Government Corruption News Stories

Excerpts of Key Government Corruption News Stories 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: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

After receiving more than $3.8 million in 2024 campaign donations from political action committees and individuals associated with the military industry, members of the House committee overseeing Pentagon spending just inserted two provisions into an upcoming bill that would exempt many more private products and services from competitive pricing guidelines and provide contractors far more leeway in what they can charge the Defense Department. Last year's Pentagon spending bill totaled nearly $884 billion. Over the past decade, more than half of that budget has gone to military contractors. Many of the top military contractors – including Boeing, RTX Corporation, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman – have seen sizable stock-value increases since the war in Gaza began in October 2023 while shooting down shareholder efforts at increased transparency. The provisions in the 2025 Pentagon spending bill are part of the 344-page National Defense Authorization Act of 2025 (NDAA). The provisions in question – Sections 811 and 812 – make good on a wishlist of policy changes that many military companies have been lobbying on for years. "As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I'm disappointed to see provisions in the NDAA that would allow contractors to further obscure pricing data," Rep. Ro Khanna [said]. "This would lead to more inflated costs and waste taxpayer money when we could be investing it instead."

Note: Learn more about unaccountable military spending in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Has the U.S. government secretly retrieved exotic craft of "non-human" origin? Newly declassified documents, along with extraordinary legislation, illustrate how two successive Democratic Senate majority leaders appear to have believed so. Notably, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the late Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) were not alone in their focus on UFOs. [They] received critical support and encouragement from a bipartisan group of high-profile senators over the years, including former fighter pilot and famed astronaut John Glenn (D-Ohio); Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who observed a UFO as a World War II pilot; Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), then-chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense; 2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.); Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.). Recently, Schumer and a bipartisan group of five other senators introduced extraordinary legislation alleging the existence of surreptitious "legacy programs" that retrieve and seek to reverse-engineer UFOs of "non-human" origin. On the Senate floor, Schumer said the government "has gathered a great deal of information about [UFOs] over many decades but has refused to share it with the American people." Critically, according to Schumer, "multiple credible sources" have alleged that elements of the U.S. government have withheld UFO-related information from Congress illegally.

Note: For more along these lines, read more about these alleged top secret UFO programs in our UFO Information Center.

At CIA, we find inspiration in all kinds of places. From robotic catfish to real-life spy birds, animals and their look-alikes have helped Agency officers perform a variety of critical duties, including eavesdropping, intelligence gathering, security, covert communications, and photo surveillance. During the Cold War ... CIA's Office of Research and Development created a camera so tiny and lightweight that a pigeon could carry it. The camera was strapped to the bird's chest with a little harness, and the bird would be released over a secret area ... that we wanted to know more about. The camera would snap pictures as the bird flew back home to us. During the Vietnam War ... CIA scientists invented what is known as the seismic intruder detection device. It could be strategically placed to monitor movements up to 300 meters away. However, our scientists had to disguise the technology. Since tigers are native to Vietnam ... they provided the ideal cover. The detection device was designed to look like tiger droppings. In the 1970s, CIA's Office of Research and Development created "Insectothopter," the first insect-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of its kind! It was disguised as an everyday dragon fly. CIA's Office of Technical Services thought rats would be a great way to conceal things during the Cold War. They treated the rat's carcass with a preservation agent, cut it open, and created a hollow cavity where our officers could hide things like money, notes, or even film. The rat would then be sewn back up, placed at a pre-determined dead drop location, and then left for the asset to retrieve. During testing phases, the rats went missing because stray cats had stolen them.

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

In the middle of night, students at Utah's Kings Peak high school are wide awake – taking mandatory exams. Their every movement is captured on their computer's webcam and scrutinized by Proctorio, a surveillance company that uses artificial intelligence. Proctorio software conducts "desk scans" in an effort to catch test-takers who turn to "unauthorized resources", "face detection" technology to ensure there isn't anybody else in the room to help and "gaze detection" to spot anybody "looking away from the screen for an extended period of time". Proctorio then provides visual and audio records to Kings Peak teachers with the algorithm calling particular attention to pupils whose behaviors during the test flagged them as possibly engaging in academic dishonesty. Such remote proctoring tools grew exponentially during the pandemic, particularly at US colleges and universities. K-12 schools' use of remote proctoring tools, however, has largely gone under the radar. K-12 schools nationwide – and online-only programs in particular – continue to use tools from digital proctoring companies on students ... as young as kindergarten-aged. Civil rights activists, who contend AI proctoring tools fail to work as intended, harbor biases and run afoul of students' constitutional protections, said the privacy and security concerns are particularly salient for young children and teens, who may not be fully aware of the monitoring or its implications. One 2021 study found that Proctorio failed to detect test-takers who had been instructed to cheat. Researchers concluded the software was "best compared to taking a placebo: it has some positive influence, not because it works but because people believe that it works, or that it might work."

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

As cities and states push to restrict the use of facial recognition technologies, some police departments have quietly found a way to keep using the controversial tools: asking for help from other law enforcement agencies that still have access. Officers in Austin and San Francisco – two of the largest cities where police are banned from using the technology – have repeatedly asked police in neighboring towns to run photos of criminal suspects through their facial recognition programs. In San Francisco, the workaround didn't appear to help. Since the city's ban took effect in 2019, the San Francisco Police Department has asked outside agencies to conduct at least five facial recognition searches, but no matches were returned. SFPD spokesman Evan Sernoffsky said these requests violated the city ordinance and were not authorized by the department, but the agency faced no consequences from the city. Austin police officers have received the results of at least 13 face searches from a neighboring police department since the city's 2020 ban – and have appeared to get hits on some of them. Facial recognition ... technology has played a role in the wrongful arrests of at least seven innocent Americans, six of whom were Black, according to lawsuits each of these people filed after the charges against them were dismissed. In all, 21 cities or counties and Vermont have voted to prohibit the use of facial recognition tools by law enforcement.

Note: Crime is increasing in many cities, leading to law enforcement agencies appropriately working to maintain public safety. Yet far too often, social justice takes a backseat while those in authority violate human rights. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on police corruption and artificial intelligence from reliable major media sources.

Candace Leslie was leaving church when she got the call she will never forget. Someone shot Leslie's son four times. Police recovered at least one gun. It was a Glock pistol. Unbeknownst to investigators at the time, the gun once served as a law enforcement duty weapon, carried by a sheriff's deputy more than 2,000 miles away in California. According to data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Glock was one of at least 52,529 police guns that have turned up at crime scenes since 2006, the earliest year provided. While that tally includes guns lost by or stolen from police, many of the firearms were released back into the market by the very law enforcement agencies sworn to protect the public. Law enforcement resold guns to firearms dealers for discounts on new equipment and, in some cases, directly to their own officers, records show. Some of the guns were later involved in shootings, domestic violence incidents, and other violent crimes. Reporters surveyed state and local law enforcement agencies and found that at least 145 of them had resold guns on at least one occasion between 2006 and 2024. That's about 90 percent of the more than 160 agencies that responded. Records from 67 agencies showed they had collectively resold more than 87,000 firearms over the past two decades. That figure is likely a significant undercount, however, because many agencies' records were incomplete or heavily redacted.

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

As a teenager almost 20 years ago, Jeffery Christian was sent to a juvenile detention center in southern Illinois. He was abused by multiple staff over the course of several years, starting just a few days into his detention. According to a lawsuit filed last week in the Illinois Court of Claims, his mother reported at least some of the alleged abuse to leadership but no one followed up. He is one of more than 90 people who sued the state last week, saying they were abused by employees when they were in juvenile detention, some as young as 12 years old. It is the latest in a flurry of legal cases around the country claiming similar sexual misconduct by employees of facilities housing children charged with a crime. The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday announced an investigation into Kentucky's youth detention facilities. Since the start of the year, there have been lawsuits filed in at least four states, including the one in Illinois. The men and women in the lawsuits allege very similar abuse. Some say they were raped. Others say they were forced to perform oral sex or were inappropriately touched by employees. Some say they were given rewards, like special snacks or extra recreational time, if they complied; others say they were punished for refusing. According to the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, recurring abuse has been documented in state-funded juvenile detention facilities in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

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

A signed affidavit from Guantanamo military commission investigator Don Canestraro ... outlines the findings of a 2016 investigation by Canestraro, a longtime veteran of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), into Saudi and CIA complicity in the [9/11] terrorist attacks, findings that are squarely at odds with the story given to the public in their wake. Relaying the information gathered from dozens of interviews he conducted with former FBI and CIA personnel, members of the 9/11 Commission, and US government officials, Canestraro's affidavit outlines a sequence of events that, if true, suggest a botched and illegal domestic CIA operation was at the heart of the intelligence failure that enabled the attacks. More than that, it suggests there was a concerted cover-up of the grave blunder after the fact by both the CIA and the George W. Bush administration. The CIA impeded law enforcement efforts that could have prevented the attacks. Several former agents recalled being blocked by the agency from sharing intelligence about the hijackers with the rest of the FBI. A "former senior FBI official" likewise told Canestraro that the CIA sat on the news that the hijackers had entered the United States in 2000. Why did the CIA so intensely gatekeep information on the future hijackers? One former agent recalled the FBI faced "diplomatic pressure" not to investigate the Saudi links to the attacks, while another ... charged that agents were told not to interview Saudi nationals.

Note: Read the full article for more important details on this alleged cover-up, including the close relationship between the CIA and Saudi intelligence agency. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and explore our comprehensive 9/11 Information Center.

For two decades, the CIA ran mind-control experiments in Montreal that later influenced modern "enhanced interrogation" techniques such as those used at Abu Ghraib. The experiments have not only crossed ethical boundaries but also raised profound questions of accountability and justice. This is particularly true in light of the ongoing class-action lawsuits initiated by those who suffered through the Montreal experiments. Established in 1940, the Allan Memorial Institute (known as "the Allan") used to be a psychiatric institute and research facility. The majority of the Montreal experiments were orchestrated and implemented by a man named Donald Ewen Cameron ... the first director of the Allan. Cameron received funds brokered by then CIA director Allen Dulles to subject his unwitting "patients" to high-voltage electroshock treatments, insulin-induced comas, sensory deprivation, and large doses of hallucinogenic drugs like LSD. To justify these treatments, Cameron touted his psychiatric techniques as innovative and experimental. The CIA obtained their desired test results from Cameron, whose patients unknowingly paid for the operation with the loss of their memories and cognitive abilities. Even though countless individuals who left the Allan were reduced to childlike states and unable to recognize their own family members, the US government has yet to be held accountable.

Note: Read more about the disturbing experiments of Ewen Cameron. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and mind control from reliable major media sources.

An NSA staffer deployed to Iraq led a counterterrorism and counterintelligence mission involving forensic investigations on computers seized in raids. The staffer's "Media Exploitation" team found pornographic videos and photos alongside thousands of audio files of the Quran and sermons, and recruitment and training CDs with video of bombings, torture, and beheadings. The team "jokingly" referred to the content as the "three big ‘P's – porn, propaganda and prayer." Reports and files were distributed to the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Among the customers of the material ... were the military units interrogating captured insurgents. Special Forces interrogators found the pornography "extremely useful in breaking down detainees who maintained that they were devout Muslims, but had porn on their computers," according to an account by the NSA staffer. As the conflict with insurgents escalated in Fallujah ... NSA staff with "top-secret" clearances were deployed to the combat zone. Marines gave the NSA staff seized computers, CDs, phones, and radios directly from the battlefield, some "covered in blood." This material, too, was used in interrogations. A former interrogator at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has said ... that pornography was used at the facility to reward some detainees and as a tool against others, who were forced to look at the material. The Associated Press has also reported on the use of pornography at Guantánamo.

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

A resurfaced documentary is exposing a series of horrific accusations made by alleged victims of a 1988 child sex trafficking ring in 1988, who claim they were flown around the US to abused by high-ranking officials - alleging that FBI 'covered up' the shocking crimes. Back in the 1980s, several alleged victims claimed that a man named Lawrence King ran an underground club in Omaha, Nebraska, through which he, along with well-known politicians, businessmen, and media moguls, are said to have forced children as young as eight years old to have sex with them. In 1990, a Nebraska county grand jury concluded that the claims were a 'hoax,' and a federal grand jury later agreed. However, in 1993 ... alleged victims told documentary makers that the government forced them into silence by threatening those who spoke out, using scare tactics, and even murder. 'Obviously, the FBI was protecting something ... significant,' [lawyer John] DeCamp concluded. 'They were protecting some very prominent politicians, some very powerful and wealthy individuals associated with those politicians and the political system, up to and including the highest political people in this entire country. 'Every victim-witness who stepped forward in any way, or even was a potential witness that somebody heard about, has either been killed, put in jail under some theory or other, terrified or run out of the state, or discredited.'

Note: For an in-depth look at this disturbing crime ring, read The Franklin Cover-Up by John W. DeCamp or watch the suppressed Discovery Channel documentary Conspiracy of Silence. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

Thousands of Americans believe they suffered serious side effects following Covid vaccination. As of April, just over 13,000 vaccine-injury compensation claims have been filed with the federal government. Only 19 percent have been reviewed. Only 47 of those were deemed eligible for compensation, and only 12 have been paid out, at an average of about $3,600. In a recent interview, Dr. Janet Woodcock, a longtime leader of the Food and Drug Administration ... said she believed that some recipients had experienced uncommon but "serious" and "life-changing" reactions beyond those described by federal agencies. "I feel bad for those people," said Dr. Woodcock, who became the F.D.A.'s acting commissioner in January 2021. "I believe their suffering should be acknowledged, that they have real problems, and they should be taken seriously." The government's understaffed compensation fund has paid so little because it officially recognizes few side effects for Covid vaccines. People who said they had been harmed by Covid shots ... described a variety of symptoms following vaccination, some neurological, some autoimmune, some cardiovascular. All said they had been turned away by physicians, told their symptoms were psychosomatic, or labeled anti-vaccine by family and friends – despite the fact that they supported vaccines. The National Institutes of Health is conducting virtually no studies on Covid vaccine safety, several experts noted.

Note: Explore our nuanced, uncensored investigation about this important issue. While mainstream narratives emphasize how rare these injuries are, the numbers speak for themselves. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a voluntary government reporting system that only captures a portion of the actual injuries. Vaccine adverse event numbers are made publicly available, and currently show 1,640,416 COVID vaccine injury reports, 37,647 COVID Vaccine Reported Deaths, and 216,757 COVID Vaccine Reported Hospitalizations.

The Biden administration suspended federal funding to the scientific nonprofit whose research is at the center of credible theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was started via a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it was immediately suspending three grants provided to the New York-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance (EHA) as it starts the process of debarring the organization from receiving any federal funds. For years now, EcoHealth has generated immense controversy for its use of federal grant money to support gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. HHS said that EcoHealth had failed to properly monitor the work it was supporting at Wuhan. It also failed to properly report on the results of experiments showing that the hybrid viruses it was creating there had an improved ability to infect human cells. In testimony to the House's coronavirus subcommittee, [EcoHealth President Peter ] Daszak claimed that EcoHealth attempted to report the results of its gain-of-function experiments on time in 2019, but was frozen out of NIH's reporting system. [An] HHS memo released today says a forensic investigation found no evidence that EcoHealth was locked out of NIH's reporting system. The department also said that EcoHealth had failed to produce requested lab notes and other materials from the Wuhan lab detailing the work being done there.

Note: Watch our 15-min Mindful News Brief video on the strong evidence that bioweapons research created COVID-19. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on COVID and government corruption from reliable major media sources.

Google and Amazon are both loath to discuss security aspects of the cloud services they provide through their joint contract with the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus. Both the Ministry of Defense and Israel Defense Forces are Nimbus customers. According to a 63-page Israeli government procurement document ... two of Israel's leading state-owned weapons manufacturers are required to use Amazon and Google for cloud computing needs. Though details of Google and Amazon's contractual work with the Israeli arms industry aren't laid out in the tender document, which outlines how Israeli agencies will obtain software services through Nimbus, the firms are responsible for manufacturing drones, missiles, and other weapons Israel has used to bombard Gaza. Project Nimbus ... has already created a public uproar. Google and Amazon have faced backlash ranging from street protests to employee revolts. Following anti-Nimbus sit-ins organized at the company's New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices, Google fired 50 employees. Emaan Haseem, [was] a cloud computing engineer at Google until she was fired after participating in the Sunnyvale protest. "A lot of us signed up or applied to work at Google because we were trying to avoid working at terrible unethical companies," she said. "Why are we pretending that because my logo is colorful and has round letters that I'm any better than Raytheon?"

Note: When Google employees protested Project Maven, a DoD drone program that used Google technology, the Big Tech giant dropped the contract with the Pentagon in 2018. Read about how Silicon Valley has been infiltrated by intelligence agencies.

U.S. Border Patrol agents freely used the derogatory slur "tonk" to describe unauthorized migrants on government computers, at times while joking about killing or beating them, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, from 2017 to 2020, reveal yet another instance of the Border Patrol's use of a slang term that officials in Washington have condemned but have struggled to stamp out. This is the second disclosure that Border Patrol personnel used the word in internal communications since HuffPost first requested a global search of its use among Border Patrol agents four years ago. The origin of the term is uncertain, but most insiders believe it comes from the sound made by bashing an arrested migrant's head with a government-issued flashlight. Some of the records reference that origin story, with one agent writing: "ah, savor the sound." Use of the term remained surprisingly common among both rank-and-file agents and those in leadership positions, the records show. Many agents appeared to use the term as a synonym for unauthorized migrants, with little apparent derogatory intent. But the slur often appeared alongside expressions of raw contempt for the people whom Border Patrol officers police. Border Patrol agents who used the slur at times gloated about migrants' misfortunes or made references to beating them. In one instance, agents joked about killing migrant children in their custody.

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

Burkina Faso's military summarily executed more than 220 civilians, including at least 56 children, in two villages in late February, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. "We saw the bloody corpses riddled with bullets. We were able to save a 2-year-old child whose mother was killed shielding him with her body," a 19-year-old witness [said]. "The attackers were soldiers from our own army. They arrived on motorbikes and in vehicles, and they were armed with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons." The mass killings came as the U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the West African Sahel crumbled, with U.S.-trained military officers launching a long string of coups, including in Burkina Faso itself. Despite the coups and massacres, the U.S. has not cut ties with Burkina Faso, and a contingent of U.S. personnel remain in-country to "engage" with the armed forces serving the ruling junta. The United States has assisted Burkina Faso with counterterrorism aid since the 2000s, providing funds, weapons, equipment, and American advisers, as well as deploying commandos. In 2018 and 2019, alone, the U.S. pumped a total of $100 million in "security cooperation" funding into Burkina Faso, making it one of the largest recipients of U.S. military aid in West Africa. U.S.-trained Burkinabè military officers have also repeatedly overthrown their government. At the same time, militant Islamist violence skyrocketed. Burkina Faso ... suffered 7,762 fatalities from militant Islamist attacks last year.

Note: Since 2008, the US has supported at least nine coups in African countries, with a vast network of military bases scattered across the continent. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US "war on terror". The long-delayed case was brought by Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and As'ad Al-Zuba'e, three Iraqi civilians who were detained at Abu Ghraib, before being released without charge in 2004. The men are suing CACI Premier Technology, a private company that was contracted by the US government to provide interrogators at the prison. Only a handful of lower-rank soldiers faced military trials; no military or political leaders, or private contractors, were held legally accountable for what happened at Abu Ghraib or at any other facility where US detainees were tortured. As governments' reliance on private actors in conflict zones and crisis situations has grown exponentially since the war in Iraq, the case is also a test of the courts' ability to hold those contractors responsible for human rights abuses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... earned private companies trillions in defense and other government contracts. To this day, CACI continues to make millions in US government contracts.

Note: Read more about the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.

Created by the Boy Scouts of America decades ago, law enforcement Explorer posts are designed to help teens and young adults learn about policing. [There are] at least 194 allegations that law enforcement personnel, mostly policemen, have groomed, sexually abused or engaged in inappropriate behavior with Explorers since 1974, an ongoing investigation by The Marshall Project has found. The vast majority of those affected were teenage girls – some as young as 13. In many programs, armed officers were allowed to be alone with teenage Explorers. In a few instances, departments minimized or dismissed the concerns of those who reported troubling behavior, records show. The officers accused of abusing teenagers spanned the ranks, from patrolmen to police chiefs. Some were department veterans cited in news articles for their community work. Many cases led to criminal charges. Some officers went to prison, while others received probation or weren't required to register as sex offenders. A few departments allowed officers to keep their jobs after a reprimand or short suspension. The Marshall Project's analysis found at least 14 departments, among 111 agencies, that had a history of repeated allegations. Slightly more than half of the cases reporters found occurred since 2000. In 2022, the Boy Scouts agreed to settle with more than 82,000 people, most of them men, who said they were abused as minors in Scouting programs.

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

The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel's genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school's own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared. During a May 1 press conference, just hours after the New York Police Department arrested nearly 300 people on university grounds, Adams praised adjunct Columbia professor Rebecca Weiner, who moonlights as the head of the NYPD counter-terrorism bureau, for giving police the green light to clear out anti-genocide students by force. Weiner maintained an office at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Her SIPA bio describes her as an "Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs" who simultaneously serves as the "civilian executive in charge of the New York City Police Department's Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau." In that role ... Weiner "develops policy and strategic priorities for the Intelligence & Counterterrorism Bureau and publicly represents the NYPD in matters involving counterterrorism and intelligence." A 2011 AP investigation revealed that a so-called "Demographics Unit" operated secretly within the NYPD's Counterterrorism and Intelligence Bureau. This shadowy outfit spied on Muslims around the New York City area. The unit was developed in tandem with the CIA. As a former police official told the AP, the unit attempted to "map the city's human terrain" through a program "modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank."

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

Federal and state Homeland Security grants allow local law enforcement agencies to surveil American citizens with technology more commonly found in war zones and foreign espionage operations. At least two Texas communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have purchased a product called "TraffiCatch," which collects the unique wireless and Bluetooth signals emitted by nearly all modern electronics to identify devices and track their movements. The product is also listed in a federal supply catalog run by the U.S. government's General Services Administration, which negotiates prices and contracts for federal agencies. Combining license plate information with data collected from wireless signals is the kind of surveillance the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have long used, with devices mounted in vehicles, on drones or carried by hand to pinpoint the location of cell phones and other electronic devices. Their usage was once classified and deployed in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, similar devices are showing up in the streets of American cities. The Supreme Court has said that attaching a GPS tracking device to a car or getting historical location data from a cell carrier requires a search warrant. However, law enforcement has found ways around these prohibitions. Increasingly, as people walk around with headphones, fitness wearables and other devices ... their data can be linked to a car, even after they have ditched the car. Courts have not definitively grappled with the question: Under what circumstances can law enforcement passively capture ambient signal information and use it as a tracking tool?

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

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