Tim Cushing writes: The TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program continues to suffer under scrutiny. When details first leaked out about the TSA’s suspicionless surveillance program, even the air marshals tasked with tailing non-terrorists all over the nation seemed concerned. Marshals questioned the “legality and validity” of the program that sent them after people no government agency had conclusively…
Category: U.S.
DHS Inspector General Is Going To Take A Look At The DHS’s Purchase Of Cell Location Data From Data Brokers
Tim Cushing writes: DHS components are buying up cell location data from third parties to track down undocumented immigrants and whoever else ICE and CBP might be interested in. The IRS is doing the same thing. So is the Department of Defense. The location data is harvested from dozens of phone apps. This data makes its way to a…
Some States Balk After C.D.C. Asks for Personal Data of Those Vaccinated
Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports: The Trump administration is requiring states to submit personal information of people vaccinated against Covid-19 — including names, birth dates, ethnicities and addresses, raising alarms among state officials who fear that a federal vaccine registry could be misused. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is instructing states to sign so-called data…
The untold story of how the Golden State Killer was found: A covert operation and private DNA
Paige St. John reports: The dramatic arrest in 2018 of Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was all the more astounding because of how detectives said they caught the elusive Golden State Killer— by harnessing genetic technology already in use by millions of consumers to trace their family trees. But the DNA-matching effort that caught one of…