In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.
Former Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, recalls a cryptic telephone call from the White House in August 2004: "Come on over. We've got something to tell you."
For a decade, members of Washington’s political establishment have derided civil libertarians, mocking their warnings about the slow but dangerous creep of the Surveillance State.
For a decade, members of Washington's political establishment have derided civil libertarians, mocking their warnings about the slow but dangerous creep of the Surveillance State. Sen. John McCain, one of Big Brother's most vocal cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, recently referred to his colleagues who expressed concern about the Obama administration's use of drones as "wacko birds."
Embarrassed by national security leaks of historic proportions, the White House rebutted accusations Monday by the disillusioned former government contractor who leaked the surveillance secrets that President Obama is no different from President George W. Bush in his anti-terrorism tactics.
The London Guardian newspaper has disclosed that an order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April has directed Verizon Business Network Services to turn over all its daily records to the U.S. government's National Security Agency during the term of the order, which lasts until mid-July.
Just before former Massachusetts Gov. Argeo Paul Cellucci announced publicly that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he told the chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School that he was determined to do something to turn the diagnosis into a positive.
The National Security Agency's collection of phone data from all of Verizon's U.S. customers is just the "tip of the iceberg," says a former NSA official who estimates the agency has data on as many as 20 trillion phone calls and emails by U.S. citizens.
As congressional Republicans' chief investigator, Rep. Darrell E. Issa is following in the footsteps of his predecessors at the helm of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who often used the post to keep the pressure on presidents of the opposite party.
