Sam Sacks - page 59

The House Armed Services Committee is spending Wednesday afternoon marking up the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act—a must-pass piece of legislation instructing the Pentagon how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars next year. But even before authorizing lawmakers got to work, the stage was set for drama. On Tuesday night, the White House expressed its disapproval with the process thus far, noting concerns about Republican-proposed language entrenching prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other provisions that would keep Uncle Sam throwing money at wasteful military… Keep Reading

As the USA Freedom Act was reintroduced Tuesday with the PATRIOT Act set to expire at the start of June, civil liberties advocates accused Congress of lacking the will to rein in spy agencies that have run roughshod over the Bill of Rights since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The legislation, which bears the same name as a bill that died in the Senate last November, is aimed at reforming the National Security Agency’s bulk communications collection activities—most notably its call records database revealed in 2013… Keep Reading

One day on the job and already dealing with civil unrest in Baltimore, Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday found herself on the receiving end of a high profile lobbying campaign launched by eight liberal lawmakers. The group, which includes top Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), is calling on Lynch to correct two decades of wrongs caused by FBI forensic teams’ systematically faulty testimony in hundreds of cases that resulted in convictions. “Simply informing incarcerated individuals is not enough,” the Senators noted, adding… Keep Reading

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) floated the idea of having the federal government take a more active role in investigating local law enforcement agencies’ killing of minorities. Grassley, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made the remarks in response to a reporter’s questions about how he was prepared to respond to recent such high profile fatal incidents that have shaken communities of color across the country—notably,in Ferguson, Mo., New York, and Baltimore. The Senator avoided most details in his response during Monday’s Q & A… Keep Reading

The number of government workers and contractors holding security clearances dramatically decreased last year—a sign that the US government has limited the number of people with access to secrets in the wake of National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s massive unauthorized public disclosure in 2013. The data, released to Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), shows that roughly 4.5 million people had some form of government security clearance in 2014—a year-over-year decline of more than 600,000 federal employees authorized to… Keep Reading

A Texas private prison improperly created a restrictive cellblock to house inmates who were agitating for more rights, according to a Department of Justice inspector general report published Thursday. The regime in question—known as “J-unit” at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos, Texas—was put into place after inmates at the roughly 2,500 strong holding facility for non-US citizens demonstrated against prison guards in early October 2013. Prisoners had refused to leave their cells in a protest against a lack of “full respect from the… Keep Reading

The Department of Homeland Security’s deployment of license plate surveillance systems along US border crossings is being carried out with virtually no contracting oversight—a violation of the department’s own policy, according to a watchdog report published Wednesday. In a review of 22 major DHS acquisition programs worth billions of dollars, the Government Accountability Office found that the Land Border Integration (LBI) program, which deploys license plate readers for Customs and Border Protection, continues to grow significantly year-over-year despite operating without proper supervision. “Department leadership has… Keep Reading