Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A confidential Justice Department legal opinion on the extent of the FBI’s surveillance authority does not have to be released to the public, a federal appeals court ruled, the Washington Post reports. The January 2010 memo gave the FBI permission to gather phone call records from telecommunications companies. The U.S. Court of…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The FBI was listening to Trenton Mayor Tony Mack’s cell phone calls for nearly six months under the authority of a court. But that authorization ended two days after agents raided Mack’s home last summer, the NJ.com reports. Government records now suggest agents continued to tap Mack’s phone, raising major questions surrounding…
 By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN New York Times The twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com President Obama’s nominee to lead the FBI, James Comey, is likely to face scrutiny over government surveillance following the discovery that the NSA had access to virtually all Americans’ phones, The Wall Street Journal reports. That’s because Comey, a former prosecutor, is intimately familiar with surveillance. In 2004, Comey threatened to resign…
