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<p>The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.</p>

It was a confluence of magnificent proportions that led six agents from the joint terrorism task force to knock on my door Wednesday morning. Little did we know our seemingly innocent, if curious to a fault, Googling of certain things was creating a perfect storm of terrorism profiling. Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history. Most of it was innocent enough. I had researched pressure cookers. My husband was looking for a backpack. And maybe...

On Monday afternoon, the US Department of Justice appealed to civil rights groups and the general public across the country for “tips” on George Zimmerman in their pursuit of potential federal civil rights charges against the just-acquitted defendant in the Trayvon Martin killing. The DOJ actually went so far as to set up an e-mail address to allow such tips: Sanford.florida@usdoj.gov. The email address is slated to go operational by the end of the week.

WASHINGTON — Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of Americans’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions. President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the...

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides. No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in...

A new rule issued late Friday requires state, federal and local agencies as well as health insurers to swap the protected personal health information of anybody seeking to join the new health care program that will be enforced by the Internal Revenue Service. Personal health information, or PHI, is highly protected under federal law, but the latest ruling from the Department of Health and Human Services allows agencies to trade the information to verify that Obamacare applicants are getting the minimum amount of health insurance coverage they need from the health "exchanges." The ruling, explained on pages 72-73 of the...

Stewart Rhodes, the group's founder, has emailed me a statement about Snowden: He is an example of what needs to be done by anyone who has knowledge of such gross violations of our rights. We need more to stand up, because this is surely the mere tip of the iceberg of the infrastructure for a police state that is being built over us. This is about far more than supposed attempts to ferry out al Qaeda operatives. This is part of a growing Stasi and Checka style surveillance police state which tags, tracks, and prepares plans to detain dissidents with...

The German government is demanding explanations from the US after it emerged that its secret spying program PRISM collected more information from Germany than any other EU country. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to raise the issue when she receives US President Barack Obama in Berlin next week, her spokesman said on Monday (10 June). Data privacy is a very sensitive topic in Germany and the cluelessness of Merkel’s government about the affair may become an issue in September’s elections. … Germany’s hawkish interior minister—a Bavarian Christian-Social politician whose party is standing for re-election both on regional and national...

German outrage over a U.S. Internet spying program has broken out ahead of a visit by Barack Obama, with ministers demanding the president provide a full explanation when he lands in Berlin next week and one official likening the tactics to those of the East German Stasi. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday, potentially casting a cloud over a visit that was designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech... In a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on...

President Obama has said the outrage over the federal government’s decision to monitor citizens’ phone activity is all “hype.” He might want to share his opinion with the Air Force, which is ordering members of the service not to look at news stories about it. WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal. The notice applies to users of the Air Force NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network), which is the only way that many troops stationed overseas and on bases in the U.S. are...

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin Last February Maxine Waters in an interview stated “The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” She continued to reveal “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before”. This week Americans were surprised to learn that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting phone call information of American Verizon customers. Like all of the...

I immediately though of this movie about the E. German Stasi when these scandals broke a week or so ago, The Lives of Others. Has anyone seen it? Do you agree? http://youtu.be/KOdn9Yelxwo

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

In 1974, a Trabant -- an old East German car -- was chugging through the Thuringian countryside, a province in the communist German Democratic Republic.In its passenger seat sat Professor Joseph Ratzinger and at the wheel was Father Joachim Wanke, then an assistant at a local seminary -- the only one in the GDR.The two priests, writes Rainer Erice, a journalist for the German radio station Mitteldeutsche Rundfunk Thüringen (MDR), were on a harmless sightseeing tour, taking in the historic cities of Jena and Weimar. It was a moment of relaxation during Father Ratzinger's short visit to East Germany, the...

For a profession as covert as theirs, you might have thought the Stasi would kit out their spies with an inconspicuous wardrobe to aid them in their secretive work. However far from blending in, a new exhibition has revealed that operatives from the secret police of former East Germany looked astonishingly like, well, spies. Dodgy fashion secrets of the Stasi show how they seem to have taken a leaf out of the book of many a Hollywood screen spy.

  A major Internet company is under investigation by more than 30 state attorneys-general for alleged wiretapping violations. In Europe and now Texas that same company faces anti-trust inquiries on whether it unfairly penalizes its competitors, and its operations face criminal wiretapping inquiries throughout Europe, as well as in Australia and South Korea.Yet, inside the Beltway, it’s business as usual. The Obama Administration plans to award the company a sweetheart, no-bid contract for satellite imagery and access to classified data. After protests, the Administration backtracks, allowing other companies to bid, but still intends to award the contract to the...

Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue is a wanted man -- at least according to the liberal activist group that's put a de facto bounty on his head. A network of liberal groups known as Velvet Revolution started an ad campaign offering $200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the man whose trade organization has become a thorn in the side of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. The group is not leveling any specific charges of criminal behavior. Rather, it is casting a wide net, fishing for any whistleblowers from Donohue's past who might come forward...

Justification and Options for Creating U.S. Capabilities Establishing security is the sine qua non of stability operations, since it is a prerequisite for reconstruction and development. Security requires a mix of military and police forces to deal with a range of threats from insurgents to criminal organizations. This research examines the creation of a high-end police force, which the authors call a Stability Police Force (SPF). The study considers what size force is necessary, how responsive it needs to be, where in the government it might be located, what capabilities it should have, how it could be staffed, and its...

The Berlin Wall anniversary is a reminder that people smugglers were once regarded not as the scum of the earth but as heroes. Hartmut Richter was one. He fled East Berlin five years after the wall was built by swimming across one of the canals that separated the city. He then helped another 33 people escape by smuggling them across the border in his car. Twenty years on, he worries about what is called Ostalgie - nostalgia for the old East Germany. The former German Democratic Republic has largely been romanticised in film, fashion and design. But Mr Richter warns...

On Nov. 9, 1989, large crowds of German citizens from both East and West Berlin approached the Berlin Wall. At several border crossing points, East Berliners began shouting at the armed communist guards, demanding they open the gates and shove aside barbed wire obstacles. The confused guards yielded and disappeared. The gleeful crowds from the communist East and the free West mingled and mixed, occasionally waving at television cameras. Young men whacked at the wall's hideous concrete with pick axes and sledge hammers, then passed the tools to other eager hands. Make no mistake. The Berlin Wall was a prison...

In local German elections, the successor to East Germany's Communist Party makes major inroads, a potential challenge for Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of national elections in September. PARIS – Sunday’s local German elections favoring left parties were variously described as “a wake up call,” a “shock,” and a “setback” for Chancellor Angela Merkel. But while the results may affect her plans for Germany’s next governing coalition, few analysts expect the popular German leader will lose national elections scheduled for Sept. 27. Nevertheless, the former Communist Party of East Germany, now known as the Left Party, made startling gains in the...

Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, commonly known as the East German secret police or the Stasi was formed in 1950. Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed upwards of 274,000 persons in an effort to root out the 'class enemy'. Apparently, the Obama Administration has learned this lesson from history rather well. As of today, the White House is seeking out information on your family, your friends, your co-workers. They are seeking out information on anyone who may dare to speak out against health care reform. President Obama, we are not afraid. We will not be silenced. Wanted: Snitches There is a lot...

If you see anybody publicly opposing President Obama’s plan to implement a government-centric overhaul of the health care system, the White House wants you to report that person (or persons) ASAP. From the White House website: There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see...

Secret files of Communist East Germany's Stasi security police were sent to a film set for use as props, triggering an investigation into how such sensitive documents were obtained.The authenticity of the files were revealed when 15 former political prisoners were being filmed for a docu-play called Staats-Sicherheit (State Security) by public broadcaster ZDF. "It's just unbelievable that something like this could happen," CDU politician and former East German civil rights activist Vera Lengsfeld said. "This must be cleared up right away." One of the "prop" files was actually the genuine file of one of the actors. The German Government's...

The past can never be predicted, and perhaps never more so than when it comes to the German left. Two years ago, we learned that Nobel Laureate Günter Grass -- the literary scourge of all things fascist, especially America -- had himself been a member of the Waffen SS. Now comes another zinger that casts the radical political and social upheavals of the late 1960s in new and revealing light. The historical surprise concerns a turning point whose ripple effects were felt in Europe and beyond. On June 2, 1967, a West German policeman fatally shot an unarmed, 26-year-old literature...

Is Germany doing enough to figure out how much the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, influenced West Germany? Or would it prefer to not open old wounds? The discovery that the policeman who unwittingly helped triggered the 1968 student protest movement was a Stasi spy has unleashed a heated historical debate. The revelation that the policeman who shot Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 was a spy for the Stasi East German intelligence service has led to an intense historical debate in Germany. Ohnesorg's death radicalized many students and is seen as one of the factors that lead to the...

East German Spy Shot West Berlin Martyr The name of Benno Ohnesorg became a rallying cry for the West German left after he was shot dead by police in 1967. Newly discovered documents indicate that the cop who shot him may have been a spy for the East German secret police. It was one of the most important events leading up to the wave of radical left-wing violence which washed over West Germany in the 1970s. On the evening of June 2, 1967, the literature student Benno Ohnesorg took part in a demonstration at West Berlin's opera house. Mohammad Reza...

During the Cold War, the Stasi - East Germany's secret police - sent "Romeo" spies to the West. They seduced secretaries working in Bonn and tricked them into handing over secrets. More than 30 of the women were later prosecuted for spying. Now a former senior Stasi officer has told BBC News the women should be pardoned. One of those targeted by the Stasi more than 30 years ago is Gabriele Kliem, who still suffers the consequences. "It's like an invisible amputation of the soul," she says. "I am totally alone, I don't have any family, I don't have any...

Cologne, Germany - A senior executive at Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is under investigation in Germany over the claim that he was a German secret-police officer in the communist era, a prosecutor confirmed Tuesday. The newspaper Die Welt was set to name the man on Wednesday as Felix Strehober, chief financial officer of Gazprom Germania. It said it was possible he would be charged in Cologne with perjury after making a statutory declaration last year, 'I have never been a salaried employee of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) or the equivalent.' Die Welt said more than 100 pages in...

Grainy pornographic films made for officers of the People's Army of former Communist East Germany have surfaced in the Stasi files in Berlin. Movies with titles like Glass Dreams, Private Werner's Big Surprise and F***ing for the Fatherland were made by a secret unit set up within a barracks of the army in Biesdorf in East Berlin. While the west fretted about the Cold War turning hot, soldiers based at Biesdorf were measured all over to see if they were well-enough endowed to play in the blue movies that mimicked those of the west in both style and substance. Officially,...

The supermarket chain Lidl has been accused of using methods reminiscent of the Stasi secret police to spy on employees in Germany. The company, which has more than 400 stores in Britain, reportedly monitored details of intimate conversations and personal relationships. Surveillance teams would arrive early on Monday mornings to install between five and 10 miniature cameras in Lidl stores, according to the German news magazine Stern. The retail chain insisted that the cameras were not to spy on staff but for "the identification of possible misconduct" adding that "details and observations do not apply to casual conversation". But in...

E. Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying A once-jailed Cuban exile's research reveals how East Germany exported its repressive Stasi security system to Cuba, where it lives on today. MICHAEL LEVITIN BERLIN -- In the cavernous underground jail once run by East Germany's notorious Stasi security agency, Jorge Luís Vázquez leads a visitor into a dank, tiny, pitch-black cell, then slams the iron door shut. The world vanishes into darkness. Moments later, the door swings open and light returns. ''Well, how was it?'' asks Vázquez, a Cuban exile who was jailed in one of these very Stasi cells in 1987,...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall a German company plans to give the Trabant, a stinky two-cylinder car that became the symbol of communist East Germany, a new lease of life. The new Trabants will no longer have tiny engines, noxious fumes and plastic bodies but will retain the iconic design of the original -- like Volkswagen's new Beetle or the new Mini. The Trabant was the most common vehicle in the former East Germany and was produced without major changes for nearly 30 years. Known in the West as a "spark plug...

BERLIN — Researchers have discovered a Cold War “shoot-to-kill” order in what amounts to the clearest evidence yet that East German troops were given a licence to fire on people fleeing to the West, the Times of London reported. The written order, issued to Stasi secret service agents, states: “Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” It was found by a researcher in a regional archive of Stasi documents in the city of Magdeburg.

BERLIN _ The agency that manages the records of former East Germany's dreaded secret police has uncovered an order for border guards to fire on escaping citizens that is far more explicit than others on record, an official said in remarks published Saturday. Though the official East German border regulations said use of a firearm was to be considered an ''extreme measure in the use of force,'' the Oct. 1, 1973 order to border guards from the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, is much less reserved, Magdeburg's Volksstimme newspaper reported. ''Do not hesitate with the use of a firearm,...

I return from one week’s leave from my column, grateful for my old roost and in the mood to repay a favor by granting one, or attempting to do so. You must have the narrative of what happened one day last week. I was at work, with an assistant, on a long project, a book about the Goldwater campaign and the events leading up to it. At noon I had an e-mail from my oldest friend, a historian-belletrist, a knighted Englishman, whose message was that I must interrupt whatever I was wasting time on in order to catch a particular...

CHILDREN in formerly communist eastern Germany are to be given lessons next year about the dreaded Stasi secret police amid fears that their horrors have been forgotten. Feelgood films like Goodbye Lenin!, TV shows, books and a soon-to-open theme park dedicated to the lost socialist state of the German Democratic Republic have had an impact on children who were not born when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Some fear a rose-tinted view of what was a hideous tyranny has warped the entire German perspective of the state that was Moscow's most fervent eastern bloc ally in the Cold War....

German spymaster buried in Berlin Nov 26, 2006 Several hundred people gathered at a cemetery in east Berlin on Saturday to bury Markus Wolf, the legendary East German spymaster who died earlier this month at the age of 83. As head of the elite foreign intelligence division of the communist state's Stasi secret police, Wolf masterminded some of the Cold War's most audacious operations. He planted an agent close to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, a move which led to Brandt's downfall when the spy was exposed in 1974. "Markus Wolf was a true and loyal friend of my country,"...

Markus Wolf, known as Cold War spymaster, dies at age 83 By Jeffrey Fleishman Los Angeles Times Former East Germany spy chief Markus Wolf is seen in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate in this 1995 photo. WARSAW, Poland — Markus Wolf, the spymaster who epitomized Cold War espionage as head of the brutal and inventive East German foreign-intelligence service, died Thursday at his Berlin home. He was 83. The cause of death was not announced. Suave and elusive, Mr. Wolf was such an enigma that Western intelligence agencies didn't know exactly what he looked like during tense decades when a...

Markus Wolf, the sinister East German spymaster who spun his web across Western Europe, has died peacefully in his sleep — taking with him some of the darkest secrets of the Cold War.A solitary red rose was deposited by a sympathiser yesterday on the doorstep of his Berlin apartment block. But few tears were being shed for the 83-year-old Stasi general who dispatched some 30,000 agents to seduce Nato secretaries, buy up politicians, vacuum up secrets and train terrorists. Normally voluble politicians contacted for comment yesterday refused to utter a word, as if Mr Wolf were a demonic presence. “Let...

Markus Wolf, the former head of communist East Germany's foreign intelligence service, has died at the age of 83, his family says. Wolf kept such a low profile that Western intelligence services did not have his picture. But as a key figure in the feared Stasi security ministry, he was a highly influential figure in the Cold War. He was interviewed by the BBC last year over his role as a journalist at the Nuremburg trials in 1945-6. He said witnessing the evidence of the Nazis' crimes "influenced my later life because anti-fascism became the raison d'etre of my life".

“There can be no peace without honestly and maturely confronting the past.” --Joachim Gauck[1] It’s the middle of May, and I’m having breakfast at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin.[2]  I’m in Germany with other journalists on a visit sponsored by Atlantik-Brücke, a Berlin-based organization that promotes German-American friendship.   This morning I’m speaking with Dr. Helmut Holl, former state secretary for Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany.  Dr. Holl and I discuss the German Democratic (sic) Republic (sic) (GDR), which subjugated eastern Germany from 1949 to 1990 after National Socialist subjugation from 1933 to 1945.   A short walk from the Adlon is...

BERLIN - The official German archives released Wednesday a communist file that describes former West German leader Willy Brandt as an intelligence source, but experts said it was clear that Brandt was unaware he was being pumped for information. Brandt was one of 45 members of the West German Bundestag parliament in the 1969-1972 period who is named in a directory of East Germany's foreign espionage network. Historians say three Bonn parliamentarians were definitely communist spies at that time. Files on 16 persons were released. Most of the rest, like Brandt, who was chancellor 1969-1974 and died in 1992, were...

In most parts of Berlin today, one has to look hard to find the double strand of bricks embedded in sidewalks, >snip< the Berlin Wall was one of the most visible, despised, politically and ideologically charged boundaries on earth. It was also the quintessence of an unnatural border, one drawn not by nature, language, ethnicity or colonial hubris, but an artificial, man-made and deliberate cleaving of a culturally and linguistically homogenous society.  >snip<  very simply, no major world city had been cleaved in half so abruptly and violently. >snip< What happened in East Germany, many Germans are  realizing, was not...

May 12, 2006 — Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized. Lending support to the administration's defense of its anti-terrorism intelligence efforts, 63 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the secret program, disclosed Thursday by USA Today, is justified, while far fewer, 35 percent, call it unjustified. Indeed, 51 percent approve of the way President Bush is handling the protection of privacy rights, while 47 percent disapprove — hardly a...

Earlier this year, Congress launched an investigation into the sale of cell phone records after the FBI and Chicago Police warned that Web-based firms could sell their officers' calling lists to criminals. Now some of the companies under investigation for fraud are telling Congress they have provided personal information to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. On Monday, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., blasted the FBI after learning that Advanced Research Inc. sent Congress a letter saying the firm did work for the bureau. Attorney General Lisa Madigan has sued Advanced Research for allegedly using fraud to obtain Illinois consumers'...

A great many people still do not understand why turning down the DP World deal was a bad step for the United States. The issue actually has several levels of significance, and most people never saw beyond one or two of them. I won’t go into a prolonged discussion about why DP World did not threaten National Security, or why the policies of the U.A.E. post-9/11 are so much more important than their pre-9/11 policies. For this article, I will simply present a real-world example of the limits of paranoid security concerns: The Stasi. East Germany was not a fun...

BERLIN -The former East German secret service considered Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, one of the most dangerous critics of communism and spied on him starting in 1974, a leading weekly reported Sunday.The Bild am Sonntag released excerpts of vast files showing that the secret police, or Stasi, closely watched Ratzinger for years, collecting biographical details, information from spies and expectations of his next moves.Ratzinger's friendship with Polish-born Pope John Paul II - who Poles today largely credit with giving them the courage to challenge communism -was viewed by the Stasi as particularly dangerous."Since the mid-70s, Ratzinger has...

Secret police spied on pope 02/10/2005 13:59 - (SA) Berlin - The East German secret police spied on the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI for 15 years, targeting him as one of the Vatican's fiercest opponents of communism, according to a report published on Sunday. From April 1974 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the feared Ministry for State Security kept close tabs on the then theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, according to documents from the so-called Stasi archives printed in the weekly Bild am Sonntag. "Ratzinger is seen at the Vatican as one of...

Germany's new Left party, which could play a crucial role in deciding the next chancellor, faced acute embarrassment yesterday amid claims that at least seven of its MPs had collaborated with the Stasi, the East German secret police. The head of Germany's state-held Stasi archive, Marianne Birthler, said she had documents to prove the MPs had worked as "inoffizielle mitarbeiter" (unofficial collaborators). The public had a right to know which MPs had collaborated, she said, adding: "It's a question of trust." The revelation came as the Left party held its first meeting as a parliamentary group after Sunday's inconclusive general...