Domestic Surveillance

By Munir Moon The area inside the Beltway consists of Washington, D.C., and surrounding counties, and what I call the Beast includes defense contractors, lobbyists, Wall Street, think tanks, advocacy groups, journalists, foreign agents, and everyone else who wants something from our government. All of these congregate in the Beltway and are actively engaged in […]

Bill of Rights

Can the Police Phone-Track you without a Warrant?

contributors

Hanni Fakhoury and Jennifer Lynch (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Once again, a federal court will decide whether police can track your movements over an extended period of time without a search warrant. Federal and state courts have divided over whether the Fourth Amendment requires police seek a search warrant to obtain historical cell site location information […]

Domestic Surveillance

Snowden Docs.: UK Telecom Conspired to Turn over millions of our Emails to British Intelligence

contributors

Channel 4 News | — “An unprecedented grab of personal data: this programme reveals that a communications firm not only handed over its own information to GCHQ, but also allowed access to the internet traffic of another telecoms company.” Channel 4 News: “Spy cable revealed: How telecoms firm worked with GCHQ”

Bill of Rights

Congress has a Bill Ready to Curb NSA Snooping; if You care, Tell them to Pass it!

contributors

By Mark Jaycox (EFF) Congress continues its path towards becoming the least productive Congress in modern history while on its second vacation in as many months. During their first vacation, we ranked Congressional lawmakers on their support for NSA reform by reviewing bills like the Surveillance State Repeal Act, the USA Freedom Act, and the […]

Domestic Surveillance

Uncle Sam’s Making a List, Checking it Twice & You Might be on It

contributors

By Hina Shamsi and Matthew Harwood (Tomdispatch.com) It began with an unexpected rapping on the front door. When Wiley Gill opened up, no one was there. Suddenly, two police officers appeared, their guns drawn, yelling, “Chico Police Department.” “I had tunnel vision,” Gill said, “The only thing I could see was their guns.” After telling […]

Culture

Exclusive: Laura Poitras on the Edward Snowden documentary

contributors

Channel 4 News Channel 4 News: “Laura Poitras’ movie CITIZENFOUR captures the man at the centre of today’s Watergate moment – Edward Snowden – in a compelling story of whistleblowing and NSA snooping. ” Exclusive: Laura Poitras on the Edward Snowden documentary | Channel 4 News

Bill of Rights

Apple and Google Take on U.S. Government Over Encryption

contributors

“ Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) — While the newest Apple and Google smartphones will automatically encrypt data stored on them, that won’t keep U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies from obtaining evidence linked to the devices. Bloomberg’s Jordan Robertson reports on “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)” Bloomberg News: ” Apple and Google Take on U.S. Government Over […]

Bill of Rights

What the Hackers did to Celebs? The NSA has been Doing that to All of US instead of Predicting ISIL

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole There has been a lot of justifiable outrage about the invasion of privacy of celebrities and the posting of their private, nude photos at 4Chan by hackers who apparently got into their cloud accounts. It seems odd to me that the discussion of this issue has been completely unconnected to the Snowden […]

Bill of Rights

Gov’t: Be Careful what you Say on Facebook: “Are you on the Terrorist Watchlist?”

contributors

AJ+ “One million people worldwide have been swept up by TIDE, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. It’s a list of people suspected of being terrorists that’s managed by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. But how easy is it to get on the list, and are we step closer to a world where everyone’s a suspect?” […]