What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness — Bush’s NSA program — is now deemed a vital state secret.

(Photo Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t, Adapted From: buhsnarf, mokblog, yaniecks / flickr)

by Glenn Greenwald
November 1, 2009

The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the “state secrets” privilege — which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by Bush/Cheney) — to attempt to block courts from ruling on the legality of the government’s domestic surveillance activities.  Obama did so again this past Friday — just six weeks after the DOJ announced voluntary new internal guidelines which, it insisted, would prevent abuses of the state secrets privilege.  Instead — as predicted — the DOJ continues to embrace the very same “state secrets” theories of the Bush administration — which Democrats generally and Barack Obama specifically once vehemently condemned — and is doing so in order literally to shield the President from judicial review or accountability when he is accused of breaking the law. Read the full story

by James Bamford
November 5, 2009

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
by Matthew M. Aid
Bloomsbury, 423 pp., $30.00

On a remote edge of Utah’s dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America’s equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined. Read the full story

by Charlie Savage
September 19, 2009

WASHINGTON – As Congress prepares to consider extending crucial provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and some Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.

Both the House and the Senate are set to hold their first committee hearings this week on whether to reauthorize three sections of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. The provisions expanded the power of the F.B.I. to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls in the course of a counterterrorism investigation. Read the full story

by Jason Leopold
September 18, 2009

(Photo Bandido of Oz / flickr)

Back in 2001, the Defense Department was briefed about a massive data mining system that officials said was aimed at identifying alleged terrorists who lived and communicated with people in the United States.

The new intelligence program granted traditional law enforcement agencies as well as the FBI and the CIA the authority to conduct what was then referred to as “suspicionless surveillance” of American citizens. Read the full story

Los espías de la Presidencia

por Javier Darío Restrepo

BOGOTÁ, 10 jun (IPS) – El periodista colombiano Hollman Morris se valió de un teléfono fijo para informar, alterado, a una agencia internacional de noticias: “Soy objeto de seguimiento policial”. Read the full story

por Eva Golinger
1 de agosto, 2009

* El Presupuesto de la USAID y el Departamento de Estado aumenta el 12% para el año 2010, con 2,2 mil millones de dólares destinados a América Latina
* 447,7 millones de dólares son para “promover la democracia” en América Latina
* 13 millones de dólares para “promover la democracia” en Venezuela
* 101 millones de dólares para “promover la democracia” en Bolivia
* 3 millones de dólares para un fondo especial para la OEA para “consolidar la democracia representativa en Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua y Venezuela”
* 20 millones de dólares para la “transición hacia la democracia” en Cuba
* El Presupuesto del Comando Sur aumenta en un 2% para llegar a los 200 millones de dólares para el 2010 más 46 millones de dólares adicionales para mejorar la base militar de Palanquero, Colombia, para el uso estadounidense Read the full story

(Photo: U.S. Air Force)

by Kim Zetter
July 22, 2009

Defense and intelligence contractor Raytheon is moving into the lucrative realm of cyber warfare, and wants to hire hundreds of “cyber warriors” to “play offense and defense,” according to an advertisement on the company’s web site. Read the full story

The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) building in Fort Meade, Md., Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2007, during a visit by then President Bush. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Bush went away, but domestic surveillance overreach didn’t. It’s now the law, and the ACLU is fighting back Read the full story

Facing the American World We Created

by Tom Engelhardt
July 23, 2009

We’ve just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here’s how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney’s orders, didn’t inform Congress that, to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders, it was trying to develop and deploy global death squads. (Of course, just about no one is going to call them that, but the description fits.) Congress is now in high dudgeon. The CIA didn’t keep that body’s “Gang of Eight” informed. A House investigation is now underway. Read the full story

• Congressional calls for formal investigation mount
• Agency officials believe they’re caught up in political war

The CIA's seal on the floor of its headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Barack Obama told agents they would not be held accountable for abuses committed during the Bush years. Photograph: Getty Images

Read the full story