SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 20

A policy rider that would expand the type of information the FBI can collect without a warrant has attached itself to legislation for the third time in less than a month. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) introduced the measure on Monday night as an amendment to the Commerce and Justice Departments’ spending bill, which the upper chamber is considering this week. If enacted, federal authorities would be able to use so-called National Security Letters (NSL) to collect internet browsing history, IP addresses and other sensitive…

Keep Reading

The transcript of a 911 call between the Orlando shooter and authorities during last week’s massacre was released on Monday by the Department of Justice, with significant details omitted. The record of the approximately 50-second exchange includes Omar Mateen admitting to the rampage, telling a dispatcher over the phone, “I did the shooting.” The portion of the conversation in which Mateen pledges allegiance to a foreign terrorist organization, however, was redacted by the Justice Department. Reacting to the release, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan…

Keep Reading

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg excoriated colleagues on Monday, charging the court with undermining Constitutional safeguards against police abuses. Justices had that day ruled 5-3 to reverse a Utah Supreme Court decision to suppress evidence collected by a narcotics detective. Elena Kagan was the other Justice to dissent. The officer in the case had detained a suspect without reasonable suspicion, discovered the man had a warrant for a traffic violation, then placed him under arrest and discovered he was possessing methamphetamine.…

Keep Reading

Upending regular order, Democrats and a few Republicans held the Senate floor for more than 15-hours on Wednesday and early Thursday morning to highlight the need for gun control measures in the wake of the recent mass shooting in Orlando. Led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the maneuver could, however,  yield troubling outcomes for those concerned about the increasing size of the national security state and its infringement on civil liberties–those with implications beyond “the right to keep and bear arms.” Just after 2 A.M. on…

Keep Reading

CIA Director John Brennan told lawmakers on Thursday that people at the CIA have indeed been held accountable for the agency’s post-9/11 torture program. Brennan refused, however, to get into the details publicly, saying the matter is classified. He made the claims during a public hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Is it still the case that no one has been held accountable for the systemic failures that the agency has acknowledged?” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the CIA chief during the proceedings. Wyden referenced the…

Keep Reading

The White House on Tuesday morning signaled that it would support legislation passed by Congress to update and modernize how agencies handle Freedom of Information Act requests. The House approved the FOIA Improvement Act on Monday night. The legislation passed the Senate in March by unanimous consent. The bill would require federal bodies to default on the side of transparency when processing records requests. It stipulates that if agencies intend to withhold documents, they have to provide specific reasons why release could lead to “foreseeable…

Keep Reading

President Obama will reportedly not act on his own to close the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, instead submitting to the whims of a Congress committed to keeping the facility open indefinitely. A source close to the deliberations told Reuters that the administration has ruled out unilateral action on Gitmo due to a lack of popular support and the hyper-politicized season. “It was just deemed too difficult to get through all of the hurdles that they would need to get through, and the level…

Keep Reading

The Supreme Court found that a judge previously involved in a capital case as a prosecutor should have recused himself during an appeal launched by the death row inmate. Justices ruled Thursday, in a 5-3 vote, that then-Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille violated the Due Process rights of Terrence Williams in 2012, when the jurist declined to withdraw from Williams’ challenge of his conviction. His death sentence was upheld by the state’s high court. “A constitutionally intolerable probability of bias exists when the…

Keep Reading

The head of the US intelligence community waded into the very public culture war being waged over the LGBT rights. According to a press release issued Wednesday, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a conference of spies that they “have the chance to lead by example” on transgender issues. “So I’ll say without equivocation…in [intelligence community] facilities…you can use whatever restroom you feel comfortable and safe in,” Clapper said. He made the speech at the Fifth Annual Intelligence Community Pride Summit. The ceremonies applaud “officers for sharing their…

Keep Reading

Democratic Senators lodged complaints with the Obama Administration on Tuesday for not nominating a new inspector general to keep watch over the Central Intelligence Agency. Addressing the Senate Intelligence Committee during a hearing to consider Susan Gibson, the president’s nominee to head the IG desk at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) hit out at watchdog vacancies throughout the intelligence community. “This month,” Feinstein noted in prepared remarks, “the NSA inspector general will be stepping down and the CIA has been without a Senate-confirmed…

Keep Reading

A group of House Democrats blasted legislation signed into law last month by President Obama, saying it will expand Drug War-style punishments for low-level criminals. The lawmakers criticized the measure for exposing more people to mandatory minimum sentences, while “lowering the intent requirement” needed to prove a defendant conspired to import drugs into the United States. Before the Transnational Drug Trafficking Act of 2015 (TDTA) was signed into law, prosecutors had to demonstrate that the accused knew the drugs were destined for the US. “We…

Keep Reading