SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 48

Tuesday marks the final day for public comment on a subtle Justice Department rule change that, if approved, would give law enforcement the ability to hack into millions of computers belonging to users not accused of any wrongdoing. The DOJ has proposed that rules of criminal procedure should give judges more latitude in issuing computer search warrants. Under the offered amendment, law enforcement would be able to obtain a warrant to pry into any computer that is using “technological means” to conceal its location. The…

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American ground forces have engaged in a flurry of activity in Afghanistan since October, The New York Times reported Thursday, in a “spike in raids” that clashes with how the Obama administration is characterizing ongoing US operations in the country. US troops were “playing direct combat roles” in the missions, despite the Obama administration’s claims that American troops would, at the start of this year, only be supporting their Afghan allies. “It’s all in the shadows now,” one former Afghan official who still advises Kabul’s…

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A bipartisan group of Senators is endorsing a lawsuit that seeks to force the Obama administration to hand over secret legal justifications for targeting and killing American citizens without a trial. In an amicus brief filed on Wednesday before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) joined three of his Democratic colleagues, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), to call for the disclosure of the legal memos, which were prepared by the Department of Justice’s Office of…

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Five months after launching military operations against the Islamic State, the White House has finally submitted draft legislation to Congress to approve of the mission. But despite the seeming futility of the exercise, lawmakers aren’t keen on rubberstamping the initiative. Legislators have expressed doubt, in particular, about the administration’s language on ground troops and the bill’s lack of a repeal for prior legislation that the administration has used to justify the ongoing war. “I have serious concerns about the breadth and ambiguity of this proposal,”…

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A lawsuit brought by a digital civil liberties group to curtail mass NSA surveillance hit a wall after a California district court sided with the government, and validated its argument that the state secrets doctrine protects the program that was challenged. But on Tuesday, that same organization launched a new legal battle against a different spying program deployed by the feds against Americans citizens. Judge Jeffery White told the Electronic Frontier Foundation that their clients, former AT&T customers including the case’ namesake, Carolyn Jewel, lacked…

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The first day of a pre-trial hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was cut short on Monday after one of the defendants said he recognized a courtroom linguist while being tortured ten years ago at a CIA black site. “The problem is I cannot trust him because he was working at the black site with the CIA and we know him from there,” said Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of five men facing a military trial for their alleged roles plotting the 9/11 attacks. According to…

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A federal judge in Washington has prevented the public release of information about a 2011 assassination plot targeting organizers of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Houston. US District Judge Rosemary Collyer said Monday that the FBI was correct in refusing to release documents about the alleged conspiracy after reviewing the material herself. The judge’s findings, in the court’s eyes, validate the federal agency’s claims that it was protecting informants within “organized violent groups”–a claim that the plaintiff in the case still contests. The lawsuit…

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