US Persons on Military Intelligence Sharing Databases
Steven Aftergood catches Charles McCullough, the Intelligence Community Inspector General who has resisted exercising oversight over spying, doing his job. “A civilian employee with the Army...
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The SEKRIT Drones in Hillary’s [Staffers’] Emails
From the start of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, I’ve maintained that there are real reasons to be critical of her use of a private email. There are big governance reasons to be concerned that...
View ArticleConfirmed: Intelligence Community Claimed Credit and Top Secret Status for...
Back when the beltway first declared that Hillary Clinton’s emails (by which they meant, but often didn’t specify, emails received by Hillary) included two Top Secret emails, I warned about being...
View ArticleWhat Agency Is Claiming Hillary Received SAP Emails?
The political world is a-twitter over the latest in the Hillary email scandal, Fox News’ report that there were emails sent to Hillary classified at the Special Access Program level. To Fox’s credit,...
View ArticleA Whole Lot of Inspector General Scrutiny on Intelligence Community Networks
Between this report, released today, on DOD Inspector General’s ongoing work and the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General Semiannual report, released in mid-January, the Intelligence Community is...
View ArticleThe CIA Is Preventing Congress from Learning that the Worst Allegations...
You probably heard that Jim Comey testified to the House Oversight Committee for over four hours today. You’ll see far less coverage of the second panel in that hearing, the testimony of Inspector...
View ArticleRon Wyden’s History of Bogus Excuses for Not Counting 702 US Person Collection
The other day, Ron Wyden gave a long speech on FISA Section 702, purportedly explaining why he was voting against Dan Coats to be Director of National Intelligence. Wyden voted against Coats because...
View ArticleSurprise! DOJ IG’s 1,403 Day Old Section 215 Investigation Had a Baby!
As longtime readers know, I have long tracked a DOJ Inspector General investigation into FBI’s use of Section 215 and other PATRIOT Act authorities. June 2010: Then DOJ IG Glenn Fine lays out...
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The NSA’s Retroactive Discovery of Tamerlan Tsarnaev
In the days after the Boston Marathon attack last year, NSA made some noise about expanding its domestic surveillance so as to prevent a similar attack. But in recent days, we’ve gotten a lot of hints...
View ArticleThe Black Holes in USA Freedumber’s Inspector General Reports
I’m still working on understanding all the crud that is included in the USA Freedumber Act. And for the first time, I have looked really closely at the language on Inspector General Reports, which...
View ArticleJames Clapper’s Anti-Leak Efforts Will Increase Information Asymmetry
As Charlie Savage and others report, Director of National Security James Clapper has instituted new efforts to crack down on leaks. The plan has two aspects. First, those agencies within the IC that...
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If NSA Commits Database Query Violations, But Nobody Audits Them, Do They...
Barton Gellman, at the beginning of the worthwhile video above, addresses something I addressed here: the only way the government can claim they haven’t “abused” the rules governing NSA activities is...
View Article1,186 Days into IG Report Covering Dragnet, Leahy Calls for Another
As I’ve been tracking, DOJ’s Inspector General Office — now led by Michael Horowitz — has been working on a report on the use of Section 215 and Pen Register/Trap and Trace authorities up through 2009...
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The Kiddie Porn and the UndieBomb
I was at a funeral Monday and Tuesday. So when I heard the FBI had busted the guy who leaked the UndieBomb 2.0 story, I assumed they had finally arrested John Brennan. But, as bmaz emphasized in his...
View ArticleThe Dog Ate Charles McCullough’s Homework
Let’s take the narrative the Federal Government wants to tell us about the Boston Marathon attack. Both FBI and CIA got tips from Russia in early- and mid-2011 implicating Tamerlan Tsarnaev in...
View ArticleCharles McCullough Too Busy Investigating Leakers to Investigate the Dragnet
As I noted back in September, Patrick Leahy and a bunch of other Senators asked the Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough to investigate the dragnet. In particular, we urge you to...
View ArticleWorking Thread on the Combined Marathon IG Report
I started reading the Combined IG Report on the Marathon attack (including the DOJ, CIA, DHS, and Intelligence Community IGs, but not NSA). And the whole thing looked so bogus from the start, I figured...
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The Day After Government Catalogs Data NSA Collected on Tsarnaevs, DOJ...
On Thursday, the Inspectors General of the Intelligence Community, DOJ, CIA, and DHS (but not NSA) released their report on the Marathon Bombing. While the public release was just a very condensed...
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