Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “Patriot Act”
Two years ago this month, a 29-year-old government contractor named Edward Snowden became the Daniel Ellsberg of his generation, delivering to journalists a tranche of secret documents shedding light on the government’s national security apparatus. But while Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers detailing one specific military conflict in Southeast Asia, Snowden released details of the U.S. government’s sprawling surveillance machine …
The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months. The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he …
Everyone knows Lord Acton’s famous quote: Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But few have heard this equally profound quote from Lord Acton: Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. Likewise, US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis said: Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for …
While some may be cheering the expiration of the Patriot Act – however temporary it may be – former presidential candidate Ron Paul notes: before Americans applaud a minor step toward transparency, they should recognize the corrosive nature of the CIA, a secret government operating far above the law. “[The CIA] is sort of the President’s own Praetorian Guard,” Daniel McAdams, …
With key provisions of the USA Patriot Act nearing a long-awaited expiration date, there remains one last adversary to take down in the fight for privacy rights: the corporate media. The most recent case is the New York Times, which on Thursday quoted several anonymous White House officials who warned that allowing the Patriot Act to sunset is akin to “playing national security Russian roulette” …
A growing segment of the American population is waking up to the implications of the Jade Helm 15 military operation to be conducted by Special Forces in conjunction with local law enforcement, the FBI, DHS, the DEA and Border Patrol across the entire Southwest. This massive unprecedented exercise will also commence in June sooner than first announced and last for 10 weeks through the …
This year, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) celebrated its 40th birthday in Geneva, at the Palais Nacions. Amidst speeches and backslapping within the coterie of the BWC crowd, the question that hangs in the air is—Are we really any safer? The Biological Weapons Convention was signed by the three depositary countries—Russia, Great Britain and the United States—in 1972 and entered …
Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region. The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history. The …
A stalemate in the Senate would leave the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) without powers they have used to track terrorists for years, say supporters of the Patriot Act. Without action by the end of the month, key provisions of the Patriot Act will expire, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argues would put the United States at …
Though the overwhelming and bipartisan passage of the USA Freedom Act in the House of Representatives on Wednesday portends the end of the NSA’s mass collection of Americans’ private telephone records, civil liberties groups found little else to celebrate as the ultimate passage of the bill, which now heads to the Senate, would re-authorize a number of worrisome programs by extending the …
