Penny Dean and Your Rights

Nearly all applicants for US visas will have to submit their social media details under newly adopted rules.

The State Department regulations say people will have to submit social media names and five years' worth of email addresses and phone numbers.

When proposed last year, authorities estimated the proposal would affect 14.7 million people annually.

Certain diplomatic and official visa applicants will be exempt from the stringent new measures.

However, people travelling to the US to work or to study will have to hand over their information.

Illustrating how sanctuary policies shield dangerous criminals, federal agents captured 141 illegal immigrants in just a few weeks simply by using fingerprints from local drunk driving arrests in one region of the U.S. The operation took place recently in New England, well known for protecting illegal aliens from federal authorities by offering sanctuary through local policies. This includes the entire states of Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts as well as cities in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

A surveillance camera caught Kendra Tatum's attention.

Mounted on a pole in a St. Louis commercial district, the camera could have a line of sight into MoKaBe's, a coffee shop where local activists like to get together.

His name is Chuck Canterbury, and he is the president of the anti-gun Fraternal Order of Police. Sadly, Canterbury has a long track record that should concern gun owners:

President Donald Trump announced Friday plans to nominate Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Canterbury has been Fraternity Order of Police (FOP) president for 16 years, having previously spent 26 years in the Horry County, South Carolina, Police Department’s patrol, criminal and training divisions, according to the White House statement.

The maker of vehicle license plate readers used extensively by the US government and cities to identify and track citizens and immigrants has been hacked. Its internal files were pilfered, and are presently being offered for free on the dark web to download.

Tennessee-based Perceptics prides itself as "the sole provider of stationary LPRs [license plate readers] installed at all land border crossing lanes for POV [privately owned vehicle] traffic in the United States, Canada, and for the most critical lanes in Mexico."

Police have the power to collect your location along with the numbers of your incoming and outgoing calls and intercept the content of call and text communication. They can do all of this without you ever knowing about it.

How? They use a shoebox-sized device called a StingRay. This device (also called an IMSI catcher) mimics cell phone towers, prompting all the phones in the area to connect to it even if the phones aren't in use.

For nearly two years, Minneapolis waited for answers about the fatal police shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed woman who had called 911 seeking help. There was no video of the shooting. There was no audio. And the officer involved, Mohamed Noor, would not answer investigators’ questions.

But on Tuesday, after a monthlong trial in downtown Minneapolis, a jury handed down a verdict that is exceedingly rare in police shooting cases: Mr. Noor was guilty of murder.

From TheFederalist.com:

If your lawyer believes that having a firearm license defines you as dangerous, you may be at risk of losing your Second Amendment rights and even your freedom. You may not know about his belief or recognize the risk until it is too late.

I can almost hear you saying, “My attorney is my advocate. What are you talking about? That could never happen!” You are wrong.

A US judge gave the cops permission to force people's fingers onto seized iPhones to see who could unlock them, a newly unsealed search warrant has revealed.

Specifically, Judge Judith Dein, of the federal district court of Massachusetts, gave agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) the right to press Robert Brito-Pina's fingers on any iPhone found in his apartment in Boston. The bloke was suspected to be trafficking guns, hence the application for a search warrant. In fact, anyone nabbed at the property would be forced to use their fingers to unlock any cellphones seized at the home, according to the court filing.

The warrant, issued April 18, is due to be executed by May 2, though it's not clear if it has been carried out yet, and therefore if the agents have been able to force Brito-Pina's fingers, or anyone else's digits, onto mobiles seized at the apartment, including his own iPhone. In any case, the document makes it plain that the ATF went to some trouble to get the judge's specific authorization on the issue.