The post office’s law enforcement arm has faced intense congressional scrutiny in recent weeks over its Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), which tracks social media posts of Americans and shares that information with other law enforcement agencies. Yet the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Yahoo News.

Among the tools used by the analysts is Clearview AI, a facial recognition software that scrapes images off public websites, a practice that has raised the ire of privacy advocates. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service uses Clearview’s facial recognition database of over 3 billion images from arrest photos collected from across social media “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals,” according to materials reviewed by Yahoo News. Source: Read More

“The AP’s top newsman said he was shocked and horrified by an airstrike that caused no casualties,” said Sen. Cotton in a Senate floor speech today. “He also disclaimed any knowledge of Hamas’s presence in the building despite actively checking. And the other journalists and their advocacy organizations mounted up on their moral high horses against Israel.”

“But the AP story just didn’t add up,” said Cotton. “So I asked a few basic questions right here, yesterday afternoon – namely, why was the Associated Press sharing a building with Hamas, in the first place? Did it normally allow its journalists to be used as human shields by a U.S.-designated terrorist organization?”

He continued, “Did the AP pull its punches and decline to report for years about Hamas’s misdeeds? One would think these are simple and reasonable questions. But I directed them to a media organization.” — Source: Read More

It turns out that the “skeptics” and “anti-maskers” who often are mocked by media and government for challenging the conventional narrative regarding the COVID-19 pandemic are the ones who “trust the science,” according to a study by MIT researchers.

The study, “Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online,” analyzed the viewpoint of skeptics toward the pandemic from March to September 2020, largely by studying Facebook groups and Twitter posts, the National File reported.

“For these anti-mask users, their approach to the pandemic is grounded in more scientific rigor, not less,” the researchers concluded.   …read more (Source)

Read the MIT Study

Legendary rocker Eric Clapton said he had a “disastrous” reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine and blamed “propaganda [that] said the vaccine was safe for everyone” after he was left fearing he’d “never play again.”

“I took the first jab of AZ and straight away had severe reactions which lasted ten days. I recovered eventually and was told it would be twelve weeks before the second one,” Clapton said in a letter to architect and anti-lockdown activist Robin Monotti Graziadei, which was shared with Clapton’s permission.

Clapton, who received the AstraZeneca shot in February, added that he was later offered the second dose after six weeks, which he accepted only because he had “a little more knowledge of the dangers.”

“Needless to say the reactions were disastrous, my hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again,” Clapton wrote. …read more (Source)

Melissa Rogers, the executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, met Friday with leaders of six secular organizations: Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, Secular Coalition for America, and Ex-Muslims of North America.

None of them are religion-friendly and some are positively militant in their agenda. They expressed their displeasure with the pro-religious liberty policies of the Trump administration, accusing it of fomenting “Christian nationalism.” The creation of this fiction is central to the anti-religion politics that drives these groups.

It would be one thing if White House staffers in domestic policy or civil rights invited representatives of these six organizations to discuss their concerns; it is quite another when those who purport to work with people of faith do so. The problem is traceable to Feb. 14, the day Biden issued his executive order establishing his faith-based program.  … read more (Source: CNS News Op-Ed)

Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists – NY Times

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow responded to new relaxed CDC coronavirus guidelines by saying she needs to “rewire” herself in order not to view non-mask-wearing people as a “threat.”

“I feel like I’m going to have to rewire myself so that when I see someone out in the world who’s not wearing a mask, I don’t instantly think, ‘You are a threat,’” Maddow said on her prime-time show Thursday night. “Or you are selfish or you are a COVID denier and you definitely haven’t been vaccinated. I mean, we’re going to have to rewire the way that we look at each other.”

Maddow: Be patient and compassionate with each other as we deal with another period of change. pic.twitter.com/By2uXygf6l

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) May 14, 2021