⚡🇺🇸 NEW - Trump says it's "hard to believe" that the ICE officer who fatally shot the woman in Minneapolis is still alive, and is "recovering in the hospital."

Argentine president Javier Milei’s government has moved to expand intelligence and digital surveillance capabilities, creating units and plans to monitor online platforms (including social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp), use AI to patrol content, analyse camera footage and deploy predictive algorithms. Reports and a leaked National Intelligence Plan prompted concerns that journalists, experts, opposition figures and protest groups could be monitored.

- New/expanded bodies: creation or strengthening of an AI/security unit and restoration/empowerment of the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE), with bigger budgets and reserved/opaque funds.

- Scope of monitoring: “patrolling open social platforms, applications and websites,” analysing security-camera images in real time (including facial recognition), monitoring suspicious financial transactions, drone/aerial surveillance, and attempts to predict crime using machine‑learning.

- Targets and language in the plan: the leaked 170‑page National Intelligence Plan reportedly allows surveillance of people who “manipulate public opinion” or “erode confidence” in government policies — wording critics say is vague and could encompass journalists, academics, economists, social leaders and protest movements.

- Incidents and consequences: journalists who reported the leak (notably Hugo Alconada Mon) reported hacking attempts and attempts to compromise WhatsApp/X accounts; press‑freedom groups raised alarms and Argentina’s press‑freedom rankings have fallen under Milei.

- Government response: officials have denied that SIDE will be used to persecute critics, while Milei and some aides have attacked journalists publicly.

- Legal/transparency concerns: critics warn of weak safeguards, broad discretion for intelligence agencies, lack of clear definitions for who may be surveilled, and increased confidential spending that reduces oversight.

Sauces (picked by GPT-5 mini): reports from El País, Buenos Aires Times, La Nación (reporting on the leaked plan), MercoPress and other outlets covering the May 2025 leak and subsequent reporting (coverage updated through Jan 7, 2026).

#Argentina #surveillance #privacy #freedom #Milei

The fog of the Maduro extraction is clearing, and the "why" beyond the Trump pressers is coming into focus.

Despite the Don repeatedly saying Venezuela stole our oil, the Pentagon didn’t move on Caracas for crude.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, but the quality of that oil is very low.

It is a heavy, sour crude that is high in sulphur content which only a handful of refineries worldwide can process.

In fact, by some estimates it would cost $1 trillion to upgrade the Venezuelan infrastructure just to have the country surpass Canada’s exports of 3 million barrels a day.

So, while Trump uses oil as a way to make the American people feel like they will directly benefit from the excursion, the real reason they moved was because of a convergence of three existential threats:

- Chinese control of AI-critical minerals.

- Iranian drone manufacturing on Western soil.

- Russian military integration in the Caribbean.

If Washington cared about restoring democracy, why wait 13 years into Maduro’s reign?

The military brass felt a growing strategic vulnerability less than 3 hours from Miami and felt they needed to act immediately.

But while the media focuses on rare earth elements and degraded oil infrastructure, the real prize might be sitting on a hardware wallet in Caracas.

For eight years, the Maduro regime operated a shadow financial engine designed to be unfreezable.

Since 2018, they’ve been liquidating gold from the Orinoco Mining Arc and "washing" oil proceeds through USDT into Bitcoin.

The scale is staggering.

Intelligence reports by Whale Hunting now point to a "Shadow Reserve" of roughly 600,000 to 660,000 Bitcoin.

To put that in perspective: that is twice the size of the US government’s entire Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

It rivals the holdings of MSTR and BlackRock.

If these numbers are accurate, Maduro and his cronies have been sitting on a $60 billion life raft that will play as a lynchpin in how the negotiations play out.

Washington likely knew about this secret stash since its very inception.

Court documents now reveal that Alex Saab, the Venezuelan businessman who was the architect of this Bitcoin accumulation scheme, had been a DEA informant since 2016.

The capture of Maduro has now triggered a high-stakes interrogation with the recovery of seed phrases likely playing a critical part.

As news of this reported 600,000 BTC stockpile begins to spread, the market is currently pricing this as a massive "supply lock-up."

Bitcoin is up over $5,000 since the abduction of Maduro went down.

Under the Trump administration, the probability of a "fire sale" is near zero.

Trump campaigned on the promise of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Getting Maduro to fork over the seed phrase would be an easy, budget-neutral way to triple its size overnight.

Maduro’s "unfreezable" asset could become the cornerstone of the American balance sheet with the only stack larger being Satoshi’s.

Bitcoin has always lived outside the logic of violence.

But as Maduro is finding out, that only holds true as long as you can keep the keys in your head.

Consider, 2020 and the story of COVID is going to be in history textbooks soon… and every bit of it is going to be bullsh*t.

Now think about everything else you “learned” from a history book.

How to fix the quantum threat to your bitcoins:

1) Get off Twitter

PV 🤙🏻🫂

"I'd like to think that decades from now, people will look back and see this time as the dawning of a new era of individual empowerment and freedom."

— Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2013)

#cypherpunk #bitcoin #privacy #freedom #future

All I want for Christmas is smaller government.

The ocean is not for kids

I just hope both teams have fun

GN