Favorite The runaway military surveillance blimp that came loose from an Army base in Maryland on Wednesday dragged its torn tether through power lines in two Pennsylvania counties before crashing into the woods. But at least no one died. The same can’t be said of a recent accident involving a U.S. military blimp in Kabul…
All posts tagged Froomkin
Bush White House’s Repeated Torture Denials Led CIA Torturers to Seek Repeated Reassurances
Favorite The Bush administration was so adamant in its public statements against torture that CIA officials repeatedly sought reassurances that the White House officials who had given them permission to torture in the first place hadn’t changed their minds. In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National…
FBI Flouts Obama Directive to Limit Gag Orders on National Security Letters
Favorite Despite the post-Snowden spotlight on mass surveillance, the intelligence community’s easiest end-run around the Fourth Amendment since 2001 has been something called a National Security Letter. FBI agents can demand that an Internet service provider, telephone company, or financial institution turn over its records on any number of people — without any judicial review…
A Year After Reform Push, NSA Still Collects Bulk Domestic Data, Still Lacks Way to Assess Value
Favorite The presidential advisory board on privacy that recommended a slew of domestic surveillance reforms in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations reported today that many of its suggestions have been agreed to “in principle” by the Obama administration, but in practice, very little has changed. Most notably, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight…
Torture If You Must, But Do Not Under Any Circumstances Call the New York Times
Favorite Monday’s guilty verdict in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on espionage charges — for talking to a newspaper reporter — is the latest milepost on the dark and dismal path Barack Obama has traveled since his inaugural promises to usher in a “new era of openness.” Far from rejecting the authoritarian…
Obama’s Cyber Proposals Sound Good, But Erode Information Security
Favorite The State of the Union address President Obama delivers tonight will include a slate of cyber proposals crafted to sound like timely government protections in an era beset by villainous hackers. They would in theory help the government and private sector share hack data more effectively; increase penalties for the most troubling forms of…
John Brennan Exonerates Himself with Sham Investigation
Favorite The outrageous whitewash issued yesterday by the CIA panel John Brennan hand-picked to lead the investigation into his agency’s spying on Senate staffers is being taken seriously by the elite Washington media, which is solemnly reporting that officials have been “cleared” of any “wrongdoing“. But what the report really does is provide yet more…
Q&A: On the Untouchable ‘Lords of Secrecy’
Favorite Powerful, unaccountable, and operating far in the shadows, the Lords of Secrecy, as author Scott Horton calls them, are real, and they are in charge of our national security state. Horton, a lawyer, journalist and human rights advocate, makes the case in his book, Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth…
Billion Dollar Surveillance Blimp to Launch over Maryland
Favorite In just a few days, the Army will launch the first of two massive blimps over Maryland, the last gasp of an 18-year-long $2.8-billion Army project intended to use giant airships to defend against cruise missiles. And while the blimps may never stave off a barrage of enemy missiles, their ability to spot and…
Torture, ‘Meet the Press’ and Cheney’s Quest for Revenge
Favorite Dick Cheney gave no ground in his “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday, but he did something arguably even better: He bared his twisted soul. Parrying questions from Chuck Todd with what he must have figured were winning talking points about the 9/11 terror attacks, Cheney unwittingly demonstrated how profoundly he has renounced fundamental…