Category Archives: Surveillance
Udall, The Torture Report and The Pentagon Papers Option
Shortly after Colorado Senator Mark Udall lost his reelection bid to Rep. Cory Gardner, it began–first as conversations among civil liberties activists, then in media outlets, and finally Udall himself raised the possibility: on his way out of the Senate, … Continue reading
On Ending The Surveillance State
Some fresh musings on Medium.
HPSCI’s “Statue of Liberty” Play On PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
Did the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) engage in the document-based form of the old football deception play? That’s the allegation coming from Michigan Rep. Justin Amash: Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican whose effort to defund theNSA‘s mass phone-records collection … Continue reading
X-Keyscore, Or “How NSA Knows All About Your Blog Visitors, Your Emails, And Your Life”
From today’s edition of The Guardian: A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided … Continue reading
Paul And Christie Spar Over Domestic Spying Scandal
Pretty typical Christie demagoguery, as reported by the Star-Ledger.
Beware The Thief At Your Back Door
From this week’s National Journal cover story on the relationship between NSA and the telecoms: Then, in the late 1990s, a furor erupted over export controls on software encryption. The NSA sought to bar exports of the best encryption technology, … Continue reading
The Surveillance State And The Mob Mentality
Former Republican Budget Committee staffer Mike Lofgren in HuffPo today: The most depressing result of the polls, however, was the variability of the partisan response depending on which party occupies the White House: “In early 2006, 37 percent of Democrats … Continue reading
Petraeus, The Political Class And The Surveillance State
My friend Ray McGovern made a cogent observation about Washington’s latest scandal: A day after the surprise announcement that CIA Director David Petraeus was resigning because of marital infidelity, the pundits continue to miss the supreme irony. None other than … Continue reading
FISA Vote: Where Were The “Small Government” Conservatives?
Only seven Republicans voted against the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization (HR 5949). Vote totals here. So I guess all the Tea Party Caucus rhetoric about the evils of big government doesn’t apply to intrusive, industrial-scale government surveillance of every call, … Continue reading
9/11: The Legacy
The 9/11 Commission found the fundamental failure of the U.S. Intelligence Community was in sharing intelligence, not in collecting it. But in the years after the attacks, that finding was subsumed by bureaucratically-driven efforts to have ever more expansive intelligence … Continue reading
Long Strange Journey 