Responses to recent disclosures about official surveillance of private communications and activities are rolling in. The most recent is from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which today released a Report on the Telephone Records Program Conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the Operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The PCLOB is an independent [...]
ProPublica has published an analysis of the four most often cited rationales offered to justify mass surveillance and collection of metadata, describing why they are “questionable claims.” It is instructive reading for anyone who is concerned about claims that security cannot be achieved without sacrificing constitutional principles. Whatever the right answer to that dilemma, official dissembling does little to advance [...]
This is a good, concise history of abuses by the intelligence community and offers a great argument against warrantless surveillance. Without that break-in by the Media 8, J. Edgar Hoover’s “shadow FBI,” a criminal conspiracy at the heart of a developing national security state, might never have been revealed. (The CIA, officially banned from domestic spying on Americans, turned out [...]