Over half of all requests for personal information from Twitter came from the United States, and that doesn't even include requests made under the 'national security' designation that forbids Twitter from releasing that information. And overall requests continue to increase.
The White House wants the National Security Agency to get out of the business of sweeping up and storing vast amounts of data on Americans' phone calls. The Obama administration this week is expected to propose that Congress overhaul the electronic surveillance program by having phone companies hold onto the call records as they do now.
The endless tide of NSA revelations has made us all too familiar with government agencies’ hunger for personal information, especially in the context of national security. But we’re also seeing surveillance systems being set up by smaller, less newsworthy agencies to monitor our day-to-day activities.
"If you have nothing to hide than you have nothing to worry about" is a great defense for NSA spying if the person in charge of the country is your guy. But, what if he's not?
The Democratic Senator from Colorado stands alongside Sen. Dianne Feinstein's critique of the CIA's response to Senate investigations into torture under the Bush Administration: "If the Senate overseers don't trust the CIA, I don't know how Director Brennan can continue to lead the agency."
Back in 2012, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report called 'Policing Dissent', exposing the Boston Police Department's 'red squad' surveillance operations, directed at antiwar and economic justice organizers. =
Technology companies and privacy advocates are praising a new government compromise that will allow the Internet's leading companies to disclose more information about how often they are ordered to turn over customer information to the government in national security investigations.
As President Obama puts the final touches on what is being billed as his "overhaul of the NSA," sources close to the administration have told The Hill that his number one goal is to stop any future whistleblowers like Edward Snowden.
The National Security Agency reported its own violations of surveillance rules to a U.S. intelligence court and promised additional safety measures to prevent similar missteps over and over again, according to more than 1,000 pages of newly declassified files about the federal government's controversial program of collecting every American's phone records during the past seven years.