News Round-Up: Live Facial Recognition Cameras in Wales, Turning Tides of Covid Vaccines and Free Speech in Germany in Total Decline
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
Live facial recognition cameras to be deployed by police across Wales’s capital.
German lawyer fined for criticising government officials on X.
US could ban Covid vaccines.
Yale scientists link Covid vaccines to serious harms.
Research: brakes of EVs produce emissions that are more toxic than diesel exhausts.
Live facial recognition cameras deployed by police across Wales’s capital
The UK’s first use of city-wide facial recognition was deployed in Cardiff this weekend during a sports event, the Belfast Telegraph reports. A network of temporary cameras were positioned across the city centre, transmitting to police vans where officers were alerted to anyone on a watchlist.
Madeleine Stone of Big Brother Watch said: “Embedding facial recognition surveillance in a city-wide CCTV network represents a shocking expansion of police surveillance and turns Cardiff into an Orwellian zone of biometric surveillance. This unprecedented use of the technology could pave the way for the mass rollout of permanent facial recognition surveillance across the UK.”
She added that live facial recognition technology turns people into walking barcodes and makes them a nation of suspects. “This network... will make it impossible for Cardiff residents and visitors to opt out of a biometric police identity check. For the last three years South Wales Police has not made a single arrest due to use of this technology at sporting events, yet it continues to waste taxpayers’ money on this rights-abusing technology,” she added.
During the big sports events the cameras are positioned across the city centre, covering the main pedestrian entry points.
South Wales Police Assistant Chief Constable Trudi Meyrick said: “The expansion of facial recognition cameras around the city centre really enhances our ability to keep visitors safe from harm.”
German lawyer fined for criticising government officials on X
Markus Roscher, a German lawyer, was fined €3,000 for criticising government officials on X, Remix News reports.
Markus Roscher, a 61-year-old lawyer from Braunschweig, was fined €3,000 for criticising the government’s heating law. Roscher described Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as “malicious failures” in a post on X back in 2021. He was subsequently issued a penalty notice under the controversial Paragraph 188 of the German Criminal Code, which criminalises defamation against individuals engaged in public political life.
Roscher, who has been active on X for over 14 years and is well accustomed to the legal boundaries surrounding political debate, insists that his post was within the bounds of political criticism. “I actually know myself to be quite well within the red lines,” he told Bild. “You have to formulate things pointedly to be heard. The lines of freedom of opinion have slipped with the red-green government.” He further described his hefty fine as a “scandal for freedom of expression.”
Paragraph 188, introduced in April 2021, criminalises insults against politicians if those significantly hinder their public work. It was initially passed under a coalition government of the CDU and SPD but has been increasingly enforced under the current administration of SPD and the Greens. The law has led to numerous prosecutions against individuals who have criticised government officials online.
US could ban Covid vaccines
Covid vaccines could be suspended for all age groups in America under the new plans backed by key health figures in the Trump Administration, The Daily Mail reports.
According to the paper the new Secreatary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has privately expressed concerns about the vaccines and signalled he is open to axing them if the data supports it. Dr Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist being considered for a health advisory role in Kennedy's new health departments, has called for the jabs to be suspended and and reassessed.
Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who has been nominated to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has backed a petition calling for the mRNA vaccines to be paused and retested. He is one of the signatories of the Hope Accord, which says there is a causal link between the mRNA shots and an alarming rise in excess deaths worldwide.
How a ban would be implemented is still not clear. A total ban would require the FDA withdrawing its approval status for safety or effectiveness reasons.
Yale scientists link Covid vaccines to serious harms
Experts from Yale University have discovered an alarming syndrome linked to the mRNA Covid vaccines, The Daily Mail writes. They call it the 'post-vaccination syndrome' and it appears to cause brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus and exercise intolerance, according to their research. Some suffer also distinct biological changes, including differences in immune cells and the presence of coronavirus proteins in their blood, years after taking the shot. The condition also appears to reawaken a dormant virus in the body called Epstein-Barr which can cause flu-like symptoms, swollen lymph nodes and nerve issues.
Dr Akiko Iwasaki, a study author and immunologist at Yale University, said: “This work is still in its early stages, and we need to validate these findings. But this is giving us some hope that there may be something that we can use for diagnosis and treatment of PVS down the road.”
Iwasaki's team collected blood samples from 42 people with post-vaccination syndrome (PVS) and 22 people without it between December 2022 and November 2023. The full results of the study have not yet been published and the study has not been peer-reviewed. Yet the findings, from a well-respected institution, suggest more research on post-vaccinaton syndrome is needed, independent experts say. The next phase of the research will be to ascertain how widespread the condition is and who is most at risk.
For anyone who has been following the information on Covid vaccines, of course, the results of this study are hardly anything surprising. What is important, however, is that the problems with these vaccines are increasingly being acknowledged by mainstream science.
Research: brakes of EVs produce emissions that are more toxic than diesel exhausts
A new study by researchers from the University of Southampton found that brake pads commonly used in electric vehicles (EVs) produce emissions that are even more toxic than diesel exhaust fumes, The Daily Mail reports. These particles are 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair and are capable of slipping through the airways deep into the lungs' most sensitive tissues.
So although EVs don't release any gas in their exhaust, they can still contribute to deadly air pollution. The researchers warn that this 'non-exhaust pollution' is now responsible for the majority of vehicle emissions in Europe. Lead author Dr James Parkin says: “People generally associate pollution from cars as being from exhaust pipes and think of electric vehicles as having zero emissions. However, EVs still produce particulate matter due to friction and wear of the road, tyres, and brakes.”
In their study, the researchers carefully collected the particles produced by four different types of brake pads: low metallic, semi-metallic, non-asbestos organic and hybrid-ceramic. In the lab, Dr Parkin and his co-authors then exposed the cells taken from the lining of the lung to the various emissions to simulate what would happen if they were inhaled. The researchers found that the exposed lung cells underwent oxidative stress, inflammation, and even death. Were these cells in someone's delicate air sacs, small structures in the lung that enable the transfer of gases from the blood, this could have caused serious health issues. Fine particulate pollution, including from cars, has been linked to a range of conditions, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular diseases, dementia and scarring of the lung. The most harmful brake pads were non-asbestos organic pads which are made of copper fibre, glass fibre, rubber, graphite and resin and come as standard on the majority of modern cars. In tests, the researchers found the emissions produced by these pads to be more toxic than diesel exhaust fumes. The second most toxic variant were the ceramic pads which also contain a high level of copper. In later tests, in which the copper was removed, the researchers found that the particulate matter became significantly less toxic.