Domestic Spying Topics

Democracy Now! stories, posts and pages that relate to Domestic Spying

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  • James Bamford: "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America"

    The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny this week. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of American military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. We speak to James Bamford about the NSA’s spying on Americans, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications...
    Oct 14, 2008 | Story

  • Book: Cheney's Drive for Warrantless Spying Nearly Brought Down Bush Presidency

    We speak to award-winning journalist Barton Gellman about his new book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Gellman reveals Cheney played a crucial role in maintaining warrantless spying even after Justice Department officials began to doubt its legality in 2004. Gellman writes: "The history of the Bush administration cannot be written without close attention to the moments when Cheney took the helm — sometimes at Bush’s direction,...
    Sep 19, 2008 | Story

  • Eight Members of RNC Activist Group Lodged with Terrorism Charges

    Ramsey County prosecutors have formally charged eight members of a prominent activist group with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee are believed to be the first persons ever charged under the 2002 Minnesota version of the federal PATRIOT Act. The activists face up to seven-and-a-half years in prison. We speak with the father of one of those charged and the president of the Minnesota...
    Sep 04, 2008 | Story

  • Libertarian Presidential Candidate and Ex-Republican Rep. Bob Barr on Impeachment, Opening Up the Debates, and Why He Left the GOP

    A decade ago, Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr was serving as a Republican congressman from Georgia and led the Republican drive to impeach President Bill Clinton. Since then he has become a vocal critic of the Republican Party, the war in Iraq and the erosion of civil liberties. Barr joins us in St. Paul. [includes rush transcript]
    Sep 04, 2008 | Story

  • Main Core: New Evidence Reveals Top Secret Government Database Used in Bush Spy Program

    Salon.com has published new details about a top secret government database that might be at the heart of the Bush administration’s domestic spying operations. The database is known as "Main Core." It reportedly collects and stores vast amounts of personal and financial data about millions of Americans. Some former US officials believe that "Main Core" may have been used by the National Security Agency to determine who...
    Jul 25, 2008 | Story

  • Who's Paying for the Conventions? Corporate Sponsors Pour Millions into Party Coffers

    Less than two weeks after Congress granted retroactive immunity to telecoms involved in the Bush spy program, it’s been learned AT&T will be emblazoned on every delegate’s bag at the Democratic National Convention. Like Comcast, Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google and a host of other corporate sponsors, the telecom giant has donated over a million dollars to the DNC in return for prominent display space and access to elected officials....
    Jul 22, 2008 | Story

  • Obama Adviser Cass Sunstein Debates Glenn Greenwald on FISA Vote, Executive Power and Prosecuting White House Officials for War Crimes

    We host a discussion with Cass Sunstein, an informal adviser to Barack Obama and an outgoing University of Chicago Law School professor who has been described as "the nation’s most-cited legal scholar," and Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com. The two debate issues ranging from the FISA bill to Obama’s refusal to support calls for the prosecution of President...
    Jul 22, 2008 | Story

  • Maryland State Police Spied on Peace, Anti-Death Penalty Groups

    The American Civil Liberties Union released documents Thursday showing that undercover officers from the Maryland State Police spied on peace groups and anti-death penalty protesters for over a year in 2005 and 2006. The police summaries and intelligence logs reveal that covert agents infiltrated groups like the antiwar Baltimore Pledge of Resistance, the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a...
    Jul 21, 2008 | Story

  • AT&T Whistleblower Urges Against Immunity for Telecoms in Bush Spy Program

    The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. We speak with Mark Klein, a technician with AT&T for over twenty-two years. In 2006 Klein leaked internal AT&T documents that revealed the company had set up a secret...
    Jul 07, 2008 | Story

  • Hersh: Congress Agreed to Bush Request to Fund Major Escalation in Secret Operations Against Iran

    Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership, according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine. The operations were set out in a highly classified presidential finding signed by Bush, which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders. The...
    Jun 30, 2008 | Story