NewsTrust - Domestic Spying - Most Recent Stories

Emphatic Farewell for British Paper Caught Up in Hacking Scandal

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Ravi Somaiya - Jul. 10 (News Report) - Reporters leaving the newsroom of The News of the World for the final time on Saturday night were told by the police to leave their desks, including their notebooks, untouched. They were allowed to keep only their cellphones. With that, the 168-year-old News of the World came to an end, brought down by a scandal over the interception of voicemail messages that is rocking Britain’s media, its police force and government, and threatens the empire of a previously unassailable mogul. The final edition included an apology to readers for the newspaper losing its way, as well as a defiant claim to being the “world’s greatest.”

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Military Launches Spy Operation Using Fake Online Identities

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By The Huffington Post, Amy Lee - Mar. 17 (News Report) - The U.S. Military has purchased software designed to create and control false online personas in an attempt to use social media and other websites to...

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Have Cell Phones Become Personal Tracking Devices? - TIME

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By Adam Cohen - Sep. 15 (Special Report) - Smart phones do many things these days: surf the Internet, send e-mail, take photos and video (and — oh, yes — send and receive calls). But one thing they can do that phone companies don't advertise is spy on you. As long as you don't leave home without your phone, that handy gadget keeps a record of everywhere you go — a record the government can then get from your telephone company.

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Project Vigilant: The Gov't/Corporate Destruction Of Privacy

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 03 (Opinion) - The emergence of a shadowy domestic espionage group sheds light on how the Government collects online data.

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FBI, Telecoms Teamed to Breach Wiretap Laws

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Jan. 25 (News Report) - The FBI and telecom companies collaborated to routinely violate federal wiretapping laws for four years, as agents got access to reporters’ and citizens’ phone records using fake emergency declarations or simply asking for them.

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NSA helped with Windows 7 development

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Associated Press - By Gregg Keizer - Nov. 25 (News Report) - The National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Microsoft on the development of Windows 7, an agency official acknowledged yesterday during testimony before Congress.

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Retired US official and wife admit spying for Cuba

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BBC News - By Bbc - Nov. 20 (News) - A retired US state department official and his wife have admitted spying for Cuba for nearly three decades.

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Senators Press Holder to Declassify Key Facts about Patriot Act

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salem-News.com - Nov. 19 (News Report) - We believe that the information we referenced in those paragraphs – specifically about the use of section 215 – is essential to understanding the full scope of the PATRIOT Act, which is about to be debated in Congress. As we said in June, if you have concerns about declassifying the specific language contained in our letter, we ask that you work with us to find language that conveys enough information to allow for an informed public debate on the PATRIOT Act’s reauthorization

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Obama administration seeks to block wiretap suit

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Devlin Barrett - Oct. 31 (News Report) - The Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege Friday to try to stop a lawsuit over Bush-era wiretapping -- the first time the Obama administration has done so under its new policy on such cases. Attorney General Eric Holder announced the decision in a California lawsuit challenging the warrantless wiretapping program begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

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Listening to you at last: EU plans to tap cell phones

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wikinews - By Brian McNeil et al - Oct. 19 (News Report) - A report accidentally published on the Internet provides insight into a secretive European Union surveillance project designed to monitor its citizens, as reported by Wikileaks earlier this month. Project INDECT aims to mine data from television, internet traffic, cellphone conversations, p2p file sharing and a range of other sources for crime prevention and threat prediction. The €14.68 million project began in January, 2009, and is scheduled to continue for five years under its current mandate. INDECT produced the accidentally published report as part of their "Extraction of Information for Crime Prevention by Combining Web Derived Knowledge and Unstructured Data" project, but do not enumerate all potential applications of the search and surveillance technology. Police are discussed as a prime example of users, with Polish and British forces detailed as active project participants. INDECT is funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), and includes participation from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

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Obama to Set Higher Bar For Keeping State Secrets

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Carrie Johnson - Sep. 23 (News Report) - The Obama administration will announce a new policy Wednesday making it much more difficult for the government to claim that it is protecting state secrets when it hides details of sensitive national security strategies such as rendition and warrantless eavesdropping, according to two senior Justice Department officials.

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Declassified Docs Reveal Military Operative Spied on WA Peace Groups, Activist Friends Stunned

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By ANJALI KAMAT, Amy Goodman, - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as “John Jacob” was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military’s role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States.

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Obama’s Military Is Spying on U.S. Peace Groups

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthDig - By Amy Goodman - Jul. 28 (News Report) - Anti-war activists in Olympia, Wash., have exposed Army spying and infiltration of their groups, as well as intelligence gathering by the Air Force, the federal Capitol Police and the Coast Guard. The infiltration appears to be in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act preventing U.S. military deployment for domestic law enforcement and may strengthen congressional demands for a full-scale investigation of U.S. intelligence activities, like the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s.

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What the CIA hid from Congress

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Jane Harman - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - Were members of congressional intelligence committees told everything about the Bush administration's surveillance programs? Not even close, reveals Jane Harman, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

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UAE Blackberry update was spyware

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Ben Thompson - Jul. 21 (News Report) - A software update promoted by United Arab Emirates telecoms firm Etisalat appears to have been surveillance software.

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Spy Memo Author to America: No Apologies for Tapping You

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Jul. 17 (News Report) - John Yoo, the beleaguered former Justice Department official, hits back at a report slamming the memos he wrote justifying the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance programs.

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Report Says Wiretaps Got Too Little Legal Review

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Eric Lichtbau, James Risen - Jul. 11 (News Report) - The federal report also says that the effectiveness of the warrantless surveillance program approved by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks was unclear.

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Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Pamela Hess - Jul. 11 (News Report) - Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

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Mr. Cheney, You Did Not Keep Us Safe

Thu, 14 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 14 (Opinion) - If 3,000 Americans had been killed on your watch, in an attack that could have been prevented, perhaps you'd be a little hesitant to accuse anyone else of endangering America. And if you had advocated torture, and the torture produced false information that you used to mislead America into an unwise, unjust and unwarranted war, you might be a tad sheepish about defending the use of torture.

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Is the Threat of Homegrown Extremism Real?

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

American Prospect - By Michelle Goldberg - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - Last week's leaked DHS report has some asking if we need to train a closer eye on fringe political groups. But we shouldn't overlook the potential for abuse with government surveillance.

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Obama Administration Embraces Bush Position on Warrantless Wiretapping and Secrecy | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

eff.org - Apr. 06 (Press Release) - The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday. In Jewel v. NSA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging the agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans. The Obama Justice Department claims in its motion that litigation over the wiretapping program would require the government to disclose privileged "state secrets." These are essentially the same arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago in Hepting v. AT&T, EFF's lawsuit against one of the telecom giants complicit in the NSA spying. "President Obama promised the American people a new era of transparency, accountability, and respect for civil liberties," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "But with the Obama Justice Department continuing the Bush administration's cover-up of the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans, and insisting that the much-publicized warrantless wiretapping program is still a 'secret' that cannot be reviewed by the courts, it feels like deja vu all over again."

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US tried to gag Binyam Mohamed with plea bargain

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Nick Allen - Mar. 27 (News Report) - He would also have been required to abandon a legal attempt to obtain documents which he believed could prove his innocence. Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Mohamed's lawyer, said: "This reflects the way the US government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture.

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The CIA responds to Seymour Hersh (via MinnPost)

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

minnpost.com - By Eric Black - Mar. 12 (Statement) - "I saw your story on Seymour Hersh’s recent allegations regarding CIA activities since 9/11. If you wish, you can attribute the quoted portion that follows to me, in name, as a CIA spokesman:

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Bush Adm. Weighed Restricting 1st Amendment

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Michael Isikoff - Mar. 04 (News Report) - In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday.

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Total Information Awareness

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By James Grimmelmann - Dec. 11 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama deployed a campaign database that made the GOP's data-gathering efforts look like the work of amateurs.

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