U.S.-China Surveillance

As I prepare a paper abstract for submission to an upcoming conference on national intelligence ethics, I’ve been thinking more about the historical context in which new federal standards for US “suspicious activity reporting” (the ISE-SAR) can be understood. Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) are an increasingly important tool of “domestic intelligence” distinct from the [...]

Former National Security Agency analyst turned whistleblower Russell Tice appeared on Keith Olberman’s Countdown last night, making new claims about the extent of NSA domestic surveillance during the Bush administration. Tice told Olberman that the NSA program was not only much wider than previous revelations suggested, targeting virtually everyone in America, but also that one [...]

The Information Office of China’s State Council released an English-language report on human rights in the US today. Section III of the report, On Civil and Political Rights, deals with issues of surveillance and data privacy. Here are some excerpts:
From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon provided data to federal authorities “on an emergency [...]

A report released by the US Government Accounting Office this month, Terrorist Watch List Screening (pdf), indicates that the number of people suspected of having terrorist ties and who appear on the official terrorist watch list ballooned to 755,000 names as of May, 2007. Most of the people on this list are Americans. According to [...]