Government Corruption Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption Media Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, flush with billions in new funding, is seeking "advanced AI" technologies to surveil urban residential areas, increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems, and even the ability to see through walls. A CBP presentation for an "Industry Day" summit with private sector vendors ... lays out a detailed wish list of tech CBP hopes to purchase. State-of-the-art, AI-augmented surveillance technologies will be central to the Trump administration's anti-immigrant campaign, which will extend deep into the interior of the North American continent. [A] reference to AI-aided urban surveillance appears on a page dedicated to the operational needs of Border Patrol's "Coastal AOR," or area of responsibility, encompassing the entire southeast of the United States. "In the best of times, oversight of technology and data at DHS is weak and has allowed profiling, but in recent months the administration has intentionally further undermined DHS accountability," explained [Spencer Reynolds, a former attorney with the Department of Homeland Security]. "Artificial intelligence development is opaque, even more so when it relies on private contractors that are unaccountable to the public – like those Border Patrol wants to hire. Injecting AI into an environment full of biased data and black-box intelligence systems will likely only increase risk and further embolden the agency's increasingly aggressive behavior."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and immigration enforcement corruption.

Since 2000, the food and chemical industry has greenlighted nearly 99% of food chemicals introduced onto the market without federal safety review. This problematic situation happened through companies exploiting a loophole in food chemicals laws allowing them to decide which chemicals are safe to consume. Since 2000, food and chemical companies have petitioned the FDA only 10 times to approve a new substance. By contrast, they have added 863 chemicals, through the "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, loophole. That's 98.8% of new food chemicals. The loophole lets those companies – not the FDA – decide when a substance is safe. The GRAS loophole was intended to apply narrowly to common ingredients like sugar, vinegar and baking soda. But as EWG's analysis shows, the loophole – not FDA safety review – has become the main way new chemicals are allowed into food. A GRAS determination shows a company believes "the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use." The company can submit a notice to the FDA about its conclusion, through a process that is entirely voluntary. Even Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for food, admitted in 2014 that the FDA "simply do[es] not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals."

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption and toxic chemicals.

In California, the law explicitly protects the privacy of power customers, prohibiting public utilities from disclosing precise "smart" meter data in most cases. Despite this, Sacramento's power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. For a decade, the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District (SMUD) has been searching through all of its customers' energy data, and passed on more than 33,000 tips about supposedly "high" usage households to police. Ostensibly looking for homes that were growing illegal amounts of cannabis, SMUD analysts have admitted that such "high" power usage could come from houses using air conditioning or heat pumps or just being large. And the threshold of so-called "suspicion" has steadily dropped, from 7,000 kWh per month in 2014 to just 2,800 kWh a month in 2023. This scheme has targeted Asian customers. SMUD analysts deemed one home suspicious because it was "4k [kWh], Asian," and another suspicious because "multiple Asians have reported there." Sacramento police sent accusatory letters in English and Chinese, but no other language, to residents who used above-average amounts of electricity. Last week, we filed our main brief explaining how this surveillance program violates the law and why it must be stopped. This type of dragnet surveillance ... is inherently unreasonable.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

Reviewing individuals' social media to conduct ideological vetting has been a defining initiative of President Trump's second term. As part of that effort, the administration has proposed expanding the mandatory collection of social media identifiers. By linking individuals' online presence to government databases, officials could more easily identify, monitor, and penalize people based on their online self-expression, raising the risk of self-censorship. Most recently, the State Department issued a cable directing consular officers to review the social media of all student visa applicants for "any indications of hostility towards the citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles of the United States," as well as for any "history of political activism." This builds on earlier efforts this term, including the State Department's "Catch and Revoke" program, which promised to leverage artificial intelligence to screen visa holders' social media for ostensible "pro-Hamas" activity, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' April announcement that it would begin looking for "antisemitic activity" in the social media of scores of foreign nationals. At the border, any traveler, regardless of citizenship status, may face additional scrutiny. U.S. border agents are authorized to ... examine phones, computers, and other devices to review posts and private messages on social media, even if they do not suspect any involvement in criminal activity or have immigration-related concerns.

Note: Our news archives on censorship and the disappearance of privacy reveal how government surveillance of social media has long been conducted by all presidential administrations and all levels of government.

The Trump administration Monday released more than 230,000 pages of previously classified documents related to the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the release, carried out under President Donald Trump's executive order directing full transparency on the assassinations of King, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The documents ... include FBI investigation details, internal memos tracking case progress and information about James Earl Ray's former cellmate who claimed Ray discussed an assassination plot. The files also contain foreign evidence from Canadian police and CIA records on the international manhunt for Ray. Unlike the JFK assassination files released under federal law, the King documents had never been digitized. Conspiracy theories have circulated about King's death, in part prompted by Ray's claims that his confession had been forced and the revelation of illegal surveillance of King by the FBI and the CIA. The FBI also allegedly attempted to get King to commit suicide. Some in King's family also believe that the government and possibly the Mafia were involved in the assassination and that Ray was set up to take the fall. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations determined in 1979 that there was a likelihood Ray acted for monetary gain and that there was likely a conspiracy behind the shooting.

Note: Few people know about the buried 1999 King Family civil trial in Memphis, where it took a jury only one hour to determine that the US government was behind the assassination of King. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation that uncovers the dark truths behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on political assassinations.

Digital technology was sold as a liberating tool that could free individuals from state power. Yet the state security apparatus always had a different view. The Prism leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed a deep and almost unconditional cooperation between Silicon Valley firms and security apparatuses of the state such as the National Security Agency (NSA). People realized that basically any message exchanged via Big Tech firms including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. could be easily spied upon with direct backdoor access: a form of mass surveillance with few precedents ... especially in nominally democratic states. The leaks prompted outrage, but eventually most people preferred to look away. The most extreme case is the surveillance and intelligence firm Palantir. Its service is fundamentally to provide a more sophisticated version of the mass surveillance that the Snowden leaks revealed. In particular, it endeavors to support the military and police as they aim to identify and track various targets – sometimes literal human targets. Palantir is a company whose very business is to support the security state in its most brutal manifestations: in military operations that lead to massive loss of life, including of civilians, and in brutal immigration enforcement [in] the United States. Unfortunately, Palantir is but one part of a much broader military-information complex, which is becoming the axis of the new Big Tech Deep State.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in the intelligence community and in Big Tech.

The Obama administration knew before and after the 2016 election that Russia did not affect the vote's outcome through cyberattacks. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard made public more than 100 pages of emails, memos and other records cataloguing what she called Obama officials' "conspiracy to subvert President Trump's 2016 victory." Both before and after Democrat Hillary Clinton's loss, the US Intelligence Community assessed that Russia played no significant role influencing the election. Among the documents was a Sept. 12, 2016, Intelligence Community Assessment that determined "foreign adversaries do not have and will probably not obtain the capabilities to successfully execute widespread and undetected cyber attacks" on election infrastructure. On Dec. 7, 2016, then-DNI James Clapper's office also concluded: "We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results." But those findings were suppressed after the FBI ... said it was going to "dissent" from the draft's conclusions "based on some new guidance." Clapper then spearheaded an alternative intelligence report claiming the Kremlin orchestrated hackings of Democratic National Committee emails ... and intervened in the presidential contest in favor of Trump. [Obama] ordered a new intelligence assessment from the CIA, FBI, NSA and DHS ... which ended up including the since-debunked dossier produced by former MI6 spy Christopher Steele.

Note: The security firm CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the alleged Russian hack of DNC servers in 2016 and found no proof that any emails from the system had been exfiltrated. All they found was inconclusive circumstantial evidence, which was presented as proof in media to the public. This deflected from the DNC and Clinton campaign's sabotage of Bernie Sanders and the damaging content of leaked DNC emails. In 2022, the DNC and Clinton campaign were fined by the FEC for obscuring their role in funding the debunked Steele dossier. Clinton also personally approved sharing another unverified claim with the press that alleged a secret Trump-Russia server connection, which helped trigger an FBI investigation later found to be discredited. Why are we not connecting the dots?

Thousands of federal troops have been deployed to Los Angeles since June 7 on the orders of President Donald Trump. The more than 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines ... were sent to "protect the safety and security of federal functions, personnel, and property." In practice, this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests. Since Trump called up the troops on June 7, they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment. The deployments are expected to cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars. Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In addition to guarding federal buildings, troops have also recently participated in raids alongside camouflage-clad ICE agents. "To have armored vehicles deployed on the streets of our city, to federalize the National Guard, to have the U.S. Marines who are trained to kill abroad, deployed to our city – all of this is outrageous and it is un-American," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass [said]. California National Guard soldiers also backed ICE raids on state-licensed marijuana nurseries last week. The troops took part in the military-style assaults on two locations. ICE detained more than 200 people, including U.S. citizens, during the joint operations. One man, Jaime AlanĂ­s Garcia, died. Experts say that the introduction of military troops into civilian law enforcement support further strains civil-military relations and risks violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Note: According to the Brennan Center for Justice, this use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement is likely illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act because it wasn't "expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress." The systematic militarization of domestic police forces is well-reported, and has been going on for years. Now, the National Guard is increasingly being trained to treat protesters like enemy troops. What happens to civil liberties when civil society is viewed by authorities as a battle-front?

In our first hearing of this Congress titled, "The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies: How Health Officials Downplayed and Hid Myocarditis and Other Adverse Events Associated with the COVID-19 Injections," I asked Dr. Joel Wallskog, an orthopedic surgeon injured by the Covid injections, to describe how those suffering from Covid injection injuries felt. His one-word answer: "Abandoned." The passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 ... led to blanket immunity for vaccines through subsequent regulation. An explosion in the number of vaccine doses on the childhood schedule was the result. Prior to 1986, there were 3 routine vaccines totaling 7 injections. Today the CDC's Maternal and Child & Adolescent vaccine schedules include 19 vaccines requiring 76 injections with 94 total doses of antigen. In August 1997, the FDA ... issued draft guidance to allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers beyond print media into TV and radio. According to one estimate, drug companies spent $10 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2024. That amount of spending has paid off handsomely for Big Pharma and its ability to control the narrative and suppress stories of drug and vaccine injuries. But to understand the true reality we face, there is nothing like hearing from those who have suffered the adverse events that are rarely acknowledged by the medical establishment, federal health agencies, and the corporate media.

Note: Watch the full Senate hearing video and read all statements from mothers and scientists who testified at hearing here. For video clips of witness testimonies, click here. Our well-researched and nuanced Substack reveals the undeniable evidence that COVID vaccine injuries and deaths were covered-up and censored. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccine problems and Big Pharma corruption.

Newly uncovered metadata reveals that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from what the US Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation described as "full raw" surveillance video from the only functioning camera near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. The video was released last week as part of the Trump administration's commitment to fully investigate Epstein's 2019 death but instead has raised new questions about how the footage was edited and assembled. WIRED previously reported that the video had been stitched together in Adobe Premiere Pro from two video files, contradicting the Justice Department's claim that it was "raw" footage. Now, further analysis shows that one of the source clips was approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds longer than the segment included in the final video, indicating that footage appears to have been trimmed before release. It's unclear what, if anything, the minutes cut from the first clip showed. The footage was released at a moment of political tension. Trump allies had spent months speculating about the disclosure of explosive new evidence about Epstein's death. But last week, the DOJ and FBI issued a memo stating that no "incriminating ‘client list'" exists and reaffirmed the government's long-standing conclusion that Epstein–whom the US government accused of committing conspiracy to sex traffic minors and sex trafficking minors–died by suicide.

Note: Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

For the past 12 years, I have tried to share moments beyond the dramatized images of battlefield action, emotional homecomings and veterans in crisis. I've photographed the often-overlooked everyday moments that make up this military life. The constant moves and goodbyes. Objects that make up this life that don't exist in civilian domestic spaces. The days after a deployment, when a service member "re-integrates" back into the family and into civilian society. John didn't start going to therapy until after he had turned in his retirement papers. He was concerned that it might jeopardize his career. I am on my computer when John leaves a notebook on my desk. He doesn't say anything. It is the journaling he has been doing with his therapist – her new strategy to get him to open up. He starts the journal with how many US soldiers and Afghan security forces were killed in each operation and what awards were given: Silver Stars, Bronze Stars with valor, Purple Hearts. I know the casualties are what weighs most heavily on him, but he is proud of the awards given to his soldiers. Then he goes into detail about a traumatic event he experienced in Afghanistan. As I read his vivid recollections of violence – which included body parts, trails of blood and the smell of burnt flesh – tears ran down my face. I am only beginning to understand what he has been through. John's career spanned the entirety of the 20-year "war on terror."

Note: Read about the tragic traumas and suicides connected to military drone operators. A recent Pentagon study concluded that US soldiers are nine times more likely to die by suicide than they are in combat.For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on war.

The daughter of a New Jersey police chief claims he repeatedly raped her for more than a decade as part of a "ritualistic" cult allegedly involving their neighbours, according to a shocking lawsuit she filed. Courtney Tamagny's allegations against Leonia Police Chief Scott Tamagny, his neighbour Kevin Slevin and others have starkly divided the small Bergen County borough. The 20-year-old claims her father and Mr Slevin heinously abused her in their home, alongside "ritualistic" worshippers in the woods near their house. "[Courtney was brought] into the woods in Rockland County New York, and there was what appeared to be other middle-aged men present with masks on their faces," the lawsuit claimed. "She recalls there being fire and animals being burned, and they would chant. She was sexually assaulted in those woods by defendant Slevin, defendant father, and some of the other men present," it further claimed. The alleged abuse began in 2009 when Ms Tamagny was around four years old, with the lawsuit claiming it continued until 2020, when she was 15. Both of Ms Tamagny's sisters were also allegedly subjected to abuse, according to the lawsuit, with their father allegedly using drugs to sedate them before assaulting them when their mother was either away or asleep. The mother, Jeanne Tamagny, joined Ms Tamagny as a plaintiff on the lawsuit and is in the process of divorcing her husband.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and sexual abuse scandals.

The United States Department of Justice this week released nearly 11 hours of what it described as "full raw" surveillance footage from a camera positioned near Jeffrey Epstein's prison cell the night before he was found dead. The release was intended to address conspiracy theories about Epstein's apparent suicide in federal custody. But instead of putting those suspicions to rest, it may fuel them further. Metadata embedded in the video ... shows that rather than being a direct export from the prison's surveillance system, the footage was modified. Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on digital forensics and misinformation, reviewed the metadata at WIRED's request. Farid is a recognized expert in the analysis of digital images. He has testified in numerous court cases involving digital evidence. "If a lawyer brought me this file and asked if it was suitable for court, I'd say no. Go back to the source. Do it right," Farid says. "Do a direct export from the original system–no monkey business." The footage confirms that from the time Epstein was locked in his cell at approximately 8 pm on August 9, 2019. However, the recording includes a notable gap: Approximately one minute of footage is missing, from 11:58:58 pm to 12:00:00 am. The video resumes immediately afterward. It looks suspicious–but not as suspicious as the DOJ refusing to answer basic questions about it.

Note: Followup reporting by Wired indicated that almost 3 minutes were cut before this footage was released. Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.

The letters the Food and Drug Administration sends to pharmaceutical companies explaining its decisions on drugs are a treasure trove of valuable information. The FDA has begun making drug decision letters public and is publishing past decision letters retroactively. The historical lack of transparency about FDA decision-making has allowed companies to spin the information to investors and shareholders. For example, if an FDA rejection letter explains that the applicant did not meet agency standards and tells the company to perform a new clinical trial to be reconsidered for approval, the firm might mislead shareholders by saying that the FDA had just asked for a few minor things. A 2015 analysis by the FDA found that drug companies avoided mentioning 85 percent of the agency's concerns about safety and efficacy when announcing publicly that their application had not been approved. In addition, when the FDA calls for a new clinical trial for safety or efficacy, that critical information is not disclosed about 40 percent of the time. As a result, capital can be wasted on futile therapies or companies misrepresenting their regulatory guidance. It is important to point out that when making decision letters public, the FDA will redact any trade secrets and confidential commercial information. At the same time, the deliberations of agency scientists are not the property of the drug's sponsor. The FDA does not belong to the industry; it belongs to the American people.

Note: The above was written by Dr. Marty Makary, the US Commissioner of Food and Drugs. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and Big Pharma profiteering.

President Donald Trump's Justice Department scrambled on Tuesday to answer questions after its leadership concluded there was no evidence to support a number of long-held conspiracy theories about the death of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged clientele. The Justice Department's memo on Epstein, released on Monday, concluded that after reviewing more than 300 gigabytes of data, there was "no incriminating client list" nor was there any evidence that Epstein may have blackmailed prominent people. The memo also confirmed prior findings by the FBI which concluded that Epstein died by suicide in his jail cell. A subsequent report by the Justice Department's inspector general later found that the Bureau of Prisons employees who were tasked with guarding Epstein failed to search his cell or check on him in the hours before his suicide. [FBI Director Kash] Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, a former podcaster, both previously made statements before working at the FBI about a so-called client list and often suggested that the government was hiding information about Epstein from the American public.

Note: Could it be that powerful people don't want the full truth about Epstein to be revealed? Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.

New evidence suggests that some of the highest-ranking officials in the Obama-era CIA and FBI perjured themselves regarding their claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin helped Donald Trump secure his victory in 2016. A newly released CIA review challenges their sworn denials to Congress that the Steele dossier – a discredited set of allegations about Trump funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign – was used as the basis for the years-long Russiagate probe that hamstrung President Trump's first term. The eight-page review conducted by career CIA analysts found the dossier did, in fact, worm its way into the text of the highly classified report known as an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) to buttress the thinly sourced, yet inflammatory allegation that "Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances." Former CIA Director John Brennan, for one, insisted in his sworn May 2017 testimony before Congress that the Steele dossier was not "in any way" used as a basis for the so-called ICA completed in late December 2016. Likewise, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper said in an official January 2017 statement that "we did not rely upon [the dossier] in any way for our conclusions." The CIA review shows that the unverified and now-debunked dossier was used as support for the intelligence analysis, not just as a sidebar as Obama officials have maintained.

Note: The security firm CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the alleged Russian hack of DNC servers in 2016 and found no proof that any emails from the system had been exfiltrated. All they found was inconclusive circumstantial evidence, which was presented as proof in media to the public. This deflected from the DNC and Clinton campaign's sabotage of Bernie Sanders and the damaging content of leaked DNC emails. In 2022, the DNC and Clinton campaign were fined by the FEC for obscuring their role in funding the debunked Steele dossier. Clinton also personally approved sharing another unverified claim with the press that alleged a secret Trump-Russia server connection, which helped trigger an FBI investigation later found to be baseless. Why are we not connecting the dots?

The first report of the Maha Commission made headlines in May when it raised concerns about a "chronic disease crisis" in children. Echoing language that [Robert F.] Kennedy campaigned on, the report argued that "the American diet has shifted dramatically toward ultra-processed foods" and that "nearly 70% of children's calories now come from UPFs, contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions". "The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare," the report found. It went on to describe the dismal state of nutrition research in the United States: "Government funding for nutrition research through the NIH is only 4-5% of its total budget and in some cases is subject to influence by food industry-aligned researchers." Kennedy has ordered the FDA to explore how to eliminate a policy that allows food companies to decide themselves whether food additives are safe, called the Generally Recognized as Safe (Gras) loophole. "That's a really, really big deal," says Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. "Ninety-nine per cent of compounds in food were added through this loophole." Several states are also pursuing policies that would limit spending from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) on "junk food".

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and food system corruption.

A new study of defense department spending previewed exclusively to the Guardian shows that most of the Pentagon's discretionary spending from 2020 to 2024 has gone to outside military contractors, providing a $2.4tn boon in public funds to private firms in what was described as a "continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing". The report from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and Costs of War project at Brown University said that the Trump administration's new Pentagon budget will push annual US military spending past the $1tn mark. That will deliver a projected windfall of more than half a trillion dollars that will be shared among top arms firms such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as well as a growing military tech sector with close allies in the administration such as JD Vance, the report said. The US military budget will have nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000. "The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021 did not result in a peace dividend," the authors of the report wrote. "Instead, President Biden requested, and Congress authorized, even higher annual budgets for the Pentagon, and President Trump is continuing that same trajectory of escalating military budgets." The growth in spending will increasingly benefit firms in the "military tech" sector who represent tech companies like SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril.

Note: Learn more about arms industry corruption in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen defended herself before the European Parliament Monday as she faces a largely symbolic no-confidence vote. Thursday's vote focuses on "Pfizergate" – a 35 billion euro ($38.5 billion) deal with Pfizer for up to 1.8 billion Covid vaccine doses that von der Leyen, head of the EU executive branch, negotiated ... with the company's CEO. The controversy began in March 2021 when von der Leyen bypassed normal EU procedures to negotiate directly with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla via text. The EU paid substantially more for the vaccines von der Leyen negotiated – 19.50 euros ($21.45) per dose versus 15.50 euros ($17.05) in previous contracts, according to leaked EU documents reported by European media – costing taxpayers billions. The text messages could contain vital information about how this price escalation happened and whether proper competitive procedures were followed. The scandal also involves concerns about the sheer volume of doses purchased. The 1.8 billion dose contract was signed when EU vaccination rates were already climbing, raising questions about whether such quantities were necessary. Critics point out that significant amounts of the vaccine supply now sit unused in warehouses across Europe. The European Court of Auditors published a damning report in September 2022 finding von der Leyen had conducted Pfizer negotiations improperly.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on COVID vaccine problems and government corruption.

Technology already available – and already demonstrated to be effective – makes it possible for law-abiding officials, together with experienced technical people to create a highly efficient system in which both security and privacy can be assured. Advanced technology can pinpoint and thwart corruption in the intelligence, military, and civilian domain. At its core, this requires automated analysis of attributes and transactional relationships among individuals. The large data sets in government files already contain the needed data. On the Intelligence Community side, there are ways to purge databases of irrelevant data and deny government officials the ability to spy on anyone they want. These methodologies protect the privacy of innocent people, while enhancing the ability to discover criminal threats. In order to ensure continuous legal compliance with these changes, it is necessary to establish a central technical group or organization to continuously monitor and validate compliance with the Constitution and U.S. law. Such a group would need to have the highest-level access to all agencies to ensure compliance behind the classification doors. It must be able to go into any agency to inspect its activity at any time. In addition ... it would be best to make government financial and operational transactions open to the public for review. Such an organization would go a long way toward making government truly transparent to the public.

Note: The article cites national security journalist James Risen's book on how the creation of Google was closely tied to NSA and CIA-backed efforts to privatize surveillance infrastructure. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.