FBI Linguist Leaked Classified Docs to Blogger

An Israeli-American attorney who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a translator pled guilty yesterday to unlawfully disclosing five classified FBI documents to an unidentified blogger last April, who then published information from the documents on his blog, the Department of Justice announced.
In a signed [...]

Rhode Island Officer Indicted on Beating Handcuffed Woman

PROVIDENCE, R.I. —  A Rhode Island police officer was indicted Friday on charges that he kicked a handcuffed woman in the head after removing her from a slot parlor for disorderly conduct, authorities said.
Edward Krawetz, 40, has been suspended without pay from the Lincoln Police Department and also faces administrative charges, said [...]

Retired Army Major Sentenced to 57 Months in Prison for Role in Bribery Scheme Involving DOD Contracts in Kuwait

A retired major in the U.S. Army today was sentenced to 57 months in prison for his role in a bribery scheme related to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts awarded in Kuwait, announced Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer and Assistant Attorney General of the [...]

3 police officers among 5 people indicted in fatal, race-related beating

Luis Ramirez was in a coma on life support
before he died two days after he was beaten.

Five people, including three police officers, have been indicted on charges related to the beating death of a Latino man in rural Pennsylvania in July 2008, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Two indictments charge the [...]

Interesting FBI Priorities

Recently, I waded through the fiscal year 2010 budget request/justification documents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which for the most part are about as unexciting as you might expect. A couple of things, however, stood out as kind of interesting and worthy of discussion, so I thought I’d [...]

Man Who Spent 28 Years in Prison Cleared by DNA Testing

WASHINGTON —  A man who spent 28 years in prison for a rape and murder has been freed after DNA testing showed he’s innocent.
Fifty-eight-year-old Donald Eugene Gates left the federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, just hours after a Washington judge ordered his release.
Gates tells The Associated Press it feels “beautiful” [...]

Report Shows Rise in Anti-Muslim Incidents

Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2009: Seeking Full Inclusion
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) just released its annual report which shows an increase in the number of bias-related incidents, but a decrease in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2008. In addition to summarizing the year’s [...]

Transcript shows man claiming to be spy helped FBI

WEST COVINA, Calif. — A Southern California man who claimed to spy on mosques for the Federal Bureau of Investigation provided the agency with valuable information for a federal prosecution, a court transcript showed on Friday.
The transcript from an August 2007 hearing states that Craig Monteilh (MON’-tay) provided “very, very [...]

Feds: Former US Prosecutor Helped Rub Out Witnesses For Gangster Clients, Ran Drugs And Call-Girls

From federal prosecutor to accused violent gangster, pimp, and drug-dealer…That’s the unusual career trajectory taken, say the Feds, by Paul Bergrin, who was indicted earlier this month in a 39-count racketeering indictment.
In a drama that could have been made for HBO, Bergrin — a white-collar defense lawyer who once represented, [...]

‘Counterinsurgency’ to Fight U.S. Crime? No, Thanks

After the sickening murder of a 9-year-old boy in Washington, our friend Spencer Ackerman made an impassioned plea: U.S. Central Command chief General David Petraeus for D.C. metro police chief. The idea of America’s leading counterinsurgent taking on one of its most crime-ridden towns definitely has a certain [...]

FBI Releases 2008 Hate Crime Statistics

“Statistics released today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that 7,783 criminal incidents involving 9,168 offenses were reported in 2008 as a result of bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability. Published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Hate Crime Statistics, 2008, [...]

Our research has shown that child trafficking increases when you have military bases

Excerpt:
When I reached her by phone, Goodnight said, “Our research has shown that child trafficking increases when you have military bases and a strong agricultural presence in the area.” That’s why, this year, before Shaniya Davis’s disappearance and the discovery of her body made “human trafficking” a hot topic, [...]

FBI kept tabs on Pulitzer-winning author Studs Terkel for 45 years

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which acted as America’s political police during the Cold War, spent several decades watching Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel, who died earlier this year at age 96.  The revelation was made by the City University of New York’s NYCity News Service, which [...]

Society in Jail

“What are you in for?” the inmate of Lee County jail asked the new prisoner.
“Rolling through a stop sign in my subdivision,” answered the new inmate, to gales of laughter from others languishing in the same cell.
As they laugh, crumbs from their hard, dry sandwiches — distributed by the wardens twice [...]

Flaw in Fed Wiretaps Could Allow Circumvention

People who think they are being wiretapped by the cops could disable the taps by sending a stream of text messages or making numerous VOIP calls to overwhelm the system’s thin bandwidth, researchers in Pennsylvania postulate.
The researchers say they’ve found a vulnerability in U.S. law enforcement wiretaps, if only theoretical, that [...]

An Aryan Nations E-Mail Box Hacked ;)

WikiLeaks: aryannationspa@hotmail.com leaked emails, 2009 mail archives (chronological)
( Aryan Nations (AN) is a white nationalist neo-Nazi organization founded in the 1970s by Richard Girnt Butler as an arm of the Christian Identity group Church of Jesus Christ-Christian. As of December 2007 there were two main [...]

New DOJ Report: Gang Information Management System Needed

Review of the Department’s Anti-Gang Intelligence and Coordination Centers
The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General just released this report which examines the intelligence and coordination activities of the National Gang Intelligence Center and the Gang Targeting, Enforcement, and Coordination Center. Additionally, the review “assesses the effectiveness [...]

New Audit Report on FBI’s ‘Sentinel’ Case Management System

Sentinel Audit V: Status of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Case Management System
This Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General audit report is the fifth in a series of reports assessing the FBI’s ‘Sentinel’ case management system.
“The objectives of this current audit, the fifth in our ongoing review [...]

ACLU Sues FBI for Imprisonment of New Jersey Man in Africa

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit [1] against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying it illegally detained and mistreated an American, Amir Meshal, who was held in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia for four months in 2007 before being released.
According to the ACLU’s complaint, which was filed [...]

SF soldier arrested after C-4 found near house

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Special Forces soldier was arrested Monday after a pair of hunters found about 100 pounds of explosives outside his home near Fort Campbell.
Timothy Ryan Richards was charged with possessing two unregistered guns, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Eric Kehn said he [...]

FBI Demands Tattoo Shops Rat On Customers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in league with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (part of the Department of Justice), has launched a program that harks back to East Germany’s Stasi.
In Philadelphia, the FBI has instructed tattoo shops to rat out their customers if they demand privacy, insist on paying [...]

Q&A With FBI Director Mueller

As a result of polygraph testing, more than a thousand applications for employment at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been rejected or otherwise terminated in the last year alone, the FBI told Congress last month.  Polygraph testing has been the single largest reason for discontinuing an application, well ahead [...]

Is VOIP Now the Go-To Tool For Gov’t Spying?

There’s an interesting article this week about a new Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) report on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and some of the issues the Bureau faces in reviewing and processing evidence. One of the areas that is apparently singled out in the IG [...]

Burbank officer listed in FBI probe kills self

BURBANK, Calif. — A police sergeant who was being investigated in an FBI probe into police misconduct has committed suicide on the corner of a Southern California residential street.
The Burbank Police Department said that 50-year old Neil T. Gunn, a 22-year veteran with the department, was found dead around 11:40 [...]

Nozette and Nuclear Rocketry

Stewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged this week under the Espionage Act, is an unusually gifted and accomplished technologist.  The allegation that he provided classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer in exchange for cash is distressing on several levels.
Among other things, [...]

Feds issue new medical marijuana policy (to Good Ol’ Boy Hoops)

WASHINGTON – Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.
Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is [...]

Attorney: Oklahoma City bomb tapes appear edited

OKLAHOMA CITY  — Long-secret security tapes showing the chaos immediately after the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building are blank in the minutes before the blast and appear to have been edited, an attorney who obtained the recordings said Sunday.
“The real story is what’s missing,” said Jesse Trentadue, [...]

Is war on drugs worth it? Maybe not, new FBI data suggest

Many law enforcement officers now say the drug interdiction effort is costly and unsuccessful. The bulk of drug arrests in 2008 were for simple possession, almost half for marijuana.
Atlanta – Every 18 seconds, an American is busted for drug possession, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) crime statistics [...]

Ex-airman gets prison sentence in Arizona

TUCSON, Ariz. — A former Air Force sergeant was sentenced Wednesday to more than two years in prison for his role in a cocaine and corruption sting that snared nearly 70 mostly military and law enforcement personnel in Arizona.
Prosecutors say 33-year-old Rommel I. Schroer was given a 28-month prison term by [...]

Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats

A notorious New Jersey hate blogger charged in June with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers was secretly an FBI “agent provocateur” paid to disseminate right-wing rhetoric, his attorney said Wednesday.
Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to [...]

Justices Rule Lab Analysts Must Testify on Results

WASHINGTON — Crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.
The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life into [...]

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online Hacker ‘Dark Tangent’ Joins DHS Advisory Council

Forget the new cyber security czar position that President Barack Obama announced last week.
The real sign that the White House might be finally taking cyber security seriously came in an announcement on Friday that Jeff Moss, aka “Dark Tangent” and the former hacker behind the annual DefCon hacker confab in [...]

Energy Department Activities Involving FISA

Although the Department of Energy is not one of the agencies that performs intelligence surveillance or physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it does occasionally play a role in providing analytical support to other agencies such as the FBI that do conduct FISA surveillance.
A recent DOE Inspector [...]

FISA Surveillance Down, NSL Requests Up in 2008

During calendar year 2008, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,083 applications for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and physical search of suspected foreign intelligence and terrorist targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to a new annual report to Congress (pdf) from the Department of Justice.  [...]

OIG Report on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist Nomination Practices

This U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General report reviews the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist nomination practices. “The federal government’s consolidated terrorist watchlist was created in March 2004 by merging previously separate watchlists that were once maintained by different agencies throughout the federal government. The watchlist is [...]