NewsTrust - Domestic Spying - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

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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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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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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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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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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Spying on pacifists, environmentalists and nuns

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Bob Drogin - Dec. 09 (News Report) - Maryland officials now concede that, based on information gathered by "Lucy" and others, state police wrongly listed at least 53 Americans as terrorists in a criminal intelligence database -- and shared some information about them with half a dozen state and federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.

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Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Siobhan Gorman - Nov. 11 (News Report) - President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

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What Did Bush Tell Gonzales?

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Murray Waas - Sep. 27 (Special Report) - Although this president is famously known for rarely becoming immersed in the details--even on the issues he cares the most about--Gonzales has painted a picture of Bush as being very much involved when it came to his administration's surveillance program.

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Palin E-Mail Hacker Says It Was Easy

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Kim Zetter - Sep. 18 (News Report) - A person claiming to be the hacker who obtained access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's private Yahoo e-mail on Tuesday has posted a supposed first-person account of the hack, revealing the relatively simple steps he says he took to crack the private e-mail of the Republican vice-presidential candidate. The story was briefly posted Wednesday to the 4chan forum where the hack first surfaced. Bloggers have connected the handle of the poster, "Rubico," to an e-mail address, and tentatively identified the owner as a college student in Tennessee.

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Flaws Found In Watch List For Terrorists

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Siobhan Gorman - Aug. 22 (News Report) - The government's main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

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Citizens' U.S. Border Crossings Tracked

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ellen Nakashima - Aug. 20 (News Report) - The federal government has been using its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.

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U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Spencer S. Hsu, Carrie Johnson - Aug. 16 (News Report) - Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders. Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.

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Key events in the anthrax episode

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Aug. 07 (News Report) - 2006: March 27: The Supreme Court declines to block Hatfill's suit against the Times. Oct. 23: A federal judge orders the Times to disclose a columnist's confidential sources as part of a libel lawsuit filed over the newspaper's coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Dec. 2: The Times asks a federal judge to dismiss Hatfill's lawsuit. ___

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Crimes and Misdemeanors

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - Jul. 24 (News Analysis) - Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!). The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal. And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.

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House passes bill to put lawmakers in spy loop

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Anne Flaherty - Jul. 16 (News Report) - The bill is the latest attempt by Democrats, struggling to challenge President Bush on major national security issues, to step up their role in overseeing an intelligence program they say has gone astray. Lawmakers complain that the Bush administration left most of them out of the loop on highly classified -- and controversial -- matters, including the creation and destruction of CIA interrogation tapes and Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.

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U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million- U.S

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - Jul. 14 (News Report) - A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil rights group said on Monday the number was far too high to be effective.

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U.S. and Europe Near Accord on Privacy

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charlie Savage - Jun. 28 (News Report) - The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement allowing law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information -- like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits -- about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The potential agreement, as outlined in an internal report obtained by The New York Times, would represent a diplomatic breakthrough for American counterterrorism officials, who have clashed with the European Union over demands for personal data.

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AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State' -

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Ryan Singel - Jun. 28 (News Report) - Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, [said of Wednesday's vote for retroactive telecom immunity] " It's a Congressional coup against the Constitution. "The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a 'compromise,' but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: 'Just following orders.' The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice."

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Netroots feel jilted by Obama's FISA stand

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Carrie Budoff Brown - Jun. 26 (News Analysis) - But with his support of a government surveillance bill that offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies -- a bill that he vowed last year to filibuster -- the honeymoon has ended. Disappointed over his position on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the online activists feel jilted and betrayed and have taken to questioning his progressive credentials. One prominent blogger, Atrios, has even given him the moniker "Wanker of the Day."

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Obama Tilts Toward Center, Irking Some Activists

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Susan Davis - Jun. 24 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama's support of an overhaul of domestic-spying laws last week was the latest in a string of statements suggesting the Democratic presidential candidate is tacking toward the center to compete with John McCain. On foreign policy, national security, tax issues and even local politics, Sen. Obama has made some decisions lately that belie his ranking by the nonpartisan National Journal as the U.S.'s "most liberal" senator.

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