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.

Funding for the Department of Defense and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy will reach more than $850 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, far higher than spending at the height of the Cold War or the peak years of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. While advocates of spending these enormous sums often argue that the money is needed to "support the troops," more than half of the Pentagon's yearly budget goes to private contractors, many of whom are making hefty profits at taxpayer expense while producing flawed products at exorbitant prices. One telling example of how these companies waste taxpayer dollars is how much they pay their top executives. In 2021 ... the CEOs of the top five contractors received compensation ranging from $18 million to $23 million each, including James Taiclet of Lockheed Martin, $18.1 million; David Calhoun of Boeing, $21.1 million; Gregory Hayes of Raytheon, $21.8 million; Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, $23.5 million; and Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman, $19.9 million. Since these firms receive a large share of their revenue from U.S. government contracts, much of this excessive executive compensation is essentially subsidized by the taxpayers. Defense executives wouldn't be able to earn multi-million dollar salaries if their companies weren't grabbing billions in Pentagon contract awards. In addition to campaign contributions, the industry spent over $100 million on lobbying in just the first three quarters of 2022.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the military and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

Timothy York knows what works to treat his decades-long opioid addiction: Suboxone, a medication that effectively quiets cravings. In 2019, he was relieved to learn that the federal Bureau of Prisons was starting a program to expand access to Suboxone. He's still waiting. In the meantime, he's been punished for using Suboxone without a prescription. Last year, after York, 46, was caught with the medication, he spent a month in solitary confinement and had his visitor privileges revoked for a year. York is not alone. The Marshall Project spoke to more than 20 people struggling with addictions in federal prison, and they described the dire consequences of being unable to safely access a treatment that Congress has instructed prisons to provide. Some have overdosed. The lack of Suboxone treatment comes amid a rise in drug-related deaths behind bars. A variety of substances are routinely smuggled into prisons and jails through mail, drone drops, visitors or corrections officers and other staff. In the last two decades, federal data shows that fatal overdoses increased by more than 600% inside prisons and more than 200% inside jails. Forty-seven incarcerated people died of overdoses in federal prison from 2019 through 2021. The data does not specify how many of these overdose deaths were caused by opioids and could have been prevented by medications like Suboxone. During the same period, correctional staff administered Narcan – a drug that reverses opioid overdoses – almost 600 times.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The Keller Independent School District, just outside of Dallas, passed a new rule in November: It banned books from its libraries that include the concept of gender fluidity. The change was pushed by three new school board members, elected in May with support from Patriot Mobile, a self-described Christian cellphone carrier. Through its political action committee, Patriot Mobile poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Texas school board races to promote candidates with conservative views on race, gender and sexuality – including on which books children can access at school. The issue has been supercharged by a rapidly growing and increasingly influential constellation of conservative groups. The groups have pursued their goals by becoming heavily involved in local and state politics, where Republican efforts have largely outmatched liberal organizations in many states for years. They have created political action committees, funded campaigns, endorsed candidates and packed school boards, helping to fuel a surge in challenges to individual books and to drive changes in the rules governing what books are available to children. The materials the groups object to are often described in policies and legislation as sensitive, inappropriate or pornographic. In practice, the books most frequently targeted for removal have been by or about Black or L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to the American Library Association.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.

Trust Lab was founded by a team of well-credentialed Big Tech alumni who came together in 2021 with a mission: Make online content moderation more transparent, accountable, and trustworthy. A year later, the company announced a "strategic partnership" with the CIA's venture capital firm. The quiet October 29 announcement of the partnership is light on details, stating that Trust Lab and In-Q-Tel – which invests in and collaborates with firms it believes will advance the mission of the CIA – will work on "a long-term project that will help identify harmful content and actors in order to safeguard the internet." Key terms like "harmful" and "safeguard" are unexplained, but the press release goes on to say that the company will work toward "pinpointing many types of online harmful content, including toxicity and misinformation." It's difficult to imagine how aligning the startup with the CIA is compatible with [Trust Lab co-founder Tom] Siegel's goal of bringing greater transparency and integrity to internet governance. What would it mean, for instance, to incubate counter-misinformation technology for an agency with a vast history of perpetuating misinformation? Placing the company within the CIA's tech pipeline also raises questions about Trust Lab's view of who or what might be a "harmful" online, a nebulous concept that will no doubt mean something very different to the U.S. intelligence community than it means elsewhere. Trust Lab's murky partnership with In-Q-Tel suggests a step toward greater governmental oversight of online speech.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and media manipulation from reliable sources.

The Biden administration took a public stand last year against the abuse of spyware to target human rights activists, dissidents and journalists: It blacklisted the most notorious maker of the hacking tools, the Israeli firm NSO Group. But the global industry for commercial spyware – which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data – continues to boom. Even the U.S. government is using it. The Drug Enforcement Administration is secretly deploying spyware from a different Israeli firm, according to five people familiar with the agency's operations, in the first confirmed use of commercial spyware by the federal government. The most sophisticated spyware tools – like NSO's Pegasus – have "zero-click" technology, meaning they can stealthily and remotely extract everything from a target's mobile phone, without the user having to click on a malicious link to give Pegasus remote access. They can also turn the mobile phone into a tracking and secret recording device, allowing the phone to spy on its owner. But hacking tools without zero-click capability, which are considerably cheaper, also have a significant market. Commercial spyware has been used by intelligence services and police forces to hack phones used by drug networks and terrorist groups. But it has also been abused by numerous authoritarian regimes and democracies to spy on political opponents and journalists. This has led governments to a sometimes tortured rationale for their use.

Note: Read about how NSO Group spyware was used against journalists and activists by the Mexican government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Newly released documents show an influential group that helps shape US food policy and steers consumers toward nutritional products has financial ties to the world's largest processed food companies and has been controlled by former industry employees who have worked for companies like Monsanto. The documents reveal the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a record of quid pro quos with a range of food giants, owns stock in ultra-processed food companies and has received millions in contributions from producers of pop, candy, and processed foods linked to diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other health problems. The findings are a part of a recently published peer-reviewed study that examined a trove of financial documents and internal communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) request. "It's incredibly influential so if the Academy is corrupt then nutritional policy in the US is going to be corrupt," said Gary Ruskin ... a co-author of the study. The Academy accepted at least $15m from corporate and organizational contributors from 2011-2017, and over $4.5m in additional funding went to the Academy's foundation. Among the highest contributions came from companies such as NestlÄ‚©, PepsiCo, Hershey, Kellogg's, General Mills, Conagra, the National Dairy Council and the baby formula producer Abbott Nutrition. The Academy and its foundation also received food industry fundings via sponsorships, which are in effect quid pro quos.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.

The House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, is nearly finished. Nearly 900 ... criminal prosecutions of alleged rioters remain underway, and one case has shed troubling new light on how the FBI investigated these defendants. The suspect's name is David Rhine. His lawyer is the first to present a potentially successful challenge to the geofencing warrant the FBI used to place some defendants inside the Capitol building during the attack. A previous Wired report last year found 45 federal criminal cases citing the warrant, which required Google to provide the FBI with data on devices using its location services inside a set geographic area. Rhine's case has revealed just how expansive the FBI's request to Google really was. Google initially listed 5,723 devices in response to the warrant, then whittled the tally to exclude likely Capitol staff and police as well as anyone who wasn't "entirely within the geofence, to about a 70 percent probability." The final list of identifying details handed over to the FBI had 1,535 names. It included people whose phones had been turned off or put in airplane mode, and "people who attempted to delete their location data following the attacks were singled out by the FBI for greater scrutiny." It's ... easy to envision geofencing warrants undergoing the usual surveillance mission creep. Left unchecked, law enforcement could decide geofence data would come in handy while looking for a journalist's whistleblowing source, or perhaps at political protests.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Beijing has set up more than 100 so-called overseas police stations across the globe to monitor, harass and in some cases repatriate Chinese citizens living in exile, using bilateral security arrangements struck with countries in Europe and Africa to gain a widespread presence internationally, a new report shared exclusively with CNN alleges. Madrid-based human rights campaigner Safeguard Defenders says it found evidence China was operating 48 additional police stations abroad since the group first revealed the existence of 54 such stations in September. Beijing has denied it is running undeclared police forces outside its territory. Instead, China has claimed the facilities are administrative hubs. Undeclared consular activities outside of a nation's official diplomatic missions are highly unusual and illegal. "What we see coming from China is increasing attempts to crack down on dissent everywhere in the world, to threaten people, harass people, make sure that they are fearful enough so that they remain silent or else face being returned to China against their will," said Safeguard Defenders Campaign director Laura Harth. "It will start with phone calls. They might start to intimidate your relatives back in China, to threaten you, do everything really to coax the targets abroad to come back. If that doesn't work, they will use covert agents abroad. They will send them from Beijing and use methods such as luring and entrapment," Harth said.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Throughout the Trump and Biden administrations, the U.S. has been on an escalating trajectory toward a new Cold War featuring the prime adversaries from the original, Russia and China. The ratcheted-up rhetoric from U.S. politicians – combined with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the tensions between China and Taiwan, and Beijing's major advancements and investments in weapons systems and war technology – has heralded a bonanza for the defense industry. Congress will soon vote on a record-shattering $857 billion defense spending bill that authorizes $45 billion more than Biden requested. Included in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023, finalized on December 6, is the establishment of a multiyear no-bid contract system through which Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and other weapons manufacturers are being empowered to expand their "industrial base" and business. The unprecedented flow of weapons to Ukraine has included a substantial transfer of weapons from the U.S. stockpile, amounting to approximately $10 billion worth of weapons. U.S. lawmakers have used this fact to push for expanding the scope of not only weapons procurements to "replenish" the arsenal, but also to maintain the pipeline of weapons to Ukraine and European-allied nations through at least the end of 2024. While Russia's invasion of Ukraine remains a central focus, the appetite for countering China's own expansive weapons and technology development is on track to grow for years to come.

Note: Another eye-opening article on this issue reports that the U.S. has spent more than $21 trillion on militarization since September 11, 2001." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses lodged in tax havens own more than 70% of the water industry in England, according to research by the Guardian. The complex web of ownership is revealed as the public and some politicians increasingly call for the industry to be held to account for sewage dumping, leaks and water shortages. Six water companies are under investigation for potentially illegal activities as pressure grows on the industry to put more money into replacing and restoring crumbling infrastructure to protect both the environment and public health. More than three decades after the sector was sold off with a promise to the public they would become individual small shareholders or "H₂Owners", control of the water industry has become dominated by overseas investment vehicles, the super-rich, companies in tax havens and pension fund investors. The ownership structure is such that transparency and accountability are limited, according to Dr Kate Bayliss ... at Soas University of London. The Qatar Investment Authority is the third largest shareholder in Severn Trent, with a 4.6% holding, while almost 10% is held by the US investment company BlackRock and its subsidiaries. A subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority has a 9.9% stake in Thames Water, while 8.7% is owned by China, the analysis shows. At least 72% of the industry is controlled by firms in 17 countries, while UK firms own 10%. Ownership of 82% of the water industry was traced overall.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

On New Year's Eve 2005, Justin Rose headed to Camp Lemonnier's cantina for celebratory $2.50 beers with his fellow Marines before heading back to his "hooch" around 1:30 a.m. Sometime after daybreak, Rose woke up to find someone stroking his penis. Disoriented for a moment, he lept down from his raised bunk and gave chase as a man dressed in red dashed out of his quarters and into another tent. He found [Jase Derek] Stanton, dressed in red, feigning sleep in his bed; Rose was certain Stanton was the attacker. So Rose did what he had been trained to do. He went to his team leader, a young corporal, and reported the assault. The first question he heard was: "Are you sure you're not making this up?" Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted – a rate far higher than that of men. But sexual assault of men in the military is also widespread and vastly underreported. Each day, on average, more than 45 men in the armed forces are sexually assaulted, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. For women, it is 53 per day, according to a September 2022 Pentagon report that uses a new euphemism "unwanted sexual contact" as a "proxy measure for sexual assault." Nearly 40 percent of veterans who report to the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, that they have experienced military sexual trauma, or MST – sexual assault or sexual harassment – are men. 90 percent of men in the military did not report a sexual assault they experienced in 2021.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

It would no longer be "life as we know it" if a space war destroyed the satellites that the world now relies on, space commanders have warned, and China and Russia have demonstrated that they're capable of doing just that. Lt Gen Nina Armagno, staff director of the US Space Force, said Russia's destruction of one of their own satellites last year was a "stunning display". "We're interpreting that ... as a message and demonstration of capability," she said. She said China was openly documenting and describing its demonstrations of power in space. Asked what the end game could be, she said, "Life as we know it would no longer be as we know it." Attacks on satellites can take out GPS systems, banking systems, power grids, first responders' communications, and impact on military operations. "I don't want to be dramatic," Armagno said. "What does war in space look like? We probably won't see it with our naked eye but we will definitely feel the consequences from the moment it begins." She also described China's 2007 destruction of one of its own satellites as shocking, irresponsible and intentional. There are two ways attacks on satellites could take out communication networks. A direct attack – through anti-satellite missiles, grappling arms, or hacking or jamming a satellite – is one. The other is the debris created by a destroyed satellite. Armagno said the US was still tracking 600 pieces of debris from China's 2007 "demonstration".

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Many of the world's largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report. The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China's Xinjiang region. In recent years, China has come under increased scrutiny over what the UN has called "serious human rights violations" against Uyghur Muslims in the region, including systemic discrimination, mass arbitrary detention, torture, and sexual and gender-based violence. The report includes a list of major asset managers, including BlackRock, HSBC and Deutsche Bank among others, exposed to index funds that include companies accused of engaging in labour transfers and the construction of repressive infrastructure in the region. It found public pension funds across the UK, Canada and the US and funds in New Zealand and Japan exposed by the investments. "So many people's pensions, retirement funds and savings are invested passively because, as average consumers, we don't have time to investigate each and every investment," said Laura Murphy, one of the report's authors and professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University.

Note: Read an eye-opening article about the shocking human rights violations happening to the Uyghur people under the auspices of the Chinese government. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on financial system corruption from reliable major media sources.

Even for the US, one of few countries that still uses the death penalty, last week was exceptionally violent, with four executions planned in the span of 48 hours. The killings were marred with errors, accusations of racism and discrimination, and claims of innocence. One was called off after officials took more than an hour and were unable to place an IV line. Officials can't seem to carry off an execution in which the right drugs are used, an IV is placed quickly and the inmate doesn't suffer ... but state officials disclose little about who conducts executions or how they are trained. "The recent spate of botched lethal injection executions have shown that, whatever the drug, whatever the protocol, condemned prisoners often spend their final moments in agonising pain and distress," Maya Foa, director of advocacy group Reprieve US, said. “With each gruesome scene in the death chamber, we are witnessing the consequences of persisting with a broken method of execution in real time.” Numerous people on death row suffer from severe mental illness, so [Kat Jutras of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona is] hoping mental health reform can limit the pipeline of people heading towards the execution chamber. "Mental health is not a political issue. There are people on both sides of the aisle who can identify with loved ones suffering from mental health issues," she said. "We can address why our death row has 110 people on it, starting with mental health."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the prison system from reliable major media sources.

The Biden administration told a US judge last week that Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, should be granted immunity in a civil lawsuit over his role in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. That decision effectively ends one of the last efforts to hold the prince accountable for Khashoggi's assassination by a Saudi hit team inside the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. In July, Biden swallowed his pride and traveled to Saudi Arabia, trying to reset his relationship with a regime he called a "pariah" as a presidential candidate. Biden greeted Prince Mohammed with an embarrassing fist bump, hoping that the photo op would convince the Saudis to increase oil production and lower gasoline prices. By October, the Saudi-led Opec+ cartel did the opposite of what the Biden administration asked – it decided to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will mean higher global fuel prices this winter. Thanks to the Biden administration's immunity decision, Prince Mohammed now has a level of protection from US legal actions that even Trump did not offer him. The prince's lawyers started seeking immunity in US federal courts in August 2020, when Saad Aljabri, a former top Saudi intelligence official, sued the crown prince in Washington. Aljabri alleged that the royal had dispatched a hit squad to kill him in Canada in 2018, just weeks after Khashoggi's murder. The Trump administration declined to grant Prince Mohammed immunity in that case, and the suit was ultimately dismissed.

Note: U.S. Presidents from both parties continue to coddle up to the Saudi regime -- one of the most repressive regimes in the world. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Within ten days [of its release], the first-person military shooter video game [Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II] earned more than $1 billion in revenue. The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry. Details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state. Not only does Activision Blizzard work with the U.S. military to shape its products, but its leadership board is also full of former high state officials. Chief amongst these is Frances Townsend, Activision Blizzard's senior counsel. As the White House's most senior advisor on terrorism and homeland security, Townsend ... became one of the faces of the administration's War on Terror. Activision Blizzard's chief administration officer, Brian Bulatao ... was chief operating officer for the CIA, placing him third in command of the agency. Bulatao went straight from the State Department into the highest echelons of Activision Blizzard, despite no experience in the entertainment industry. [This] raises serious questions around privacy and state control over media. "Call of Duty ... has been flagged up for recreating real events as game missions and manipulating them for geopolitical purposes," [journalist Tom] Secker told MintPress.

Note: The latest US Air Force recruitment tool is a video game that allows players to receive in-game medals and achievements for drone bombing Iraqis and Afghans. For more on this disturbing "military-entertainment complex" trend, explore the work of investigative journalist Tom Secker, who recently produced a documentary, Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood, and published a new book, Superheroes, Movies and the State: How the U.S. Government Shapes Cinematic Universes.

The Department of Defense underwent its fifth annual financial audit this year, and for the fifth time in a row, it failed. This year's audit involved a team of 1,600 analysts who visited 220 sites in person and 750 sites virtually as they reviewed the Pentagon's $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities. The overall audit was broken down into 27 units, of which nine received "clean" or passing grades, one received a modified grade, which can pass once an identified issue is resolved, and the rest received disclaimers due to a lack of complete data. The cost of the audit was estimated to be $218 million. Defense Department Comptroller Mike McCord said the results were similar to last year's. "We failed to get an ‘A'," he told reporters earlier this week. "The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want." McCord said he expects to see steady improvement in the use of financial controls at the Pentagon, but there are still challenges ahead. "Valuing properties is probably the hardest thing for us to do," he said. Dive into the fiscal year 2022 Defense Department audit here.

Note: Every company is expected to account for every dollar spent, yet the largest branch of government cannot account for literally trillions of dollars. Read other major media news articles showing incredible corruption in the Department of Defense to the tune of trillions of dollars. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Last week, an Israeli defense company painted a frightening picture. In a roughly two-minute video on YouTube that resembles an action movie, soldiers out on a mission are suddenly pinned down by enemy gunfire and calling for help. In response, a tiny drone zips off its mother ship to the rescue, zooming behind the enemy soldiers and killing them with ease. While the situation is fake, the drone – unveiled last week by Israel-based Elbit Systems – is not. The Lanius, which in Latin can refer to butcherbirds, represents a new generation of drone: nimble, wired with artificial intelligence, and able to scout and kill. The machine is based on racing drone design, allowing it to maneuver into tight spaces, such as alleyways and small buildings. After being sent into battle, Lanius's algorithm can make a map of the scene and scan people, differentiating enemies from allies – feeding all that data back to soldiers who can then simply push a button to attack or kill whom they want. For weapons critics, that represents a nightmare scenario, which could alter the dynamics of war. "It's extremely concerning," said Catherine Connolly, an arms expert at Stop Killer Robots, an anti-weapons advocacy group. "It's basically just allowing the machine to decide if you live or die if we remove the human control element for that." According to the drone's data sheet, the drone is palm-size, roughly 11 inches by 6 inches. It has a top speed of 45 miles per hour. It can fly for about seven minutes, and has the ability to carry lethal and nonlethal materials.

Note: US General Paul Selva has warned against employing killer robots in warfare for ethical reasons. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Public outrage over how police use force has fueled protests in the streets, spurred calls to cut their funding and ignited broad debates over how to reform law enforcement. Despite this intense focus on the present and future of policing, one key component has remained woefully inadequate, according to a report from a prominent policing think tank: how new officers are trained. Training for recruits "presents an immediate crisis for policing," according to the report from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). The report describes a system that, even after years of push and pull over change, is "built to train officers quickly and cheaply." That system then hurries the new officers onto streets across the United States without helping them develop vital skills, including crisis intervention and communication, that they will need on the job. Police in the United States typically spend about 20 weeks in the academy, the report said, while recruits in Japan might spend up to 21 months training. Their peers in many European countries spend two to three years training. The report also touches on why, despite all the pleas to rethink policing, training remains behind the times in many places. "At many academies," the report said, instruction "is based largely on what has been taught in the past." In many cases, the report continued, academies "seem to rely almost exclusively on current or retired law enforcement officers to develop their training curricula," even though these people lack backgrounds in designing course instruction.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption from reliable major media sources.

An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what's known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet's infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly. The company's Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which ... has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. TrustCor's products include an email service that claims to be end-to-end encrypted, though experts consulted by The Washington Post said they found evidence to undermine that claim. A test version of the email service also included spyware developed by a Panamanian company related to Packet Forensics. A person familiar with Packet Forensics' work confirmed that it had used TrustCor's certificate process and its email service, MsgSafe, to intercept communications and help the U.S. government catch suspected terrorists. The physical address in Toronto given in [TrustCor's] auditor's report, 371 Front St. West, houses a UPS Store mail drop.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

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.