Journo Deemed A U.S Terror Threat

Apparently, the pen is so mighty, that we can’t even risk certain foreign journalists flying in our airspace.
According to reports over the weekend, an Air France flight to Mexico was diverted because of one passenger, Franco-Colombian writer Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for the Le Monde Diplomatique, a left-wing French-based [...]

April 19

Katherin Andrade, 24
Jennifer Andrade, 19Aldrick Bennett, 35
Susan Benta, 31
Mary Jean Borst, 49
Pablo Cohen, 38
Yvette Fagan, 34
Doris Fagan, 60
Lisa Marie Farris, 26
Ray Friesen, 76
Dayland Gent, 3
Diana Henry, 28
Paulina Henry, 24
Phillip Henry, 22
Stephen Henry, 26
Vanessa Henry, 19
Zilla Henry, 55
Novellette Hipsman, 36
Floyd Houtman, 61
Cyrus Howell, 8
Rachel Howell, 23
Star Howell, 6

Sherri Lynn Jewell, 43
David Michael Jones, 38
Michelle Jones, 18
Serenity [...]

More FBI Hacking: Feds Crack Wi-Fi to Gather Evidence

Buried in the 150 pages of CIPAV spyware-related documents released by the FBI Thursday is a tantalizing nugget that indicates the bureau’s technology experts have more than one way to hack a suspect.
In early 2007, FBI agents with one of the bureau’s International Terrorism Operations Sections sought hacking help from [...]

Texas Officer Charged With Bank Robbery

A Conroe police officer was arrested and charged with one count of bank robbery, FBI officials told KPRC Local 2 Tuesday. Sgt. Michael Tindall
Federal authorities said Sgt. Michael Tindall is accused of robbing the First Bank of Conroe on Aug. 11, 2008. He [...]

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette on MIAC report

See also: The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

U.S. Military Contractor Allegedly Hacked Teens to Extort Nude Photos from Them

An army contractor who worked on a U.S. military base in Iraq hacked into the computers of teenage girls to harass and extort sexually explicit images from them, authorities allege. Police say he and an accomplice targeted some 4,000 young women around the world, including six Florida teens — one of [...]

Ex-FBI Agent Convicted of SoCal Robbery Plot

A jury convicted a former FBI agent and another man of plotting to rob a drug stash house in Southern California using a machine gun.
The verdict was read Wednesday after jurors reached their decision late Tuesday in the trial of 44-year-old Vo Duong Tran, a former agent from New Orleans.
Tran [...]

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization
of Law Enforcement

Patriots, Christians and concerned citizens are increasingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intelligence community, and battle lines are being quietly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforcement and military forces against us.
A February 20 report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” was issued [...]

CIA Man Accused of Rape Claimed to Be FBI Agent in Parking Row

Andrew Warren,  the former CIA officer accused of date rape in Algiers late last year, caused such a ruckus over parking dispute at a Washington, D.C. hotel three years earlier that the matter was referred to the FBI.
Multiple sources said Warren flashed official credentials and claimed to be [...]

Arizona sheriff’s department target of probe

PHOENIX — Federal authorities told a high-profile Arizona sheriff Tuesday that they will investigate his department over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures.
The U.S. Justice Department said in a letter to Maricopa County  Sheriff Joe Arpaio that investigators will focus on alleged patterns of police discrimination based on national [...]

Narco Field Tests Fail

According to a new report (PDF) sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project, field tests commonly used by police to identify marijuana and other drugs yield false positives in response to a variety of legal substances, resulting in the arrest and detention of innocent people. Worse, “millions of people have been, [...]

FBI Joins Probe of Philadelphia Officer

The FBI has joined a probe into whether a city police officer falsified evidence to build drug cases, Mayor Michael Nutter said Friday, and reports say the investigation may spread to other officers.
Narcotics Officer Jeffrey Cujdik has been under investigation by the police department’s internal affairs unit since December [...]

Filing FOIA requests

I’m often asked – in interviews and from this site’s readers – how to file a Freedom of Information Act t request. It’s a fairly simple procedure – you don’t need a special form or a lawyer. I keep meaning to write and post a guide, but until that day arrives, [...]

NSA Whistleblower Tells More on Illegal Wiretapping of US Citizens (videos)

On January 21, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice appeared Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, told Olbermann government programs designed to spy on the American people are more extensive and far reaching than previously admitted. “The National Security [...]

‘We’ll block police home PC hacks’: Security vendors

The Home Office on Friday said it was working with the European Parliament on plans to extend police powers to conduct remote searches of computers. UK police already have the power to hack into suspect systems without a warrant, due to an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act, [...]

Guide to Using Declassified Documents and Archival Materials on U.S. Foreign Policy

David N. Gibbs

Associate Professor of
History and Political Science
University of Arizona
PhD, 1989, M.I.T.

General Sources
When searching for primary documents pertaining to U.S. foreign policy, a good place to begin is with the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series. This is a huge collection of declassified documents from [...]

Two soldiers charged with N.C. bank robberies

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Police have charged two Fort Bragg soldiers with robberies at two Fayetteville banks.
The Fayetteville Observer reported Friday that the 82nd Airborne Division soldiers were charged with a robbery Tuesday and one Dec. 22.

Baltimore ends public oversight of police killings

Baltimore police will no longer release the names of officers who kill or injure people, changing a long-standing practice that the department believes put officers at risk.
The decision is prompting criticism from several Baltimore leaders, who said withholding officers’ names will only endanger an already tenuous relationship between the [...]

Australia: Growing opposition to Labor’s Internet censorship

More than 2,000 opponents of the federal Labor government’s plans to censor the Internet rallied in cities across Australia on December 13—the second national protest in the past two months. The demonstrations, which were convened by the Digital Liberty Coalition (DLC), are another indication of the growing concern of [...]

More Concerns About NSA’s “Stellar Wind” and Meta-Data Collection

“… But an even more interesting revelation — one ultimately far more troubling — can be found in a regrettably less prominent sidebar to the main Newsweek story, entitled “Now we know what the battle was about”, by Daniel Klaidman. Put together with other reports about the program, it lends [...]

Report: State Department & Blackwater Cooperated to Neutralize Killings

WASHINGTON — State Department officials worked closely with the private security contractor Blackwater USA to play down incidents in which company operatives killed innocent Iraqis, according to Blackwater and State Department documents obtained by a congressional committee.
Read the House committee memorandum

FBI Managers Encouraged Workers in Iraq to Bill for Time Off

For nearly five years, FBI leaders encouraged employees on temporary assignment in Iraq to bill an average of $45,000 in overtime and extra pay by routinely claiming to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, even when some of that time was spent eating, exercising, watching movies or [...]

Court Rules Patriot Act’s “National Security Letter” Gag Provisions Unconstitutional

NEW YORK – A federal appeals court today upheld, in part, a decision striking down provisions of the Patriot Act that prevent national security letter (NSL) recipients from speaking out about the secret records demands. The decision comes in an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil [...]

Joint Intelligence DNA Database Described

Scattered details of a little-known U.S. government database containing the DNA of suspected terrorists were gathered and reported today in the Financial Times. See “Fears over Covert DNA Database” by Stephen Fidler.
The Joint Federal Agencies [or more often: Antiterrorism] Intelligence DNA Database (JFAIDD) is described in a 2007 briefing slide (pdf) as “a searchable database [...]

Spy drone ‘Predator,’ reflects what US has become

TUCSON — The bad news is that the US Border Patrol has four drones flying out of Fort Huachuca over the US/Mexico border for surveillance. One drone has already crashed near Nogales and these unmanned aerial planes, provided first by Israel’s Apartheid spy technology maker, Elbit Systems, are a risk to the lives of those [...]

FBI to hold town hall meeting in Riverside

Members of the public will be able to question top FBI officials about any topic during a town hall meeting scheduled for this Saturday in Riverside.

DA Dennis Stout Admits Errors, Drops Role in Probe

San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Dennis Stout acknowledged Wednesday that he violated his own ethical standards and made “errors in judgment” when he secretly aided the political opponent of a county supervisor he was investigating.