British intelligence has rejected claims that it was asked by the administration of former President Barack Obama to spy on then-President Elect Donald Trump after the 2016 presidential election. The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the equivalent of America’s National Security Agency, says it never happened. It is true that the GCHQ, which works closely with the...
Category: Surveillance
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China & the Uighurs: The Orwellian Future Arrives With Western Help
The appalling story of how China is suppressing the Uighurs (pronounced “We-Gurs”), a non-Chinese ethnic group, is one of the most undercovered stories of the day. I too have neglected this mind-boggling story, an error I plan to correct in the weeks and months ahead with more coverage of the plight of the Uighurs and...
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How the FBI Profiles: From Bookstores to ‘Black Identity Extremists’
Last month Professor Joshua Clark Daniels excavated a forgotten story from the files of the FBI: the Bureau’s surveillance of black-owned bookstores from 1968 to 1974. Spying on bookstores might seem quaint in the the age of mass surveillance but there is a connection: how U.S. intelligence agencies see and understand their most vocal and...
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Mexican Cartels Use Israeli Spyware to Target Journalists, Investigators Say
From Citizen Lab, and interdisciplinary investigators from the University of Toronto: On May 15th, 2017, journalist Javier Valdez was shot dead as he left the offices of Riodoce, the newspaper that he founded to investigate cartels and organized crime in Sinaloa, Mexico. His killers pulled him from his car, shot him a dozen times, and stole...
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Mass Surveillance Program Ended By Trump Uncovered Exactly One Case of Terrorism
The mass surveillance program, launched by President Bush, defended by President Obama, and now reportedly discontinued by President Trump, was spectacularly unsuccessful at achieving its stated goal of making Americans safer. Susan Landau, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, explains: While initial statements by the intelligence community brought up 54 incidents in...