Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com New documents reveal more about the FBI’s cell phone surveillance group, which has the technology to listen to anyone’s calls, Slate reports. The surveillance method was revealed in new documents received by the civil rights group, Electronic Privacy Information Center, using the Freedom of Information Act. The technology, most commonly referred to…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com In the six hours before radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki entered the Pentagon for a luncheon in February 2002, he was being tracked by the FBI’s elite surveillance unit, Fox News reports. Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show the bureau’s Special Surveillance Group trailed al-Awlaki, who was killed by…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI continues to investigate Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings, who died in a car crash in June, for “controversial reporting,” Al Jazeera America reports. The bureau opened a file on Hastings on June 11, 2012 “to memorialize controversial reporting by Rolling Stone magazine on June 7, 2012,” according to records obtained…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI is releasing dozens of investigative files involving civil rights-era photographer Ernest Withers as part of a lawsuit with The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, Tenn., CNN reports. Among the files is an investigation of Martin Luther King Jr. while in Memphis in 1968, CNN reported. The bureau also examined the NAACP,…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Aaron Swartz, an online activist who committed suicide last month, was being closely tracked by the FBI, Salon reports. Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show agents monitored the 26-year-old’s activity on the internet and collected information on even banal online activity, Salon wrote. The probe began when the FBI…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A Tennessee death row inmate has been denied access to FBI records that he says would overturn his 1998 conviction for the murder of a Memphis motel clerk, the Associated Press reports. A federal appeals court reaffirmed the FBI’s right to redact information under the Freedom of Information Act. The redacted records,…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Journalist and author Seth Rosenfeld spent a lot of time and money digging up FBI records since the mid-1980s, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The FBI’s refusal to turn over records turned out to be costly after a judge ruled last week that the bureau owed Rosenfeld nearly a half million dollars…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A log of complaints against Secret Service employees shows a variety of misconduct, including an allegation that an agent was intoxicated while he was supposed to be protecting a foreign leader, Bloomberg News reports. The federal government released the 229-page log this weekend in response to a Freedom of Information Act by…
