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WikiLeaks' release of documents that provide details of alleged CIA hacking operations will be investigated by federal authorities, CNN reports. Citing several U.S. officials, CNN claims the FBI and the CIA will coordinate their reviews of how WikiLeaks acquired the documents, which officials said are in CNN's words "largely genuine," and if more will follow. The officials have yet to determine how much of the release is accurate or if any have been altered before being released.

Apparently not satisfied with just setting fire to the 4th Amendment, NSA boss Keith Alexander's next target is the 1st Amendment. In an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog , it appears that Alexander felt he'd have a friendly audience, so he let loose with some insane claims, including suggesting that the government needs to find a way to "stop" journalists from reporting on the Snowden leaks . As noted by Politco, General Alexander isn't a fan of journalists doing anything about these documents: "I think it’s wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents,...

Ladar Levison, 32, has spent ten years building encrypted email service Lavabit, attracting over 410,000 users. When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was revealed to be one of those users in July, Dallas-based Lavabit got a surge of new customers: $12,000 worth of paid subscribers, triple his usual monthly sign-up. On Thursday, though, Levison pulled the plug on his company, posting a cryptic message about a government investigation that would force him to “become complicit in crimes against the American people” were he to stay in business. Many people have speculated that the investigation concerned the government trying to get access...

First, if the PRISM program and all the rest of the government’s surveillance programs were so good and necessary, then why didn’t the feds catch the Tsarnaev brothers, who earlier this year blew up the Boston Marathon? Or Major Hassan, the 2009 Fort Hood mass-murderer? Or the “underwear bomber,” also from 2009, who nearly succeeded in blowing up the passenger jet flying into Detroit? Fourth, it’s not an accident that these Silicon Valley companies are supporters of Barack Obama. The greatest among these Obama supporters is Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of the largest of these companies, Google. Google gained a...

Renee Montagne from NPR spoke with liberal columnist and author Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who co-wrote the stories for the British newspaper The Guardian, today on the massive data-mining scandal. Greenwald dropped this bomb during the interview. “There are reported examples of the NSA, analysts at the NSA, using mechanisms they have access to. ABC reported several years ago through whistle blowers that they have used it to eavesdrop on people on whom they have personal grudges. There are isolated examples of the Patriot Act being abused. The problem is that the entire system operates behind a wall of extreme...

Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said. Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA's domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that "domestic collection" does not mean that the target is based...

A secret National Security Agency program to collect vast amounts of phone records has foiled multiple attempted terrorist attacks inside the United States, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters on Thursday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein did not specify how many attempted attacks had been prevented, or the nature of the threats, but the California Democrat said there had been more than one. The remarks were made to reporters following a meeting with senators who were concerned over a report in a British newspaper that the NSA had requested phone records from a division of telecommunications giant Verizon. According...

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers....

UPDATE: Why Govt. Source leaked PRISMAdditional information is being reported that confirms what most of us have always suspected. NSA is collecting all our email data, tracking our movements, our photographs, our documents, etc. Also factor in the fact that a court recently ruled that Obama is free to collect our DNA without being found guilty of any crime. National Security Agency (NSA) building designed for massive data collection in Utah:WaPo reports the following:The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection...

The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc.'s phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. The agency is using...

The Washington Post has published a remarkable report showing that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been monitoring the central servers of major Internet companies -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple -- and "extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time." Why did a government source leak information of this program, dubbed "PRISM," to the Post? What follows is perhaps the most chilling paragraph I've read to date about U.S. government surveillance: Firsthand experience with these systems,...

A top-secret April PowerPoint slideshow details how the National Security Agency partnered with nine tech companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Google, to monitor users activity. The NSA got direct access to these companies servers´ in order to directly watch user communications, according to the presentation obtained by the Washington Post and the Guardian. The program was nominally aimed at foreign actors, but as the Post reports, purely domestic communications could easily end up in NSA hands, so long as an algorithm estimated at least a 51 percent probability that they were foreign.

Since the Guardian story about the NSA seizure of the Verizon phone records of millions of Americans dropped last night, the administration and its allies have been asserting that privacy wasn’t invaded because intelligence agencies didn’t listen in on those calls. “The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard...

A timely video from Reason TV on the surveillance state’s newest venture: Cameras and microphones on city buses, just in case Al Qaeda decides to plan its next attack on municipal transportation within earshot of other passengers. Not every city does this, but the practice is spreading — early adapters include San Francisco, Baltimore, and Hartford with funding from, you guessed it, DHS. It’s darkly amusing to think of someone on the bus in one of those cities, reading the news today about the NSA/Verizon warrant on their cell phone, and worrying that the state has their phone records. Who...

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. The highly classified program, code-named PRISM, has not been disclosed publicly before. Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy. Even late last year, when critics of the foreign intelligence statute argued for changes, the only members of Congress who know...

The National Security Agency's warrant for metadata on every single Verizon call for three months is jaw-dropping in its scope. Except, well, the NSA's surveillance of our communications is most likely much, much bigger than that. Technology has made it possible for the American government to spy on citizens to an extent East Germany could only dream of. Basically everything we say that can be traced digitally is being collected by the NSA. We're supposed to trust that our government will be much better behaved, but they're not, and the White House almost admits it. That doesn't mean they're admitting...

IT GETS WORSE: Google, Microsoft, Apple Allowed Government To 'Watch Your Ideas Form As You Type' Brett LoGiurato Jun. 6, 2013, 6:19 PM The National Security Agency and FBI have been engaging in a highly classified program that mines data from leading U.S. internet companies, according to a bombshell report in The Washington Post Thursday night. The program is code-named PRISMand the Post reports that it was established in 2007. According to the report, the nine companies that "participate knowingly" in the program are Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. The program has not been disclosed publicly,...

CITIES PARALLEL EACH OTHER ON FACE-SCANNING DEBATE. Wednesday, July 25, 2001Reporter: Aaron Mitchell The mayor's of Tampa and Virginia Beach are a study in contrasts. ;It;s a complete invasion of privacy; The Mayor of Virginia Beach, Virginia left little doubt about her feelings regarding face-scanning technology in an interview with BayNews9.com today. Mayor Meyera Oberndorf;s town is separated by 1,000-miles from Tampa, but both cities are embroiled in an emotional debate over face-scanning its citizens. Virginia Beach, like Ybor City, is a popular entertainment center for tourists and locals alike, drawing millions of visitors every year. Both cities have...