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(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack.

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in...

That’s the revelation made by California Congressman Devin Nunes, who sits on the House Ways And Means Committee on Hugh Hewitt’s Show Wednesday night. Here’s the key part of that transcript: HH: The idea that this might be a Geithner-Axelrod plan, and by that, the sort of intimation, Henry II style, will no one rid me of this turbulent priest, will no one rid me of these turbulent Tea Parties, that might have just been a hint, a shift of an eyebrow, a change in the tone of voice. That’s going to take a long time to get to. I...

(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) told Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday to visit the Truman Library, “because we don’t know where the buck stops,” referring to scandals at the Justice Department. “Mr. Attorney General, I think that this committee has been frustrated for at least the last two and a half years—if not the last four and a half years—that there doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of responsibility in the Justice Department for things that have gone wrong,” Sensenbrenner said, during an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. “Now, may I suggest that you and maybe Mr....

Congrats to Hillary Clinton: She’s become everything she said she was fighting against when Nixon was in the White House. She was either liar then or a hypocrite now. If I had to pick one, I’d pick liar and hypocrite. Maybe when she runs from president 2016, she can help herself in the polls and go on Letterman or the Tonight Show or Jon Stewart and talk about whether she wears Obama’s boxers or briefs for him. It could help her. The press would just love it. You see Hillary and Barack can do no wrong. Because, like DC Mayor...

The White House on Monday distanced President Obama from the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press telephone records. “Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement. Carney said the White House had no involvement in the Justice effort. “We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department,” he said. The Justice Department said in a letter to the AP on Friday that...

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned.

The U.S. thwarted a bomb plot by al Qaeda's Yemeni branch aimed at bringing down a jetliner with a more advanced version of an underwear bomb used in a failed 2009 Christmas Day attempt, officials said Monday. The Central Intelligence Agency, working with foreign security services, was able to seize the bomb—which they believed was intended for a U.S.-bound flight—before the would-be suicide bomber was able to move ahead with his plot, officials said. Because the plot was headed off in its early stages, officials said the effort never represented a threat to Americans or to U.S. allies, nor did...

Here's a disturbing update to last week's amazing story about the U.S. mole who infiltrated al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and thwarted an airliner attack with a more sophisticated underwear bomb. Someone in Washington whose boss stood to gain from an election year story about alert intelligence operatives successfully protecting American voters at great personal risk leaked the heroic story to the Associated Press. The AP held the story until Obama administration sources said the CIA operative was safe. But, it turns out, the mole was not a CIA operative. The Obama administration had nothing to do with the...

Do you recall a time, a few years back, when the media wouldn't shut up about a supposed outing of an agent? Yup, the left and the media were pissed. I bet you could just imagine the firestorm of coverage that would result if instead of a former Secretary of State leaking a name it was our President....right? Guess not: Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. But as...

<p>Looks Like DOJ HAS BEEN TAPPING AP NEWS TELEPHONE LINES TO DISCOVER THEIR CONFIDENTIAL SOURCES IN CONGRESS!</p> <p>The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.</p>

Ohio justices: Cell phone searches require warrant COLUMBUS, Ohio — Police officers must obtain a search warrant before searching the contents of a suspect’s cell phone unless their safety is in danger, a divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday on an issue that appears never to have reached another state high court or the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Antwaun Smith, who was arrested on drug charges after he answered a cell phone call from a crack cocaine user acting as a police informant. Officers took Smith’s cell phone when he was arrested and, acting...

The White House is casting doubt on a recent claim by President Clinton that the release of historical records from his administration has been "slowed down" by aides to President Bush....[snip] The Bush White House's claim that it is not responsible for any backlog of Clinton-era records awaiting release was first reported last week in an Associated Press dispatch that was not widely circulated outside Arkansas.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate is trying to reach a deal before recessing next week on a bill that would ban the practice of impersonating someone to get telephone records, aides said on Wednesday, in light of a scandal at Hewlett-Packard Co. over how it probed news leaks. The Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees were negotiating to finalize the language of a bill before the recess to campaign for November elections, they said. "We're working on a compromise bill that would hopefully satisfy all parties," one of the aides said. "We every have intention of getting it done before...

SAN FRANCISCO Extending beyond the skullduggery that pried loose people's private phone records, Hewlett-Packard Co. investigators hunting for a boardroom leak shadowed the company's directors and tried to install snooping software on at least one reporter's computer, according to published reports. While the additional surveillance reported by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal may provoke more indignation about HP's probe, the tactics aren't likely to shift the focus of the inquiries into whether the company and its investigators broke any laws in their quest to identify the boardroom leaker. Authorities and politicians remain primarily concerned about the...

A federal prosecutor may inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to identify their confidential sources, a federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday. The 2-to-1 decision, from a court historically sympathetic to claims that journalists should be entitled to protect their sources, reversed a lower court and dealt a further setback to news organizations, which have lately been on a losing streak in the federal courts. ...The case arose from a Chicago grand jury’s investigation into who told the two [NYT] reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was...

Just heard on Fox News break something about Court ruling NYT has to give up phone records re: tipping off Islamic charity case. Nothing on web site yet

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 vote that prosecutors had a valid interest in seeing who had contacted the reporters. "We see no danger to a free press in so holding," Judge Ralph K. Winter wrote for the majority. The case involved stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon that revealed that the government...