The Sunlight Foundation has ranked Massachusetts among the worst states in the nation on government transparency. Journalist Joshua Eaton’s recent correspondence with the Boston Police Department shows just how absurd that secrecy looks on the ground. In June 2014, fellow Boston-based muckraker Evan...
In his first public comments on the US drone campaign in Pakistan, President Obama described it as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans, hit American...
The New York Times has filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security over access to department assessments of DHS-funded “fusion centers” written between 2009 and 2014. The centers—created by DHS after 9/11 in an attempt to facilitate information sharing about terrorism...
As the battle over digital security heats up, with the FBI and law enforcement on one side and security experts and even intelligence officials on the other, it’s more important than ever to shine a light on the government’s efforts to defeat...
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he has special access to classified information about United States intelligence operations. As I’ve written about before, Senator Wyden has repeatedly used that special access to warn the American people about gaps between...
Last night, we learned some startling news about the Department of Justice’s battle against Apple: the FBI claims that an outside party recently demonstrated to the FBI a way to break into Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone, and so the DOJ has hit the...
The advocacy organization Color of Change is mobilizing its members to ask FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to require transparency and policy commitments before authorizing local police departments to use controversial cell site simulator technology known as stingrays. The group’s message to the...
After considering some 50 amendments to the popular legislation, the Massachusetts state senate today unanimously voted to approve strong public records reform legislation. Following the passage of weaker legislation from the house, the two chambers must now meet to hammer out a...
Granting the ACLU and the public access to staffing, budgetary, and statistical information about the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and FBI would mean “the public would know where the FBI was putting its resources,” warned an Assistant US Attorney in...
Please note that by playing this clip YouTube and Google will place a long term cookie on your computer. Watch a Privacy International activist and a Vice News journalist hunt stingray cell site simulators outside the Ecuadorian embassy (where Julian Assange is...