a sexual nature".

The crime carries a maximum penalty of 10 years behind bars, but those involved are unlikely to face that. A wide-ranging report by the Committee against Torture in August found that almost half of all law enforcement officers convicted of torture only receive suspended sentences.

Gulagu.net is one of several rights groups and independent media outlets that fled Russia earlier this year as the Kremlin ratcheted up pressure against those exposing the corruption and crimes of Russian officials and Mr Putins inner circle.

Last month, Mr Putin's party United Russia won a national election but was hit with widespread allegations of rampant fraud after a landslide win despite polls showing its waning popularity.

Mr Osechkin said his NGO had already shared the footage with Russian authorities, the Council of Europe, and the United Nations.

He said his source was a Belarusian IT engineer identified as Sergey who was incarcerated in Saratov prison and also faced abuse.

Sergey was coerced into cooperating with prison officials, during which time he managed the prison's computer network and secured access to video files from the entire Russian prison system.Igor Kalyapin, one of Russias most prominent activists fighting torture behind bars, said that while reports of such torture were not unusual, what is unique is the fact that we were able to see it."

Male prisoners in Russia often face sexual abuse at the hands of other prisoners on the orders of the prison administration, in order to intimidate and blackmail them, he told the independent media outlet TV Rain.

Those things are often done not only as punishment but in order to keep a person on a short leash, Mr Kalyapin added.

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Russian prisoners raped and abused in 'conveyer belt of torture', according to leaked footage - Telegraph.co.uk

Countries in the developing world will soon follow in the steps of El Salvador and make Bitcoin (BTC)legal tender, BitMEX CEO Alexander Hptner recently predicted.

In a Wednesday blog post, Hptner expressed support for El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender in September, predicting that developing countries will be leading the way in Bitcoin adoption:

According to Hptner, developing countries will adopt Bitcoin faster due to three major factors: the growing need for cheaper and faster international remittances, massive inflation, and political issues.

As opposed to consumers in more developed countries, people in developing economies are more affected by issues related to cross-border payments and inflation, Hptner said.

The CEO noted that remittances made up 23% of El Salvadors gross domestic product in 2020, while the World Bank assessed that low- and middle-income countries receive about 75% of total global remittances. He added that people around the world are increasingly looking at Bitcoin as a solution to weather massive inflation, citing rapid crypto adoption in Turkey amid a 19.2% inflation rate.

Hptner went on to say that El Salvadors Bitcoin move will make it easier for other countries to consider similar moves. But if its a reality that politics will play a big role in the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender, its also true that any failings by these leaders in the implementation phase may hurt wider adoption of cryptocurrencies in general, he added.

Related: 70% of Salvadorans opposed to Bitcoin Law as Sept. 7 implementation draws near

A former CEO of German stock exchange Boerse Stuttgart, Hptner took over as CEO of BitMEX in December 2020, replacing Arthur Hayes.

Hptner is not alone in thinking that more countries will follow El Salvadors lead in adopting Bitcoin. Last month, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson predicted that a lot more countries will adopt cryptocurrencies. World-renowned computer programmer Edward Snowden also believes that latecomers may regret hesitating.

Some major figures in the cryptocurrency space have been hesitant to praise El Salvadors crypto adoption sparked by President Nayib Bukele. On Friday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterincriticized Bukeles approach to adopting Bitcoin,arguing that forcing businesses to accept a specific cryptocurrency is contrary to the ideals of freedom that are supposed to be so important to the crypto space.

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BitMEX CEO predicts Bitcoin will be legal tender in five countries by 2022 - Cointelegraph

WITH only a puny opposition less than a year to the 2022 elections, and a Duterte 2 administration inarguably on the horizon, the United States has employed what has been its special propaganda weapon, the Nobel Peace Prize, to give American-Filipino Maria Ressa, the chief executive officer (CEO) of a viciously anti-Duterte news website, the stature to demonize the Philippine president, and consequently whoever he endorses as his presidential candidate.

Ressa's co-awardee is Dmitry Muratov, an editor of the most widely circulated newspaper in Russia very critical of Vladimir Putin, the four-term president of the Russian Federation, one of the two adversaries of the US for world dominance. The US must be so desperate it didn't care that the motives of its Nobel move are so obvious: one is aimed against the strongman Putin, the other against the strongman Duterte, whom the Americans are furious at for drawing the country close to their second adversary, China. A Reuters headline on the story summed it up: "Journalists who took on Putin and Duterte win the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize" although it should have added the phrase "US targets" before "Putin."

The US has demonstrated several times in the past its power to manipulate the Nobel awards committee into handing the peace prize to whomever it wants, when it needs to do so. The committee consists of just five people nominated by the Norwegian Parliament. If you've ever been in such a panel (as I have), you will realize how easy it would be for a determined party, such as the US, to manipulate the committee: it receives over 300 nominations for all awards per year. How did Russia get into the minds of these Norwegians? In terms of contributing to humanity, Julian Assange, who started Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, who told the world of the massive US monitoring of private cell phone conversations, didn't cross their minds. Oh, these two pissed off the US government.

The US has done this Nobel move before. To boost the profile of the first black US president, an obscure Illinois senator, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2009 to Barack Obama just nine months into his term even if he had done absolutely nothing to deserve the purported justification for it, "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy." To draw attention to the imprisonment of a largely ignored Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the peace prize was awarded solely to him in 2010.

Ressa was awarded not for any work of journalism but entirely on her portrayal of herself as a crusader for press freedom in the Philippines, which she claims President Rodrigo Duterte has been suppressing. She is a master of the sound bite, spewing such obvious lies that tug at Americans' hearts such as her claim that for criticizing Duterte, she had received at one point "90 hate messages an hour, 90 rape threats per minute."

That claim of press suppression in the country is just astonishing as anyone can simply scan the newspapers here and find that many are more vicious in criticizing Duterte than Rappler, yet are not complaining over press suppression. The Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Philippine Star should be jealous and protest the Ressa award: they have been more vociferously critical of Duterte, and with a much bigger audience than Rappler.

Killings

Killings of journalists, according to a detailed case-to-case investigation of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security, weren't related to their work. In the very few cases that were, the people who ordered their murder were drug lords or municipal-level political kingpins they run into trouble with. According to a Unesco monitoring body, there were 16 journalists here killed during the Duterte administration. Under Aquino 3rd, there were 27.

The Philippines has in fact the freest and probably most powerful press in the world. Ressa's website, initially funded by tycoon Benjamin Bitanga and then by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-linked US entities National Endowment for Democracy and the Omidyar Network, has even become one of the bigger websites since Duterte assumed office in 2016. How in the world could it have been suppressed? Journalists who have congratulated Ressa for winning the Nobel Prize, as the single one that did so in this newspaper, are so stupid they don't realize what that award essentially means: Only Ressa has the guts to fight Duterte, the rest of the Philippine press do not have the balls to do so.

It is a desperate move for the US since its nightmare is likely to be a reality: all the polls show that Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.," son of the strongman of Ferdinand E. Marcos, it moved heaven and earth to depose in 1986, will be the next president, even by a landslide. The Marcos camp should be worried though: the US would have other tricks other than this Nobel one to prevent Bongbong from winning the 2022 elections.

By getting her the Nobel Peace Prize, the US has made Ressa the opposition poster girl, giving her the platform and prestige to hurl dirt against Duterte and Marcos, when nobody practically listens anymore to the likes of Vice President Maria Leonor "Leni" Robredo or the communist spokesmen. Already, Ressa has started to do the rounds of television interviews as a Nobel laureate as in the respected Freed Zakaria's CNN program yesterday. It was Zakaria's first show involving the Philippines.

Defamation

The announcement by the Nobel Committee to justify Ressa's award it doesn't give any other explanation for its awards is so blatantly false and a gross defamation of our country that the government should file a diplomatic protest. The sole justification for the award, according to that "announcement," is that Ressa's "Rappler has focused critical attention on the Duterte regime's controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign. The number of deaths is so high that the campaign resembles a war waged against the country's own population."

Murderous? Not even Rappler, for god's sake, has claimed that that campaign "resembles a war waged" against the country's citizens. The accurate figure, which hasn't been disproved by actual facts despite several efforts by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and two universities, is around 6,600 since 2016. That's way fewer than 30,000 to 40,000 killed in state campaigns against illegal drugs in Mexico and Colombia.

The casualties have in fact gone down so much in the past two years that not even the opposition dare use Duterte's anti-drug war as a major issue in its anti-Duterte campaign, since most Filipinos are grateful that the campaign has vastly reduced the illegal drug problem in the country.

The figure of over "27,000" killed, which the Left and the opposition have succeeded in spreading all over the world, and which the Nobel Committee apparently believed, was one concocted by Rappler. It deliberately misinterpreted the number of total homicides (due to any reason including passion killing, for example) being investigated by police as due to the drug war. (See my 2020 column "Ressa, Coronel and Gascon concocted false '27,000 killed' number in anti-drug war.")

Incompetence

The cases filed in court against Ressa were not Duterte's moves to suppress her or Rappler, but entirely due to her incompetence as an editor and as a company CEO. A businessman filed charges against her and one of her staff for an article accusing him of being a "murderer," which was a total lie. The businessman asked her to just delete the article. She refused. It didn't take long for the court to find her guilty as there was totally no proof at all for the piece's allegations.

Two American CIA-linked NGOs, the National Endowment for Democracy and Omidyar Network, invested $4.5 million on the website, which was even announced there. But that was a clear violation of the Constitution that bars any foreign money in the media. Ressa tried to squeeze her way out of the predicament by claiming it was a form of corporate shares the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed. The SEC ruled that it wasn't. She then claimed the amount was a "gift" to her and Rappler's editors. But the country's laws impose a tax on any gift, which they hadn't paid at all nor reported in their income tax returns. Ressa obviously thought she was exempted from the country's income tax laws. The Bureau of Internal Revenue disagreed.

Ressa is a fraud. She has exploited the unpopularity of Duterte in the US to portray herself as a poor victim of the president's wrath. The American press has been so gullible to believe her because Duterte isn't liked at all in the US, mainly the result of his distancing of the country from the superpower and drawing it closer to China, as well as the lies of the pro-American Yellow opposition, that he is a ruthless strongman like Putin.

Truth will eventually come out when some enterprising investigative reporter ferrets out the truth behind her Nobel Prize award, which is to demonize Duterte and thereby prevent his perceived successor from winning the 2022 elections. Ressa won't be the first journalist to fool even experienced US newspapers as was the case of Janet Cooke, who won a Pulitzer Prize in the 1980s for an article purportedly about an 8-year-old heroin addict in The Washington Post, which was later discovered to have been totally fabricated

When that day comes, I hope the Philippines does not get the dubious distinction as the country from which a fraudster managed to fool not just the Nobel Committee but most of the Western media. After all, she's mostly an American who took Filipino citizenship for convenience when her then employer ABS-CBN said it couldn't give her a paycheck as she didn't have the working permit necessary for foreigners employed in the country.

Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao

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US uses Nobel Prize to demonize Duterte, and therefore his successor - The Manila Times

Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Slow-moving lava from the volcano that erupted on La Palma in the Canary Islands has finally reached the ocean, releasing steam and possibly dangerous gases as the magma hit the water.

The eruption began on Sept. 19 and for days the lava has slowly been making its way to the edge of the island.

As the lava pours into the sea, it naturally releases large plumes of steam -- and also possibly toxic gases dangerous to humans.

The lava fell from a 330-foot cliff in the area of Los Guerres beach. The water there is shallow and the lava deposits form land quickly.

At one point, a large deposit measuring 160-feet formed in less than an hour, scientists said.

Authorities have evacuated everyone in the immediate surrounding areas of the lava flow, and advised those outside the zone to remain in doors in case there were harmful gases coming from the magma.

The lava flow has destroyed hundreds of homes since it began more than a week ago.

The Volcanic Ash Advisory Center in Toulouse issued a warning Wednesday about volcanic ash rising 17,000 feet into the air and moving southeast.

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Lava from eruption in Canary Islands pours into the sea - UPI News

Facebook along with its Instagram and WhatsApp platforms suffered a worldwide outage Monday that has extended more than three hours. Facebooks internal systems used by employees also went down. Service has not yet been restored.

The company did not say what might be causing the outage, which began around 11:40 a.m. ET. Websites and apps often suffer outages of varying size and duration, but hourslong global disruptions are rare.

This is epic, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis for Kentik Inc, a network monitoring and intelligence company. The last major internet outage, which knocked many of the worlds top websites offline in June, lasted less than an hour. The stricken content-delivery company in that case, Fastly, blamed it on a software bug triggered by a customer who changed a setting.

Facebooks only public comment so far was a tweet in which it acknowledged that some people are having trouble accessing (the) Facebook app and that it was working on restoring access. Regarding the internal failures, Instagram head Adam Mosseri tweeted that it feels like a snow day.

But the impact was far worse for multitudes of Facebooks nearly 3 billion users, showing just how much the world has come to rely on it and its properties to run businesses, connect with communities of affinity, log on to multiple other websites and even to order food.

It also showed that, despite the presence of Twitter, Telegram, Signal, TikTok, Snapchat and a bevy of other platforms, nothing can truly replace the social network that has evolved in 17 years into all but critical infrastructure. Facebooks request Monday that a revised antitrust complaint against it by the Federal Trade Commission be dismissed because it faces vigorous competition from other services seemed to ring a bit hollow.

The cause of the outage remains unclear. Madory said it appears Facebook withdrew authoritative DNS routes that let the rest of the internet communicate with its properties. Such routes are part of the internets Domain Name System, a central component of the internet that directs its traffic. Without Facebook broadcasting its routes on the public internet, apps and web addresses simple could not locate it.

So many people are reliant on Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram as a primary mode of communication that losing access for so long can make them vulnerable to criminals taking advantage of the outage, said Rachel Tobac, a hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security.

They dont know how to contact the people in their lives without it, she said. Theyre more susceptible to social engineering because theyre so desperate to communicate. Tobac said during previous outages, some people have received emails promising to restore their social media account by clicking on a malicious link that can expose their personal data.

Jake Williams, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm BreachQuest, said that while foul play cannot be completely ruled out, chances were good that the outage is an operational issue caused by human error.

Madory said there was no sign that anyone but Facebook was responsible and discounted the possibility that another major internet player, such as a telecom company, might have inadvertently rewritten major routing tables that affect Facebook.

No one else announced these routes, said Madory.

Computer scientists speculated that a bug introduced by a configuration change in Facebooks routing management system could be to blame. Colombia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin tweeted that he expected Facebook would first try an automated recovery in such a case. If that failed, it could be in for a world of hurt because it would need to order manual changes at outside data centers, he added.

What it boils down to: running a LARGE, even by Internet standards, distributed system is very hard, even for the very best, Bellovin tweeted.

Facebook was already in the throes of a separate major crisis after whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, provided The Wall Street Journal with internal documents that exposed the companys awareness of harms caused by its products and decisions. Haugen went public on CBSs 60 Minutes program Sunday and is scheduled to testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.

Haugen had also anonymously filed complaints with federal law enforcement alleging Facebooks own research shows how it magnifies hate and misinformation, leads to increased polarization and that Instagram, specifically, can harm teenage girls mental health.

The Journals stories, called The Facebook Files, painted a picture of a company focused on growth and its own interests over the public good. Facebook has tried to play down the research. Nick Clegg, the companys vice president of policy and public affairs, wrote to Facebook employees in a memo Friday that social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out.

Twitter, meanwhile, chimed in from the companys main Twitter account, posting hello literally everyone as jokes and memes about the Facebook outage flooded the platform. Later, as an unverified screenshot suggesting that the facebook.com address was for sale circulated, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, how much?

___

AP technology writer Matt OBrien contributed to this report from Providence, R.I.

Frank Bajak And Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press

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New life in Canada for family that helped Edward Snowden flee to Hong Kong - Todayville.com

Former US secret agent Edward Snowden has spoken on Twitter about the Pandora Papers, a leak published this Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ, for its acronym in English).

The funny side of this serious story is that even after two apocalyptic leaks from a law firm and offshore finance, those industries are still compiling vast databases of ruin, and still securing it with a post-it marked as Do not filterReads the text. I take my hat off to the source! , he adds.

The document, which is the most comprehensive exposition of financial secrets of the ICIJ, is the result of extensive journalistic work that reveals that the offshore money machine operates in every corner of the planet. A total of 35 world leaders (active or who have already left power), more than 100 billionaires and more than 300 senior public officials from more than 90 countries would be involved.

Snowden, who lives asylum in Russia, faces accusations in the US of violation of the Espionage Law and theft of government property after he caused a large international scandal in June 2013 after handing over thousands of classified documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to major outlets such as The Washington Post and The Guardian.

The US Justice indicts him at least 17 crimes of espionage for having published confidential information, while activists from around the world support the former CIA contractor for having brought to light such activities of the US intelligence agencies in collaboration with several allied countries.

Did you find it interesting? Leave your opinion in the comments!

Disclaimer: This article is generated from the feed and not edited by our team.

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Edward Snowden reveals the funny side of the apocalyptic leaks of Pandoras Papers - Market Research Telecast

Three years ago, Yana Peel abruptly resigned as director of the Serpentine Galleries in London after reports connected hervis--vis her husbands private equity firmto NSO Group, a controversial Israeli cybersecurity company known for its flagship spyware that allows users to hack unsuspecting cell phones. Those who have raised alarm about the group describe it as analogous to gun manufacturers prior to U.S. firearm regulations: a weapons merchant operating indiscriminately within a legal system ill-equipped to control it.

Peels relationship to the company, it turned out, was tenuous. (She owns an indirect and passive interest in Novalpina, the investment fund that acquired the NSO Group in 2019, but has had no involvement with the Israeli company.) The Guardianone of the first publications to report on the directors alleged involvementissued a rare retraction saying as much.

And yet Peels resignation from the Serpentine represented an important milestone in the 11-year history of the Israeli company, according to Eyal Weizman, founding director of the investigative art collective Forensic Architecture: it marked the first moment of accountability to any actions related to the NSO Group.

If Weizman and his group have their way, this instance of accountability likely wont be the last. This month, Forensic Architecture unveiled its newest project: an interactive platform that charts thousands of instances of so-called digital violence tied to the NSO Groupas well as the events, private interests, and other forces that have empowered the company along the way.

Its part art, part legal resourceone that, like other Forensic Architecture projects, may well be employed as evidence in a courtroom one day. The Turner Prize-nominated research lab has previously trained its eyes on subjects ranging from Russian military activity in Ukraine and U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. The new project is the most comprehensive database ever assembled dedicated to whats been called the worlds most notorious surveillance company.

Rounding out the artsier features of Digital Violence, as the platform is titled, are video investigations narrated by Edward Snowden; interviews with activists, journalists, and lawyers worldwide who have been the subject of targeted hacks; and a sound piece composed by Brian Eno. Laura Poitras, the Academy Award-winning director of Citizenfour,the documentary about Snowden, has also made a short film about the project, which is set to debut at Cannes Film Festival this month.

Courtesy of Forensic Architecture.

A missed call or a strange text: these are perhaps the only signs that your phone has been infected by Pegasus, the name of the NSO Groups signature software, according to Forensic Architectures lead researcher Shourideh Molavi. After that, the users on the other end have access to virtually everything on your deviceyour calls and texts; your passwords and GPS information; your network of friends, family, and colleagues. They can even tap into your camera and microphone, enabling real-time surveillance. This is what Forensic Architectures members have dubbed digital violence.

Were used to examining missiles, tanks, bullets, Molavi told Artnet News. Now, were dealing with a kind of state violence that you cannot see, that is difficult to detectthat doesnt require any agency from the user, and thats privately funded and sold by a private company. All of these things make for a dangerous package of human rights violations.

Often, physical violence isnt far away. What Forensic Architectures platform makes clear is that instances of Pegasus-related digital violence are often accompanied by real-world attacks, be it in the form of break-ins, lawsuits, or arrests. In interviews, hacking victims recall the psychological and emotional toll of being infected: they become anxious, have trouble sleeping, and feel like theyre constantly being watched.

Its hard for people to understand how a hack can have physical consequences, Molavi said. Its just your phone, right? But really, its your relationships, its your family, its your feeling of security, its your mental health.

Theres another crucial consideration, too: digital violence transcends geopolitical boundaries. Whereas states cant exercise judicial power outside the limits of their respective territories, Pegasus gives its users the power to terrorize almost anyone, anywhere, according to numerous reports on the product.

Despite challenges in court, Israels Ministry of Defense continues to grant the NSO Group export licenses; and the companys corporate structure has allowed it to put its signature product in markets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and even the United States. NSO has yet to confirm any of its clients, but according to a report from Citizen Lab, Pegasus has been used in at least 45 countries worldwide since 2015.

Representatives from the NSO Group did not immediately respond to Artnet Newss request for comment, but in a statement to the Washington Post, a spokesperson for the company dismissed Forensic Architectures platform.

These are recycled claims, filled with inaccuracies and half-truths, the spokesperson said. The company investigates all credible claims of misuse, and takes appropriate action based on the results of its investigations. This includes shutting down a customers systema step NSO has taken several times in the past, and will not hesitate to take again if a situation warrants.

For Forensic Architecture and its allies, Digital Violence aims to do what international judicial organizations, traditional press outlets, and other authorities wontor cant.

During a recent event to inaugurate the platform at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, where Forensic Architecture is currently included in an exhibition on open-source investigation, Edward Snowden said: The investigation of not just the NSO group, but this sector and this technology, is the most important unwritten story in media today.

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Art Collective Forensic Architecture Has Teamed Up With Edward Snowden to Investigate a Shadowy Global Spyware Company - artnet News

Investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald sounded off on Thursday about the Biden White House admitting it has joined forces with Big Tech entities like Facebook to censor what it dubs "misinformation."

Greenwald, who notably broke the Edward Snowden-NSA civilian surveillance story, told "Fox News Primetime" that the apparent merger between large private business firms and a powerful federal government is a "classic definition" of economic fascism.

"I have been trying to make the point for well over a year now [that] lot of people think that this censorship is coming from executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter, which really isn't true," Greenwald said Thursday.

The journalist added that Big Tech appeared cowed by liberal journalists "shaming" them for not censoring enough during the Trump era as the Democrats "increased in power" while Democratic lawmakers kept summoning tech CEOs to Capitol Hill to further "threaten" them if they neglected to censor what the left considers "hate speech" or "misinformation."

"It's really a merger of state and corporate power which is ironically is the classic definition of fascism," said Greenwald.

"We have heard so much about fascism over the last five years. This is what it actually is. And the people who say they are against it are actually now supporting it," he said.

The increased concern over federal government interventionist actions came to a head earlier in the day when White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki essentially admitted the Biden administration is enlisting the Big Tech giants to quash speech they don't like or as host Pete Hegseth said, turning Facebook, Google and Twitter into "the de-facto censorship arm of the federal government."

Hegseth noted Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, whose role is the nation's chief medical doctor, spoke at the White House over the apparent epidemic of such "misinformation."

Murthy noted that his office's public advisories are saved for "public health threats" such as the USSG's lung cancer warning long denoted on tobacco packaging but instead warned of the "insidious threat" that "misinformation" poses to public health.

"Misinformation, its always misinformation," Hegseth said. "Its a word that the Biden administration cant get enough of.Its Orwellian double-speak deliberately ambiguous, so they can define italways."

Hegseth noted once again that Psaki, Murthy and Biden can essentially ask Big Tech to label whatever statements or images it wants to be "misinformation" even if the facts therein are true.

He also remarked that "misinformation" has since supplanted "circle-back" as the spokeswoman's buzzword-du-jour.

The host further added that President Trump long derided as a purveyor of "fascist" policies by groups like Antifa, whose name is a portmanteau of "Anti-Fascist" was essentially given a gift in his pending class action litigation against Big Tech.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Trump sued social media companies in Miami federal court earlier this month, claiming he and others to have been wrongfully silenced for their political beliefs.

"The White Houses admission today hammers home the point that President Trump is making in his class-action lawsuit against Facebook that social media companies act as the de-facto censorship arm of the federal government," said Hegseth.

"I hope the Trump team makes this clip Exhibit #5,000 in their lawsuit. They just came out and said it."

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Greenwald: WH and Big Tech 'ironically' creating textbook 'definition of fascism' they claim to be against - Fox News

A controversy over Fox News host Tucker Carlson's texts and emails has revived Republican interest in curtailing the National Security Agency's surveillance program, an issue that has often divided the party between libertarians and national security hawks.

Fifteen House Republicans, led by Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Bill Posey of Florida, sent the NSA a letter on Tuesday, demanding explanations of its surveillance practices and how a U.S. citizen's communications might lawfully be ensnared in its spying on foreign nationals.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who is a longtime critic of the NSA, has also sought an investigation of the incident. "I write to you to demand that you investigate the National Security Agency's (NSA) alleged spying and unmasking of Tucker Carlson, as well as any leaks of his private emails from the NSA to other reporters," he said in a letter.

KAMALA IN CRISIS

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy requested that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee investigate Carlson's June allegation that the NSA had spied on him in an effort to take his highly rated show off the air.

"The NSA cannot be used as a political instrument, and House Republicans will ensure accountability and transparency," McCarthy, a California Republican, said at the time.

"It's illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens. It's a crime," Carlson said on his show. "It's not a Third World country. Things like that should not happen in America."

The spy agency has publicly denied Carlson's claims. "This allegation is untrue," an NSA spokesperson said in a statement. "Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air."

"We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States," the statement continued. "With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting."

Republicans were dissatisfied with this response, especially following an Axios report that the NSA surveilled Carlson through incidental collection while attempting to secure an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising questions about how the outlet would have obtained this information.

"Asserting that Tucker Carlson is not and never has been an intelligence target of the Agency does not rule out the possibility of his being surveilled or unmasked for supposed ties to a party under investigation," the House Republicans wrote in their letter.

"I am open-minded enough to believe, if given convincing evidence, that the NSA may be telling the truth, but when a long train of abuses conducted by the NSA evinces a consistent design to evade the law and violate the constitutionally-protected liberties of the people, the NSA must do more than tweet a carefully worded denial to be trusted," Paul wrote in his letter.

Surveillance by the NSA, initially revealed in part in 2013 leaks by former agency contractor Edward Snowden while Barack Obama was president and President Joe Biden was vice president, has often become the target of GOP ire under Democratic administrations. But party leaders have been reluctant to shed powers the federal government acquired after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Unmasking and surveillance became an issue again when an associate of former President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was surveilled, and incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn had the contents of a controversial call with a Russian official leaked. Trump repeatedly alleged that the Obama administration spied on his campaign, while officials defended the initial inquiries as justified.

Flynn was charged with misleading federal investigators about the Russian call. Trump and his campaign were investigated to determine whether they colluded with the Russian government's attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Flynn was pardoned at the end of a complicated legal saga, and special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a Trump-Russia election conspiracy.

As the top Republican on the House Intelligence panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California repeatedly pressed officials on the surveillance and unmasking of Trump associates during the Obama era.

Former Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican turned Libertarian Party member who led a bipartisan effort to limit warrantless surveillance and data collection, argued that these investigations did not go far enough compared to his proposed legislative remedies.

"The NSA is doing all the things that McCarthy and Nunes voted for it to do," Amash tweeted after Republican leaders spoke out on the Carlson allegations. "When I tried to stop the FISA 702 reauthorization, they said I was endangering American lives. GOP leaders urged Trump to denounce my efforts and sign the FISA bill, which he did. Now they feign outrage."

Amash made a similar observation in 2019 when a federal surveillance court rebuked the FBI for violating Americans' privacy rights through its foreign intelligence programs. "This is FISA 702," he tweeted at the time. "In 2018, I led the charge against the establishment to stop this program. President Trump attacked my efforts and signed it into law, with the support of [former House Speaker Paul] Ryan, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, McCarthy, Nunes, and [Rep. Adam] Schiff. It's an outrageous violation of our Constitution and our rights."

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"The Tucker thing will get the base's juices flowing, but we haven't been consistent on this," said a veteran Republican operative in Washington, D.C.

"It is imperative that any claim of a U.S. government agency illegally spying on a private citizen be taken seriously," Gohmert, Posey, and over a dozen other House Republicans wrote, requesting an NSA response by Aug. 1. "Therefore, in addition to your response to these important questions, we are urging you to provide all documents related to your agency involving Tucker Carlson to us."

Original Location: Tucker Carlson reignites NSA surveillance debate on the Right

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Tucker Carlson reignites NSA surveillance debate on the Right - Denver Gazette

CANNES, France -- Thirty years after JFK, Oliver Stone has returned to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, this time in a documentary.

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass" is a kind of non-fiction addendum to one of Stone's most sensational and controversial films. The documentary, which is to premiere Monday at the Cannes Film Festival, is likely to prompt another round of debate on both the American tragedy and Stone's methods. But for the 74-year-old filmmaker, it was a way to answer his critics and go deeper into a history he's forever linked with.

I was a relative novice when that film came out. I was nave. I didnt know that Id get banged like this and it was hard, Stone said in an interview. It became as if I was untrustworthy. In Hollywood, I became labeled a conspiracy theorist which I think is a term from a 1952 CIA document an attempt to discredit people. But people liked the movie. As a movie-movie, it worked.

JFK was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won two. It grossed more than $200 million. But it was also surrounded by questions about its factuality. JFK Revisited" has doubts attached to it, too. Several streaming services passed on distributing the film in part over their fact checks. In Cannes, the film has set up international releases in several countries and is seeking a U.S. distributor.

The documentary, which has been edited down to around two hours after being twice that, makes no declarations about who killed Kennedy. It pulls in part from millions of government files that have been released in the years since JFK. In 2017, President Donald Trump delayed the release of more documents, citing national security.

JFK Revisited delves deeply into inconsistencies in Kennedy's autopsy, the handling of key pieces of evidence and Lee Harvey Oswald's alleged ties to the CIA. And its deepest suspicions not unlike JFK lie in the U.S. intelligence services.

I feel the most important is why President Kennedy was killed, said Stone. "We answered with our evidence that he was going to withdraw from Vietnam. The dtente with Cuba was in motion. The nuclear test ban treaty had been signed. He was looking for a dtente with Russia. He was an anti-colonialist."

Stone, whose films include "Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, himself fought in Vietnam.

I went in as a hawk. I believed we were doing the right thing, he said. Even when I came out of Vietnam, I was not an activist. It takes years to reeducate yourself. And I found out more and more. By the time I made ("JFK"), I didnt know what I know now. The history of this country is screwed up. We havent told it."

In films like Wall Street," Nixon and W., Stone has charted through his own provocative lens much of the last 50 years of American history in movies that gave politically charged figures splashy big-screen portraits. But his relationship with both Hollywood and Washington has declined in more recent years. His last fiction film was 2016's Snowden," a biopic that depicted Edward Snowden as an American hero. It was painstaking to get funded and little noticed on release.

"It kind of broke my spirit," said Stone.

His skepticism for American democracy has only increased. A plutocracy is more accurate, he said, citing the influence of money in elections. Democracy is a strange word. It's in question.

At the same time, Stone has been drawn to meeting and documenting some of the world's dictators and strongmen. Stone interviewed Russia's Vladimir Putin at length for a Showtime series that was criticized as fawning. He has done interviews with Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Stone is currently prepping a series with the former Kazakhstan leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

What attracted to me those figures was they are balancing America. American cannot be the sole power in the world. I think Henry Kissinger would agree with me. I think Machiavelli would agree with me," said Stone. Balance of power is the only way this world can be free of one control, one tyrant. Thats the real tyrant. America.

I'm not a bad guy, Stone added. And I don't love dictators.

As for Stone's relationship to Hollywood, he said he tries not to think about too much. I just try to keep going, Stone said. In Cannes, he also screened a director's cut of JFK. But when he considers the kinds of movies that get made today in the U.S., he sees little political inquiry or international perspective.

I find that many American filmmakers would be very good but they deal with crime issues its on TV all the time. Theyre great at violence. Except for a few filmmakers, they never go against American foreign policy, which is wrong. Thats wrong.

America is censoring itself. Its censoring Facebook, its censoring the ex-president. Were scared. Were scared of hearing the truth, Stone continued. Sometimes you have to hear the Alex Joneses of the world. You have to have different points of view.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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