white supremacist

White supremacists protest Michigan performance of Anne Frank play with Nazi flags

A group of White supremacist demonstrators protested a performance of the play "The Diary of Anne Frank" in Howell, Michigan, by waving Nazi flags across the street from the venue.




white supremacist

Chris Evans Is Engaged In Amazing Twitter War With A White Supremacist, and People Are Calling It Most 2017 Thing Ever

It's as if Evans is battling it out with the 'Red Skull' himself. A word to the wise, a Twitter Pro Tip if you will: maybe don't go after Captain America himself, unless you're ready for a solid ass-whooping. 




white supremacist

White Supremacist Pleads Guilty In George Floyd Riots



The Boogaloo Bois member fired shots at a police station.




white supremacist

When White Supremacists Staged the Only Successful Coup in U.S. History

The 1898 Wilmington massacre left dozens of Black North Carolinians dead. Conspirators also forced the city's multiracial government to resign at gunpoint




white supremacist

Jemele Hill Calls Out New England Patriots’ Draft Pick With White Supremacist Tattoo

Kicker Justin Rohrwasser said he would cover the tattoo




white supremacist

Utah Pulls Plug On Surveillance Contractor After CEO's Past As A White Supremacist Surfaces

A couple of months ago, a records request revealed a private surveillance contractor had access to nearly every piece of surveillance equipment owned and operated by the state of Utah. Banjo was the company with its pens in all of the state's ink. Banjo's algorithm ran on top of Utah's surveillance gear: CCTV systems, 911 services, location data for government vehicles, and thousands of traffic cameras.

All of this was run through Banjo's servers, which are conveniently located in Utah government buildings. Banjo's offering is of the predictive policing variety. The CEO claims its software can "find crime" without any collateral damage to privacy. This claim is based on the "anonymization" of harvested data -- a term that is essentially meaningless once enough data is collected.

This partnership is now on the rocks, thanks to an investigation by Matt Stroud and OneZero. Banjo's CEO, Damien Patton, apparently spent a lot of his formative years hanging around with white supremacists while committing crimes.

In grand jury testimony that ultimately led to the conviction of two of his associates, Patton revealed that, as a 17-year-old, he was involved with the Dixie Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. On the evening of June 9, 1990 — a month before Patton turned 18 — Patton and a Klan leader took a semi-automatic TEC-9 pistol and drove to a synagogue in a Nashville suburb. With Patton at the wheel, the Ku Klux Klan member fired onto the synagogue, destroying a street-facing window and spraying bullets and shattered glass near the building’s administrative offices, which were next to that of the congregation’s rabbi. No one was struck or killed in the shooting. Afterward, Patton hid on the grounds of a white supremacist paramilitary training camp under construction before fleeing the state with the help of a second Klan member.

If you're wondering where the state of Utah's due diligence is in all of this, there's a partial explanation for this lapse: the feds, who brought Patton in, screwed up on their paperwork.

Because Patton’s name was misspelled in the initial affidavit of probable cause filed in Brown’s case — an FBI agent apparently spelled Damien with an “o” rather than an “e” — any search of a federal criminal court database for “Damien Patton” would not have surfaced the affidavit.

Now that his past has been exposed, the state of Utah has announced it won't be working with Banjo.

The Utah attorney general’s office will suspend use of a massive surveillance system after a news report showed that the founder of the company behind the effort was once an active participant in a white supremacist group and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue.

The AG's office can only shut down so much of Banjo's surveillance software. Other government agencies not directly controlled by the state AG are making their own judgment calls. The University of Utah is suspending its contract with Banjo, but the state's Department of Public Safety has only gone so far as to "launch a review" of its partnership with the company. City agencies and a number of police departments who have contracts with Banjo have yet to state whether they will be terminating theirs.

And the AG's reaction isn't a ban. The office appears to believe it might be able to work through this.

“While we believe Mr. Patton’s remorse is sincere and believe people can change, we feel it’s best to suspend use of Banjo technology by the Utah attorney general’s office while we implement a third-party audit and advisory committee to address issues like data privacy and possible bias,” Piatt said. “We recommend other state agencies do the same.

It's refreshing to hear a prosecutor state that it's possible for former criminals to turn their lives around and become positive additions to their communities, but one gets the feeling this sort of forgiveness is only extended to ex-cons who have something to offer law enforcement agencies. Everyone else is just their rap sheet for forever, no matter how many years it's been since their last arrest.

The other problem here is the DA's office's tacit admission it did not take data privacy or possible bias into account before granting Banjo access to the state's surveillance equipment, allowing it to set up servers in government buildings, and giving it free rein to dust everything with its unaudited AI pixie dust.

These are all steps that should have taken place before any of this was implemented, even if the state had chosen to do business with a company with a less controversial CEO. This immediate reaction is the right step to take, but a little proactivity now and then would be a welcome change.




white supremacist

Tumblr deletes millions of white supremacist reblogs after new policy update

The social media site says it has removed over 4.5 million reblogs in an attempt to rid the site of hateful content on the platform.




white supremacist

Armed activists escort black lawmaker to Michigan's Capitol after coronavirus protest attended by white supremacists

Rep. Sarah Anthony told Yahoo News that her security detail, made up of local black and Latino activists, came together because the armed protesters bearing white supremacist symbols represented a “different level of terror.”





white supremacist

Oregon White Supremacist Indicted for Threatening Ohio Civil Rights Leader by Mailing a Noose

“A noose is an unmistakable symbol of hatred and violence in our nation, conjuring up images of a despicable period in our history. Mailing a noose to an individual who advocates for racial equality sends a clear threat of violence,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.



  • OPA Press Releases

white supremacist

Oregon White Supremacist Pleads Guilty for Threatening Lima, Ohio, Civil Rights Leader by Mailing Noose

Daniel Lee Jones, a Portland, Ore., white supremacist, pleaded guilty to using the Postal Service to send a threatening communication to the president of the Lima, Ohio, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.



  • OPA Press Releases

white supremacist

Martin Luther King's Jr.'s daughter warns of the 'resurgence of white supremacist groups' on MLK Day

Bernice A. King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, delivered speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, on MLK Day. Thousands around the country celebrate his legacy.




white supremacist

Martin Luther King's Jr.'s daughter warns of the 'resurgence of white supremacist groups' on MLK Day

Bernice A. King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter, delivered speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, on MLK Day. Thousands around the country celebrate his legacy.




white supremacist

Rob Reiner says GOP 'made pact with Putin' while siding with 'white supremacists' to support Trump

Acclaimed director Rob Reiner (left), 72, tweeted on Saturday that President Trump's (top right) supporters have 'made a pact' with Russian President Vladimir Putin (bottom right).




white supremacist

White supremacist boasted about killing black woman after HIV threats

An affidavit provided by the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office revealed Ronald Lee Kidwell, 47, said he 'flipped out' after MeShon Cooper confronted him at his home in Shawnee, Kansas.




white supremacist

White supremacists are now the BIGGEST threat to New Jersey residents

The annual New Jersey Terrorism Assessment report explains that state officials raised the threat level for white supremacist from 'moderate' to 'high.'




white supremacist

U.S. Designates Foreign White Supremacist Group as Terror Organization

The U.S. on Monday designated a Russian white supremacist group, the Russian Imperial Movement, as a foreign terrorist organization and placed sanctions on its members. Photo: Olga Maltseva/AFP




white supremacist

Here's Why an Organisation Led by a White Supremacist Has No Business Lecturing a Nation With 5,000-yr-old Heritage

That Tony Perkins and his ilk get to dictate, influence opinion about Bharat speaks volumes of the deterioration in standards of USCIRF.