Salon.com > FOIA

Federal court: CIA can’t ignore FOIAs on drones

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 16:20:00 +0000

Secrecy and the CIA's drone program go hand in hand. But on Friday a D.C. federal appeals court ruled that the agency can no longer refuse to respond to FOIA requests on secrecy grounds, as the existence of the targeted killing program has now been publicly discussed by officials.

The ACLU filed a FOIA request in January 2010 seeking to learn "when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how and whether the U.S. ensures compliance with international law restricting extrajudicial killings," according to a release from the group. Initially, a district court permitted the government to refuse to respond to the FOIA, accepting the CIA's argument that it could not release documents because even acknowledging the existence of the program would harm national security. Such a move is called a "Glomar" response -- a "neither confirm nor deny" response to FOIA requests deemed legal in certain circumstances. The decision on the Glomar response in this instance has now been reversed, largely on the grounds that the existence of CIA drone wars are the stuff of mainstream political discourse (and Senate hearings, filibusters and more).

How the FBI tracked Aaron Swartz

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:37:00 +0000

Firedoglake's Daniel Wright has published once classified files on the FBI's tracking of Aaron Swartz, the online activist who committed suicide last month facing hefty federal charges.

The FOIA'd files, which became unclassified following the 26-year-old technologist's death, tell how the FBI began watching Swartz once he was suspected of downloading millions of records from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database -- a different case from the Justice Department's pursuit of Swartz over downloading academic articles from JSTOR.

"I remembered a macabre fact," wrote Wright on obtaining the FBI file, "upon death every American’s FBI file becomes unclassified with certain exceptions." The blogger added that "overall the files tell you more about the FBI than they do Swartz," noting how the FBI highlighted a host of Swartz's banal online activity:

5 chilling new ways police violate your rights

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:44:00 +0000

One of the most disturbing trends in law enforcement in recent years is the hyper-paramilitarization of local police forces. Much of the funding for tanks for Fargo's hometown cop shop comes from the Department of Homeland Security. The feds have a lot of money to throw around in the name of preventing terrorism, and municipalities want to get that money. As anyone who has done budgeting knows, the best way to ensure your funding stays high is to request a lot of money and spend it all.

As a result, every year the police get more tools, gadgets, weapons, and surveillance technologies that, whatever their stated purpose, serve to give cops greater capabilities to curtail the rights of anyone unlucky enough to be standing in their path.

We were going to list these in order from least to most creepy, but that proved far too challenging. So here are some cop tools you may not be familiar with, in no particular order.

The irony of joint FBI/private sector OWS policing

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 18:00:00 +0000

The intractable fusion of Wall Street and government interests was a major focus of many Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. There is some dark irony, then, that an FBI program specifically dedicated to the partnership between the FBI, DHS and the private sector monitored the protests, providing information and tips to corporate partners on interacting with and combating Occupy groups.

According to FBI documents obtained through FOIA by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) -- "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" -- produced a report specifically for the use of "the corporate security community" on the Occupy protests that aimed to shut down West Coast ports. DSAC also issued tips to corporate clients advising that they avoid "all large gatherings relating to civil issues." As Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) put it, such documents show "federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."