spooks gone wild

TSA Agent Used Twitter to Trick Source Into Revealing Himself

TSA Special Agent John Enright, left, speaks to Steven Frischling outside the blogger’s home in Niantic, Connecticut, after returning Frischling’s laptop Wednesday. Photo: Thomas Cain/Wired.com A TSA agent who served a civil subpoena on blogger Steven Frischling last week also posed as the blogger in order to trick the blogger’s anonymous source into revealing his identity, according to someone familiar with the incident. The agent, while in possession of Frischling’s BlackBerry, typed a message in the blogger’s Twitter account asking the source to contact him by e-mail.

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Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 P2P News 1 Comment

Government Settles for $3 Million in Spying Coffee Table Suit

The U.S. has agreed to pay $3 million to a former government worker who accused officials with the CIA and State Department of spying on him with a bugged coffee table. Rather than comply with a court order to provide lawyers in the case with what the U.S.

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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 P2P News No Comments

Spy Son Rats Out Mole Father

The son of a disgraced CIA agent convicted of funneling classified information to the Russians has pleaded guilty to charges of helping his imprisoned father collect overdue bills for his dad’s nefarious activities. The 25-year-old son, Nathaniel James Nicholson of Eugene, Oregon, traveled throughout the world using coded e-mail messages to plot meeting locations with the Russians, and received tens of thousands of dollars on behalf of his convicted spy father, Harold James Nicholson, according to a January indictment . (.pdf) The younger Nicholson faces up to 25 years in prison.

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Friday, August 28th, 2009 P2P News No Comments

Feds Say ‘Dragnet’ Surveillance Lawsuit Threatens Security

SAN FRANCISCO – Citing the state secrets privilege and other legal claims, the Obama administration urged a federal judge here Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit claiming Americans’ electronic communications are being siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. During a two-hour hearing, a top-ranking Justice Department litigator declined to confirm or deny the existence of what the Electronic Frontier Foundation described in its lawsuit as ongoing “dragnet” surveillance, which the EFF hopes the lawsuit will stop. “President Obama inherited a number of surveillance activities,” Anthony Coppolino, special litigation counsel for the administration, told U.S.

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Thursday, July 16th, 2009 P2P News No Comments

FCC’s Warrantless Household Searches Alarm Experts

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it. That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

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Thursday, May 21st, 2009 P2P News No Comments