The sorry affair of David Petraeus and a cast of thousands of emails, Tampa-area socialites, and jokes about the book title “All In” really showed the power of the FBI as part of the architecture of the government surveillance state, able to snoop on almost every private email communication of every citizen, often without a [...]

Today, the House will vote on the extension of the FISA Amendments Act, a bill that was well-known to most Americans, especially on the left, in 2008, but which has gotten little if any notice these days. The bill not only granted retroactive immunity to telecom companies that cooperated in the warrantless surveillance of US [...]

I know this is normally The Dissenter’s beat, but I’ve grown pretty concerned at the shift of all law enforcement organizations into anti-terror operations. We have two more examples of that today. First, Charlie Savage writes that the FBI has stepped up their counter-terror operations. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been more [...]

The press is seemingly relishing the attacks on Wikileaks, for publishing information that major news organizations publish every day. I’ve seen plenty of headlines similar to “the noose is tightening around Julian Assange.” As you may know, the US domain host EveryDNS dropped Wikileaks, claiming that their other websites were threatened because of multiple denial [...]

I know Marcy has covered the hell out of this already, but clearly Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the Al Haramain case is a huge deal. There never was going to be before, or likely will be again, a case as cut and dried as Al Haramain. In this instance, the government accidentally handed over [...]

The Indianapolis Star has a fascinating tidbit in the ongoing Dawn Johnsen saga: Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has said he is likely to vote for her, which would give Democrats the 60 votes they need for confirmation if all Democrats stick together. But while Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., recently reversed positions and said he would [...]