SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 55

The Justice Department gave millions of dollars in grant money to the Cleveland police while it was investigating the force for repeated civil rights abuses. The department’s Civil Rights Division announced Thursday that it discovered the city’s police repeatedly “using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment” after conducting a two-year long investigation. But as the Justice Department was compiling an exhaustive list of the cops’ abuses, it was funneling lucrative grant money into the force’s coffers. In September, the Cleveland Division of Police…

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Over the span of six months between 2013 and 2014, the intelligence community’s inspector general conducted more than two-dozen investigations and informed the White House that it’s looking into claims about a spying database that “improperly included US persons’ data.” The probe was revealed by a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Federation of American Scientists’ Steven Aftergood. Aftergood’s query compelled the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to hand over a redacted semi-annual report documenting the inspector general’s activities between…

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The Pentagon claims that a lengthy report released Thursday shows it has improved how it deals with sexual assault. But critics argue that the problem is still grave and systemic, and the 2015 defense spending bill winding its way through Congress might not leave much room for improvement. While the Department of Defense found that victims appear less frightened to report sex crimes and that assaults are on the decline, it also admitted that 62 percent of victims who reported transgressions this year faced retaliation.…

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The National Security Agency’s warrantless telephone metadata collection will end tomorrow if President Obama declines to reauthorize the program. The administration must seek approval from the top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court every 90 days to continue the bulk call record collection. The last court order was issued on Sept. 11. Since the program was revealed last June by journalists working with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it has sparked a debate across the country about the government’s surveillance capabilities. A federal judge last December…

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When the House and Senate Armed Services Committees released their new defense spending authorization bill this week, it was missing a key provision on closing the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In hammering out the agreement, lawmakers stripped out a measure that would have given President Obama the authority to transfer Guantanamo prisoners to the United States as long as it was in-line with US national security interests and addressed public safety risks. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who was responsible for…

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Two influential Senators have written to the National Archivist demanding he stop the CIA’s attempts to destroy emails written by former employees and contractors. “We are concerned that this policy would undermine the ability of citizens to understand how their government works and hold it accountable,” said Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) in a letter sent Monday to archivist David Ferriero. “A plan to delete the majority of emails at any agency should raise great concern,” the lawmakers added. In January of…

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Secretary of State John Kerry has the power to revoke Americans’ passports, but one diplomat said that he will only do it on the recommendation of law enforcement officials. Ambassador Robert Bradtke, a State Department adviser on the conflict in Syria, made the remarks Tuesday before a House Foreign Affairs joint subcommittee. He cited the lack of Justice Department appeal as the reason why no US citizen fighting for an Islamist militia in Syria has had the travel document rescinded. “This is something we would only do in relatively…

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