“Failure To Obey” Documentary On Checkpoint Refusal 

According to current federal law, border patrol agents currently have the authority to stop and conduct searches on vessels, trains, aircraft, or other vehicles anywhere within “a reasonable distance from any external boundary of the United States.”

This “reasonable distance” is defined as 100 miles from any border, including coastal boundaries.

In this 100-mile zone, the US Border Patrol has claimed certain extra-constitutional powers, such as, claiming the authority to operate inland immigration checkpoints.

In practice, Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority, violating the constitutional rights of innocent people.

Although the 100-mile border zone is not literally “Constitution-free,” it is frequently treated as such by the Border Patrol.

As a result, two-thirds of the U.S. population, or approximately 200 million people, are potentially subject to detention and warrantless searches by Border Patrol agents.

This film documents the story of Pastor Steven Anderson being being beaten, tasered, and jailed for refusing a warrant-less search of his vehicle.

The film also covers his trial and subsequent border patrol encounters.

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Feds Steal $16,000 From Innocent Man On Train, Because, Well, He Shouldn’t Be Carrying That Much 

It apparently is no longer safe to carry large sums of cash with you when you travel in America.

Joseph Rivers learned this lesson the hard way when the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) took his entire life’s savings — $16,000 — while he was riding on an Amtrak train in April to Los Angeles. The 22 year old is an aspiring music video producer.

Like many drivers, Rivers was never arrested or charged with a crime. Instead, DEA agents used civil asset forfeiture law to seize the cash he was carrying on a passenger train he had boarded in Michigan. Agents entered the train in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The agents took the cash after asking Rivers a series of questions. When he told them he was going to Los Angeles to make a music video, the agents asked for permission to search his luggage, which was granted. The DEA found the cash and seized it.

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So Why Are You Still In Your Chair, Americans? 

What if you discovered that Presidents Bush and Obama have both intentionally, willfully and with malice violated the law by authorizing mass spying on Americans that was never authorized by any law passed by Congress, and representations to the contrary were a lie?

Well, that’s what happened.

May 7, 2015 A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of U.S. phone records is illegal, dealing a startling blow to the program just as Congress is weighing reforms to surveillance authorities.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals deemed that dragnet collection of American call data does not constitute information relevant to terrorism investigations under Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

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Ancestry.com Is Now Sharing Your DNA With The Police 

The police state just took a very dark turn. We all know that private corporations tend to side with the government on privacy issues, and they’re more than willing to hand over our information when the government asks for it. Google and Facebook are pretty well-known examples of that, and they’ve been doing it for so long that nobody even bats an eye at their government compliance anymore. What people don’t realize is that this situation applies equally to all major companies, not just the ones that handle our information.

Sometimes, it involves our DNA, which is what Michael Usry Jr. learned when the police called him in for questioning in regards to a bogus hit and run incident. In reality, they were trying to solve a cold case involving the 1994 murder of Angie Dodge in Idaho Falls.

So why did they think he was the killer? Because, his father’s DNA, which was a very close match the killer’s, had been submitted to Ancestry.com. The Sorenson Database, which is owned by Ancestry.com and stores over 100,000 DNA samples from around the world, gave up his father’s genetic profile without a warrant or a court order.

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8 Discrete Things You Wouldn’t Think Are Spying On You, But Are 

In this realm of technology and technological advances, we may have left ourselves open to being spied upon by the most unlikely sources.The latest recruit to be enlisted in the task of surveillance is in any department store or fashion outlet you may visit, mannequins.

The $245 billion dollar luxury goods industry currently avails itself of five companies in Europe and the U.S. that use the EyeSee polystyrene frame mannequins, whose eyes are equipped with police grade face-recognition cameras.

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USA Freedom Act: Just Another Word For Lost Liberty 

Apologists for the National Security Agency (NSA) point to the arrest of David Coleman Headley as an example of how warrantless mass surveillance is necessary to catch terrorists. Headley played a major role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people.

While few would argue that bringing someone like Headley to justice is not a good thing, Headley’s case in no way justifies mass surveillance. For one thing, there is no “terrorist” exception in the Fourth Amendment. Saying a good end (capturing terrorists) justifies a bad means (mass surveillance) gives the government a blank check to violate our liberties.

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Supreme Court: Cops Can’t Violate 4th Amendment By Prolonging Traffic Stops To Wait For Drug Dogs  

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that police are not allowed to extend a citizen’s detention during a normal traffic stop, while officers probe for evidence of crimes unrelated to the offense that prompted the initial stop.

In the case before the court, Rodriguez v. U.S., Dennys Rodriguez was given a warning for driving on the shoulder of the highway, then forced to wait for almost 10 minutes as police awaited the arrival of a drug-sniffing dog.

After arriving at the scene, the dog alerted, and a subsequent search of the vehicle found methamphetamine.

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Congress Moves To Grant Even More Power To The NSA 

Privacy advocates are urging the House of Representatives and Senate to vote against bills that further increase the government’s widespread surveillance of citizens. The bills, called the “Protecting Cyber Networks Act” (H.R. 1560) and the “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act” (S. 754) are the latest move by lawmakers to bolster the strength of the domestic spying apparatus.

One of the main objectives of the new laws is to eliminate consequences for companies that share their users’ private information with the government. The bills refer to this as “liability protection.”

Letters written to members of the House and Senate from a coalition of privacy advocates caution lawmakers that the bills.

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You May Never Trust Another Repairman After Reading About This Stunning FBI Sting 

FBI agents violated the Fourth Amendment by turning off the Internet and then pretending to be repairmen to enter an alleged bookie’s hotel suite and search computers without a warrant, a federal judge has ruled.

US District Judge Andrew P. Gordon also ruled that it is unconstitutional for agents to cut off Internet service without a warrant.

“They were trying everything they could to get inside without a warrant,” attorney Thomas Goldstein said of FBI agents in an interview with the Associated Press.

Goldstein represents Wei Seng Phua and a number of other men accused of running an illegal online sports book out of villas at the Caesars Palace Casino in Las Vegas.

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