The war on drugs makes it far too easy for corrupt police officers to plant evidence on people.

One hidden cost of inflation is that it makes an increasingly large share of cash holdings and transactions subject to government surveillance.

I’ve heard it said that “you never forget where you were when you heard that President Kennedy was shot.”  I remember, but most American’s don’t because Kennedy’s assassination was 54 years ago and most Americans weren’t alive then. Like many Americans, I am convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald, the person who shot President Kennedy,…
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What happens if the TSA catches someone with a firearm at one of their checkpoints?  It happens a lot.  Last year the TSA found 3,391 guns in carry-ons at checkpoints.  This happened to a friend of mine this week.  Here’s what he told me. He and his wife were going through the TSA checkpoint…
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September 11, 2016, marks the fifteenth anniversary of a calamity that shook America to its core. I remember vividly to this day being riveted by the constant video replays of the two Boeing 767s plowing into the World Trade Center, people leaping from office windows to their deaths, the collapses of the twin towers,…
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Editor: Today is the publication date of the Independent Institute’s newest book, American Surveillance: Intelligence, Privacy, and the Fourth Amendment, by Anthony Gregory (Research Fellow, Independent Institute). Published for Independent by the University of Wisconsin Press, this widely acclaimed new book traces the history of government surveillance in the U.S. that transcends party divides,…
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My initial reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement, like many old white guys, was that All Lives Matter.  But recent events have changed my thinking on this. My old thinking: Racial discrimination is a reality, but race is just one of many personal characteristics on which people discriminate.  Good-looking people tend to be…
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The Washington Post recently ran an article titled, “Surprise! NSA data will soon routinely be used for domestic policing that has nothing to do with terrorism.” In the article, journalist Radley Balko explains that provisions in the Patriot Act have allowed the National Security Agency to share information with a variety of other agencies,…
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If the government does something to you, should they also have the power to require you not to tell anyone?  That’s the issue in a lawsuit Microsoft is bringing against the federal government. Microsoft claims that over the past 18 months it has had 2,576 orders from the federal government to turn over customer…
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In the wake of the terror attack in San Bernardino late last year, the FBI and other government agents set out to uncover as much information about the attackers as possible. After searching the suspects’ home, speaking with the families of the perpetrators, and looking for other clues, authorities had uncovered a great deal…
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