The Protect America Act, a six-month modification to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that directly affects the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program, expires on Feb. 1. It’s looking more and more like the Congress will punt on this one, passing another temporary extension–perhaps as short as one month–while lawmakers try and sort out a […]

The debate in Congress about whether to allow Americans to sue companies that participated in the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance activities has little to do with punishing Big Telecom for its role in domestic spying. Rather, keeping alive an estimated 38 pending civil suits against AT&T, Verizon, and other companies has become congressional Democrats’ […]

Beginning in February 2001, almost seven months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the government’s top electronic eavesdropping organization, the National Security Agency, asked a major U.S. telecommunications carrier for information about its customers and the flow of electronic traffic across its network, according to sources familiar with the request. The carrier, Qwest Communications, refused, believing […]

No big surprise here, but an important admission from Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. In a letter to Arlen Specter (Penn.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, McConnell acknowledges that the president authorized the National Security Agency to undertake “various intelligence activities,” after the 9/11, aimed at preventing another terrorist attack. […]

I stumbled onto the terrorism enhancement story several months ago while reporting on another one: the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program. I learned about a trial of so-called “eco-terrorists” in Eugene, Oregon, part of the FBI’s Operation Backfire against the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. After lawyers for the defendants for […]

There’s no doubt about it: Daniel McGowan is a criminal. In January 2001, he stood lookout while other members of a radical environmentalist group set fire to the offices of the Superior Lumber Co. in the tiny southwestern Oregon town of Glendale. In statement issued after the fire, McGowan justified the after-hours assault, calling Superior […]

The National Security Agency’s warantless surveillance program is broader than officials have described. The Bush administration has assiduously avoided any talk about the actual workings of its program to intercept the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are suspected of having links to terrorists abroad. Officials’ unwavering script goes like […]

To help the government track suspected terrorists and spies who may be visiting or residing in this country, the FBI and the Defense Department for the past three years have been paying a Georgia-based company for access to its vast databases that contain billions of personal records about nearly every person — citizens and noncitizens […]