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A federal judge has dealt conservative figure James OKeefe a legal blow, ruling that his groups undercover operations against a Democratic consulting firm can fairly be described at an upcoming million-dollar trial as political spying.

Making matters worse for the right-wing star, the judge cited OKeefes own book as evidence against him.

In 2016, Allison Maass, an operative for OKeefes Project Veritas group, took an internship at Democratic firm Democracy Partners under a fake name. While staffers at the firm thought Maass was working to elect Democrats in the 2016 campaign, she was secretly recording them and relaying undercover video and notes on the group to Project Veritas. Project Veritas eventually released the video, prompting Democracy Partners founder Robert Creamer to step back from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Creamer and Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas in 2017 over the sting. Now, with the trial set for December, OKeefes lawyers wanted to preemptively prevent the plaintiffs lawyers from describing Project Veritass work in court as political spying.

In an Oct. 14 court opinion, though, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that its reasonable to describe OKeefes groups actions in that way.

Political spying is a fair characterization of the undisputed facts of this case, Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote.

OKeefes lawyers had argued that Project Veritas operates as journalists, an argument that would likely make it easier at trial for Project Veritas to claim their activities were protected under the First Amendment. But much of the evidence that Project Veritass operation could be called spying came from OKeefes own 2018 book, American Pravda.

Describing the Democracy Partners sting in his book, OKeefe wrote that Maass worked under an assigned role and compared her to a spy working in the Soviet Unionliterally living out her character in Americas capital city much as Americans overseas did in Moscow during the Cold War.

As if to make the comparison between Maass and notorious political spying operations clearer, OKeefe wrote in his book that Maass devised a way to hide her recording device from metal detectors and even compared Maass to the Watergate burglars.

The last time operatives got caught stealthily entering the DNC headquarters, those headquarters were in the Watergate complex, OKeefe wrote. Remember that kerfuffle?

This lawsuit is further exposing the lows to which Creamer will stoop to attack the first amendment, this time by calling undercover reporting political spying, Project Veritas said in a statement. Creamers actions are antithetical to a free press and should be denounced by all reporters.

In another setback for OKeefe, Friedman also ruled that lawyers for Democracy Partners can introduce proof of ties between Project Veritas, and Donald Trump.

The evidence includes OKeefe meeting with Trump during the 2016 campaign and his appearance at Trumps election-night party and could be offered to prove that Project Veritas staffers operated as political operatives, instead of journalists. The plaintiffs also won the right to introduce video of anti-Muslim activist and then-Project Veritas employee Laura Loomer hitting a piata shaped like Hillary Clinton as evidence.

Editor's note: The headline on this story has been corrected to reflect the language in the judges order

See more here:
Judge Rules O'Keefe's Schemes Can Be Portrayed to Jury as 'Political Spying' - The Daily Beast

A recent comment suggesting it was "funny" for a "libertarian blog" to suggest the possibility of restricting private social media platforms' property rights led me to want to repost this reminder:

I'm not a libertarian.

This is not a libertarian blog.

Don't expect solid or even near-solid libertarianism from us.

Some of us are pretty hardcore libertarians. Some are more conservatives. Some are moderates. Most of us are a mix. Our blog subtitle says "Often libertarian," and that's true. But "often" was deliberately chosen to also flag "not always" (and not even almost always).

If you call me anything, you might call me a libertarianish conservative, but even that isn't really that helpful, since sometimes my positions aren't aligned either with most libertarians or most conservatives. I think human affairs are complicated thingsas my father likes to quote, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." We all come at this with some general principles, but, to offer another quote, "General propositions do not decide concrete cases," in part because there are so many things we want at once and so many opportunities for good general principles to conflict.

For instance, I want liberty (often including privacy)and security; indeed, security is often another term from liberty from private misconduct (or liberty from foreign governments). These aren't always consistent, but I can't tell you that one should always trump the other. (That's why the Fourth Amendment, for instance, bansunreasonable searches and seizures rather than banning all searches and seizures; that's why the Constitution tries to create a limited government, but does create a government.) I support private property rights, subject to some limitations, and can't easily capture all the limitations into one formula. My guess is that many of my cobloggers take the same view.

Now maybe I'm not libertarian enough. Or maybe I'm too libertarian. Or maybe I'm one of these in some situations and another in others. Perfectly possible, indeed very likely. But measure me, and the blog, based on the merits of the particular analyses we offer in each post, not against our supposed (but never actually offered) assurances of libertarianism.

Read more:
Never Took That Libertarian Loyalty Oath Reason.com - Reason

October 26, 2021

I was a registered Democrat for 35 years, most of my voting life. Like many Democrats, I was drawn to a party that promised to help my community in areas of critical need, including education, health care, food insecurity, and voting access. I found a community of Democrats that felt the same. Yet after years of involvement, I saw little progress in these important areas. Instead, our party's focus was increasingly aimed at maintaining bureaucratic power, and I found myself at odds with this direction.

The party started to shift control to the professional politicians and away from the people. National focus took precedence, and these top-down priorities were often in conflict with the concerns of our local community. My apprehension grew when I realized that my own expertise in areas like education and community policing carried little weight once the party decided that bureaucrats knew more than constituents.

At first, it was just party leadership. But then I witnessed the rise of adversarial politics at the individual level. I watched members of my party shun those who disagreed with party politics, labeling them simply as bad people with bad opinions. In our local community, residents with "Hate Has No Home Here" signs in their yards took to social media in a manner that directly contradicted that motto.

It boiled down to something very simple. Principles.

The principles that first drew me to the Democratic Party became less represented in the party's objectives. Rather than serving as the party's compass, these principles became flexible and subject to bureaucratic power.

In the local Libertarian Party, I discovered something I had been looking for during all my years as a Democrat: A group of principled individuals who lead the party from the bottom up, with an unwavering focus on non-aggression towards others and respect for the individual and their rights. I found meetings that were open to all, where visitors from other parties are welcomed and discussion is encouraged. I found support for transparency and voter choice in politics. I found an attitude of volunteerism and of working for positive change in the community, without waiting for someone else to do it. I found a place where my own principles fit, those very principles that first drew me to the Democratic party.

So I joined this growing body of people who keep their sights on positive change and who respect the views of others. I am still the same person I was when I joined the Democratic Party. My guiding principles remain my compass: Standing up for people who need help, improving community relations, listening to others, and respecting others' rights and property. But now I've found my place in a party that has remained loyal to these same principles, the principles that make our community and our country the wonderful places that they are.

The Delaware Valley Journal provides unbiased, local reporting for the Philadelphia suburbs of Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. For more stories from the Delaware Valley Journal, visit DelawareValleyJournal.com

Link:
ROSICA: I Found My Democratic Ideals In The Libertarian Party - Patch.com

Peter Thiel, co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Monday, Nov. 18, 2019.

Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON Tech billionaire Peter Thiel believes that people should be more worried about "surveillance AI" rather than artificial general intelligences, which are hypothetical AI systems with superhuman abilities.

The venture capitalist, who co-founded big data firm Palantir, said at an event in Miami on Wednesday that on the path to AGI, you get surveillance AI, which he described as a "communist totalitarian technology."

Those that are worried about AGI aren't actually "paying attention to the thing that really matters," Thiel said, adding that governments will use AI-powered facial recognition technology to control people.

His comments come three years after Bloomberg reported that "Palantir knows everything about you." Thiel has also invested in facial recognition company Clearview AI and surveillance start-up Anduril.

Palantir, which has a market value of $48 billion, has developed data trawling technology that intelligence agencies and governments use for surveillance and to spot suspicious patterns in public and private databases. Customers reportedly include the CIA, FBI, and the U.S. Army.

AGI, depicted in a negative light in sci-fi movies such as "The Terminator" and "Ex Machina," is being pursued by companies like DeepMind, which Thiel invested in before it was acquired by Google. Depending on who you ask, the timescale for reaching AGI ranges from a few years, to a few decades, to a few hundred years, to never.

Hype around AGI has diminished recently as people realized there's still a long way to go despite some promising breakthroughs. The most advanced AI systems remain relatively "narrow" and unable to perform "general" tasks. An AI that can play the board game "Go" can't also paint a picture, for example.

Thiel, a well-known libertarian who also co-founded PayPal and holds a board seat at Facebook, said Silicon Valley isn't talking about AGI as much today as it was six or seven years ago.

"Elon's not talking about it anymore and Larry (Page) is off to Fiji and doesn't seem to be working on it quite as hard," he said, before going on to question why the AGI discussion hasn't completely collapsed.

Murray Shanahan, a senior research scientist at DeepMind, said on Twitter that Thiel had an "interesting take" on AGI. He did not immediately respond when CNBC asked him to elaborate.

In the same talk, Thiel pitted AI against cryptocurrencies, saying that he'd prefer to see the latter one succeed.

"If we say crypto is libertarian and that it is fundamentally a force for decentralization, then I think we should also be willing to say that AI, especially in the low-tech surveillance form, is essentially communist."

"If you want to frame it as a technological race I want the crypto decentralized world to work," he said.

Thiel added that he feels "underinvested" in bitcoin just hours after the world's most popular cryptocurrency climbed to a new all-time high of just over $66,000 per coin.

Continue reading here:
Palantir's Peter Thiel thinks people should be concerned about surveillance AI - CNBC

Voters in most Connecticut communities face a traditional choice between Democrats and Republicans on Election Day, but in West Hartford the town council race features four political parties and a petitioning candidate.

The outcome could be as few as two parties sharing power, and but theoretically could end up with an unprecedented five-way split: Democrats, Republicans, A Connecticut Party members, a Libertarian and an unaffiliated councilor.

Fifteen people are vying for the nine town council seats, and the Election Day outcome could leave the winners trying to put together a coalition government for the next two years.

Democrats have held control of the council for the past 21 years, and are the only party that could come out in this years election with a majority: Theyre running six candidates. If five or more win, the party keeps power.

Republicans are fielding just three candidates, and the A Connecticut Party ticket has only four.

Because theyre not running full slates, neither the GOP nor the ACP could win a council majority. That means even if one of them wins on Nov. 2, theyll still have to work with another party and possibly two to pass anything on the council.

The possibilities become even more complex because of two contenders who are running alone: petitioning candidate Aaron Sarwar and Libertarian David Dehaas.

If Sarwar or Dehaas wins, for example, while Democrats, Republicans and the ACP each get only two to three seats each, the major-party winners might need cooperation from Sarwar or Dehaas to pass controversial measures after they take office.

And on matters where the charter requires a super-majority - six votes - for approval, the negotiations could get even more complex.

In all, this years ballot will have the second most council candidates in more than half a century. In 1979, Republicans and Democrats each fielded six while, and six more people ran on the Independent line, said Town Clerk Essie Labrot.

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This is the first time from 1969 to present that we have had two major parties, two minor parties and one petitioning candidate on the same ballot for town council, Lebrot reported.

Only one petitioning candidate won in that time: Barbara Carpenter, whod previously been elected to the council as a Republican.

Among the new councils first tasks will be choosing a new mayor; traditionally the dominant party makes that decision, but this time around it could be very different.

Most of the complexity this year results from a huge fracture within the local Republican Party in the spring. At the time, Democrats held a 6-3 majority, the largest any party is allowed.

Minority Leader Lee Gold, the top voter-getter from the Republicans ballot in 2019, announced he was leaving the GOP along with party Chairman Mark Merritt and residents Rick Bush and Roni Rodman.

They said the national Republican Party had swung too far right, and declared theyd resurrect the dormant A Connecticut Party - founded by Lowell Weicker 31 years earlier. All four renounced their GOP registration, and are running on the ACP line.

Local Republicans leaders claimed Gold had sided too often with tax increases and spending measures, and the party produced a more conservative slate for this fall. Incumbent Mary Fay along with Mark Zydanowicz, a school board member, and Al Cortes, who previously ran in 2019, are running on the GOP line.

Democrats are running Mayor Shari Cantor and incumbents Liam Sweeney, Ben Wenograd, Leon Davidoff and Carol Blanks along with Adrienne Billings-Smith.

Labrot is encouraging residents who vote by absentee ballot to carefully check that theyve voted for no more than six candidates in the council race. Ballots with too many selections are disqualified.

Read more:
Crowded race for West Hartford council: 14 candidates from four parties plus an unaffiliated challenger - Yahoo News