Surveillance

By Tom Engelhardt and Laura Poitras via Tomdispatch.com Here’s a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! stat from our new age of national security. How many Americans have security clearances? The answer: 5.1 million, a figure that reflects the explosive growth of the national security state in the post-9/11 era. Imagine the kind of system needed […]

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?” […]

Bill of Rights

Are the 17 Intel Agencies now the Fourth Branch of Government?

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch.com The Fourth Branch The Rise to Power of the National Security State By Tom Engelhardt As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the U.S. government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just […]

Bill of Rights

NSA Spying: Now It’s Personal

contributors

By Eva Galperin and Nadia Kayyali via EFF Imagine that you watched a police officer in your neighborhood stop ten completely ordinary people every day just to take a look inside their vehicle or backpack. Now imagine that nine of those people are never even accused of a crime. They just happened to be in […]

Domestic Surveillance

NSA Targetting of Innocent Muslim-Americans Raises 1st Amendment Alarms

contributors

By Deirdre Fulton Following Intercept report, rights groups and Muslim-American organizations slam NSA targeting Rights organizations responded harshly to reports that the National Security Agency and FBI covertly monitored the emails of prominent Muslim-Americans using secretive procedures intended to target terrorists and foreign spies. While the revelations, reported by Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain at […]

Surveillance

German who spied on Parliament for NSA recruited by CIA

contributors

By Nadia Prupis The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) took part in a spying operation against Germany that led to the arrest of a double agent and has jeopardized its alliance with the U.S., Reuters reports. German authorities last week arrested an alleged "double agent" who confessed that he was paid by U.S. agents to spy […]