Government Corruption News Articles

Excerpts of key news articles on

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 revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the [FAA] did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses? The American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, an effort to scientifically analyze all sightings to see if any posed a threat to national security. Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings. On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two [US] Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land. An examination of the site turned up indentations in the ground and a level of radiation in the area that was significantly higher than ordinary. More witnesses at the same base reported the U.F.O. again on subsequent nights. The deputy base commander reported that the aircraft aimed light beams into the most highly sensitive area of the base — a clear security breach.The United States ... should reopen investigations of U.F.O. phenomena. It would not imply that the country has suddenly started believing in little green men. It would simply recognize the possibility that radar alone cannot always tell us what’s out there.

Note: The author of this article, Nick Pope, was in charge of U.F.O. investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994. For his testimony and that of other top officials suggesting a major cover-up of the UFO phenomena, click here. Pope is also the author of Open Skies, Closed Minds.

The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), [said] that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war. He spoke after oil prices set a new record on 13 consecutive days over the past two weeks. They have now multiplied sixfold since 2002. Goldman Sachs predicted last week that the price could rise to an unprecedented $200 a barrel over the next year. Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy Service, and an authority on Iraq's oil, said it is the only one of the world's biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially to increase its flow. Production in eight of the others – the US, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico – has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels. Dr Salameh [said] that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. "This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil."

Consumers and farmers will soon be on their own when it comes to finding out which pesticides are being sprayed on everything from corn to apples. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said ... it plans to do away with publishing its national survey tracking pesticide use, despite opposition from prominent scientists, the nation's largest farming organizations and environmental groups. "If you don't know what's being used, then you don't know what to look for," said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center, a nonprofit in Enterprise, Ore. "In the absence of information, people can be lulled into thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in this country." Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency's detailed annual report to learn which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes and oranges grow. The U.S. [EPA] also uses the fine-grained data when figuring out how chemicals should be regulated, and which pesticides pose the greatest risk to public health. Joe Reilly, ... at the National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the program was cut because the agency could no longer afford to spend the $8 million the survey sapped from its $160 million annual budget. "Unless new funds are made available there's not much that we can do," Reilly said. "What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting accident reports," said Steve Scholl-Buckwald, managing director at the San Francisco nonprofit Pesticide Action Network. "And that's a lousy way to protect public health."

Note: For many important reports on health issues from major media sources, click here.

The battle over dioxin contamination in [the Saginaw, Mich.] region had been raging for years when a top [EPA] official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up. On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the [Bush] administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office. Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1. Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Gade, appointed ... regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters. She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S. Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. On Thursday, Gade said of her resignation: "There's no question this is about Dow. I stand behind what I did and what my staff did. I'm proud of what we did."

Note: For many powerful reports on government corruption from the major media, click here.

The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law. The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees. While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments. The new documents provide more details about how the administration intends to determine whether a specific technique would be legal, depending on the circumstances involved. Some legal experts critical of the Justice Department interpretation said the department seemed to be arguing that the prospect of thwarting a terror attack could be used to justify interrogation methods that would otherwise be illegal. “What they are saying is that if my intent is to defend the United States rather than to humiliate you, than I have not committed an offense,” said Scott L. Silliman, who teaches national security law at Duke University. The humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners is prohibited by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Note: For many disturbing reports of increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

A Bush administration lawyer resisted a San Francisco federal judge's attempts Wednesday to get him to say whether Congress can limit the president's wiretap authority in terrorism and espionage cases, calling the question simplistic. "You can't possibly make that judgment on the public record" without knowing the still-secret details of the electronic surveillance program that President Bush approved in 2001, Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino said at a crucial hearing in a wiretapping lawsuit. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker didn't rule immediately on the government's request to dismiss the suit by an Islamic charity in Oregon, which says a document that federal authorities accidentally released showed it was wiretapped. But Walker, in an extensive exchange with Coppolino, said Congress had spoken clearly in a 1978 law that required the government to obtain a warrant from a secret court before it could conduct electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists or spies. "The president is obliged to follow what Congress has mandated," Walker said. The case may determine whether any U.S. court can judge the legality of Bush's covert order to the National Security Agency to intercept phone calls and e-mails between Americans and suspected foreign terrorists without seeking judicial approval. After Bush acknowledged the existence of the program, Congress temporarily extended it in August and now is debating whether to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits for their past cooperation. Most lawsuits challenging the program have been dismissed because the plaintiffs were unable to show that they had been wiretapped.

Note: For many disturbing reports of increasing threats to civil liberties, click here.

In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years. Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret. Deferred prosecutions have become a favorite tool of the Bush administration. But some legal experts now wonder if the policy shift has led companies, in particular financial institutions now under investigation for their roles in the subprime mortgage debacle, to test the limits of corporate anti-fraud laws. Firms have readily agreed to the deferred prosecutions, said Vikramaditya S. Khanna, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has studied their use, because “clearly it avoids a bigger headache for them.” Some lawyers suggest that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. “Some companies may bear the risk” of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said. Legal experts say the tactic may have sent the wrong signal to corporations — the promise, in effect, of a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Note: For more revelations of government corruption from major media sources, click here.

The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters. The letters are investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena. ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied "make us incredibly concerned that the FBI and DoD might be collaborating to evade limits" placed on the Defense Department's use of the letters. Goodman, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, said the military is allowed to demand financial and credit records in certain instances but does not have the authority to get e-mail and phone records or lists of Web sites that people have visited. That is the kind of information that the FBI can get by using a national security letter, she said. "That's why we're particularly concerned. The DoD may be accessing the kinds of records they are not allowed to get," she said. Goodman also noted that legal limits are placed on the Defense Department "because the military doing domestic investigations tends to make us leery.

Note: For further disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.

When the nation's intelligence agencies wanted a computer network to better share information ... they turned to a big name in the technology industry to supply some of the equipment: Google Inc. The Mountain View company sold the agencies servers for searching documents. Many of the contracts are for search appliances - servers for storing and searching internal documents. Agencies can use the devices to create their own mini-Googles on intranets made up entirely of government data. Additionally, Google has had success licensing a souped-up version of its aerial mapping service, Google Earth. Spy agencies are using Google equipment as the backbone of Intellipedia, a network aimed at helping agents share intelligence. [The system] is maintained by the director of national intelligence and is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and an alphabet soup of other intelligence agencies and offices. Google supplies the computer servers that support the network, as well as the search software that allows users to sift through messages and data. Because of the complexities of doing business with the government, Google uses resellers to process orders on its behalf. Google takes care of the sales, marketing and management of the accounts. Google is one of many technology vendors vying for government contracts. On occasion, Google is the target of conspiracy theories from bloggers who say it is working with spy agencies more closely than simply selling search equipment.

Despite ordering improvements more than two years ago, President Bush has barely made a dent in the huge backlog of unanswered requests under the Freedom of Information Act. At the same time, an audit by the National Security Archive found that Bush has provided citizens someone to talk to about how long it is going to take to get the government records they want or to be turned down. The archive, a private research group at The George Washington University, released its seventh audit ... of the 1967 law that gives people the power to request information from federal government files. The audit of 90 government agencies found mixed results from Bush's executive order on Dec. 14, 2005, to agencies to clear the backlog and be more responsive to requesters. "Behind its ambitious facade, the order lacked both carrot and stick," the audit said, because it provided no additional money to do the job and no way to force agencies to set substantial goals or step up their efforts if they fell short. "Many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public," said Tom Blanton, director of the archive, whose FOIA audits are funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The archive found that unanswered requests government-wide dropped just over 2 percent, from 217,000 to 212,000, from the end of 2005 to the end of 2007. Of those agencies with backlogs, 31 percent even saw pending requests rise during the two years, including some agencies that significantly reduced very old unanswered requests but saw gains wiped out by a surge of new requests. The audit particularly criticized the Treasury Department for trying to "wait out the requester."

Note: For many key articles on government secrecy, click here.

A plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to close several of its 26 research libraries did not fully account for the impact on government staffers and the public, who rely on the libraries for hard-to-find environmental data, congressional investigators reported yesterday. The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the EPA effort, begun in 2006 to comply with a $2 million funding cut sought by the White House, ... hurt access to materials and services in the 37-year-old library network. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, said the report reveals a "grim picture" of mismanagement at the EPA. The libraries provide technical information and documentation for enforcement cases and help EPA staff members track new environmental technologies and the health risks associated with dangerous chemicals. They also are repositories of scientific information that is used to back up the agency's positions on new regulations and environmental reports and data that are tapped by people such as developers and state and local officials. The collections include hard-to-find copies of documents on federal Superfund hazardous waste sites, water-quality data and the health of regional ecosystems. Under the plan, EPA closed physical access to three regional office libraries in Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas, and to the headquarters library and the Chemical Library in Washington. Operating hours were reduced at libraries in Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Boston. Investigators noted that users of the Chemical Library -- which served EPA scientists who review industry requests to sell new chemicals -- did not learn of the facility's closure until after it occurred.

Note: For many key articles on government secrecy, click here.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft responded angrily Tuesday to Congressional Democrats who suggested that a no-bid private contract directed to him by the Justice Department last year amounted to a “back-room sweetheart deal” worth tens of millions of dollars to his consulting firm. “There is not a conflict; there is not an appearance of a conflict,” Mr. Ashcroft said at a hearing of a House Judiciary subcommittee exploring the circumstances of the contract. He repeatedly tried to talk over the panel’s Democratic chairwoman, Representative Linda T. Sánchez of California, who offered the severest questioning. Mr. Ashcroft stepped down from the Justice Department three years ago and now runs a Washington consulting and lobbying firm that bears his name. Ms. Sánchez opened the hearing by suggesting the appearance of a conflict of interest in the department’s decision last year to steer a monitoring contract worth $28 million to $52 million to Mr. Ashcroft’s firm as part of an out-of-court settlement with a medical supply company under criminal investigation. The Indiana company, Zimmer Holdings, hired the Ashcroft firm as the settlement monitor at the direction of Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney in New Jersey, who had pursued the investigation and had worked under Mr. Ashcroft at the Justice Department. “You don’t believe that it may be a conflict of interest in a former employee hiring the former boss, or suggesting that he be hired, for a very lucrative contract?” she said of the 18-month contract, which requires Mr. Ashcroft to make sure that Zimmer complies with the terms of its settlement of kickback allegations. Ms. Sánchez described the contract as a “back-room sweetheart deal” in which “Mr. Ashcroft was selected with no public notice and no bidding.”

Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable, verifiable sources on government corruption, click here.

Under pressure from the chemical industry, the Environmental Protection Agency has dismissed an outspoken scientist who chaired a federal panel responsible for helping the agency determine the dangers of a flame retardant widely used in electronic equipment. Toxicologist Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an EPA scientific panel reviewing the chemical a year ago. Federal records show that she was removed from the panel in August after the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying group for chemical manufacturers, complained to a top-ranking EPA official that she was biased. The chemical, a brominated compound known as deca, is [commonly] used in the plastic housings of television sets. Rice, an award-winning former EPA scientist ... has studied low doses of deca and reported neurological effects in lab animals. The EPA is in the process of deciding how much daily exposure to deca is safe - a decision, expected next month, that could determine whether it can still be used in consumer products. The role of the expert panel was to review and comment on the scientific evidence. Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an advocacy group in Washington, said it was unprecedented for the EPA to remove an expert for expressing concerns about the potential dangers of a chemical. "It's a scary world if we create a precedent that says scientists involved in decision-making are perceived to be too biased," she said. In 2004, the EPA gave Rice and four colleagues an award for what it called "exceptionally high-quality research" for a study that linked lead exposure to premature puberty in girls.

Note: For many revealing articles on government corruption, click here.

Investigators from Scotland Yard have concluded that Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader, died after hitting her head as she was tossed by the force of a suicide blast, not from an assassin�s bullet, officials who have been briefed on the inquiry said Thursday. The findings support the Pakistani government�s explanation of Ms. Bhutto�s death in December, an account that had been greeted with disbelief by Ms. Bhutto�s supporters, other Pakistanis and medical experts. It is unclear how the Scotland Yard investigators reached such conclusive findings absent autopsy results or other potentially important evidence that was washed away by cleanup crews in the immediate aftermath of the blast. The British inquiry also determined that a lone gunman, whose image was captured in numerous photographs at the scene, also caused the explosion. Pakistani authorities originally said there were two assailants, based partly on photographs splashed across the front pages of the nation�s leading newspapers. Scotland Yard said through a spokesman in London that it would have no comment on the Bhutto report until after it was made public. The findings are certain to be met with widespread skepticism, especially from Mrs. Bhutto�s supporters who ... say they believe she was shot, as do people who were riding with Ms. Bhutto when she died on Dec. 27. The doctors who treated Ms. Bhutto told a member of the hospital board, an eminent lawyer, Athar Minallah, that she had most likely been shot.

Note: Why is it that offficial investigations into assassinations of major political figures always come up with "Lone Gunman" theories? For many revealing reports on assassinations from reliable sources, click here.

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer is urging a third of the nation's governors to join him in opposing the implementation of a national identification card, saying they can force Congress to change it. Schweitzer, who last year said "no, nope, no way, hell no" to the federal plan calling for national driver's licenses under the REAL ID Act, sent a letter yesterday to 17 other governors asking them to oppose a Department of Homeland Security effort to penalize states that have not adopted the mandate. Homeland Security has said recently that travelers from states that have not adopted the license will have to use a passport or certain types of federal border-crossing cards if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security.

Residents of at least 17 states are suddenly stuck in the middle of a fight between the Bush administration and state governments over post-September 11 security rules for driver's licenses -- a dispute that, by May, could leave millions of people unable to use their licenses to board planes or enter federal buildings. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who unveiled final details of the REAL ID Act's rules on Friday, said that if states want their licenses to remain valid for air travel after May 2008, those states must seek a waiver indicating they want more time to comply with the legislation. Chertoff said that in instances where a particular state doesn't seek a waiver, its residents will have to use a passport or a newly created federal passport card if they want to avoid a vigorous secondary screening at airport security. Chertoff spoke as he discussed the details of the administration's plan to improve security for driver's licenses in all 50 states -- an effort delayed due to opposition from states worried about the cost and civil libertarians upset about what they believe are invasions of privacy. Under the rules announced Friday, Americans born after Dec. 1, 1964, will have to get more secure driver's licenses in the next six years. The American Civil Liberties Union has fiercely objected to the effort, particularly the sharing of personal data among government agencies. In its written objection to the law, the ACLU claims REAL ID amounts to the "first-ever national identity card system," which "would irreparably damage the fabric of American life."

The International Criminal Court isn't discussed much in the presidential campaign, but few issues are more revealing of a candidate's perspective on the United States' legal and political relations with the rest of the world. The court was established in 2002 to deal with cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Headquartered in the Dutch city of The Hague, it was conceived as a permanent successor to the Nuremberg tribunals formed to try Nazi leaders after World War II. It now has 105 members, including virtually all current U.S. allies, but not the United States itself. President Bush has attacked the court relentlessly, saying it could subject Americans to politically motivated prosecutions abroad. He has renounced the 1998 treaty that created the court, pressed other nations to disregard it, and signed legislation - nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act" by critics - authorizing military action to free any citizen of the United States or an allied nation held for trial by the court. The presidential candidates ... took differing positions in the only congressional vote on the issue, the 2002 legislation allowing military action to free prisoners at The Hague. Clinton and McCain voted for the bill, as did then-Sen. John Edwards, who now favors U.S. membership in the court. Three other Democrats, Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Sens. Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd, voted against the measure. International law scholars say the candidates' positions are illuminating because the disagreements over the court represent some of the most critical foreign-policy questions in the post-Cold War world - U.S. autonomy and its limits, the role of international law and the multinational bodies that enforce it, and the balance between power and accountability. "The court can be seen as a bellwether of their approach to the rule of law and international institutions," said Michael Scharf, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Note: Do you think the current administration might have something to fear here?

The U.S. military is making a mockery of American democratic principles by bringing a criminal case against an Associated Press photographer in Iraq without disclosing the charges against him, AP President and CEO Tom Curley said Saturday. "This is a poor example - and not the first of its kind - of the way our government honors the democratic principles and values it says it wants to share with the Iraqi people," Curley wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. The U.S. military notified the AP last weekend that it intended to submit a written complaint against Bilal Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Military officials have refused to disclose the content of the complaint to the AP, despite repeated requests. Hussein's lawyer will enter the case "blind," with no idea of the evidence or charges, Curley wrote. "In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, although the military has sent out a flurry of ever-changing claims. Every claim we've checked out has proved to be false, overblown or microscopic in significance," said Curley. Hussein, a 36-year-old native of Fallujah, was part of the AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005. He was detained in Ramadi on April 12, 2006. "We believe Bilal's crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man," Curley wrote. Curley said the military has refused to answer questions from Hussein's attorney, former federal prosecutor Paul Gardephe, since announcing its intentions to seek a case against him. The military has leaked baseless allegations against Hussein to friendly media outlets, Curley wrote, but it will not even share the exact date of the hearing with the AP.

Note: For a powerful summary of a former Marine general's view of war, "War is a Racket", click here.

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied. "Most people don't realize it, but they're carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air." In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker's phone location by using the carrier's E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. "Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously 'ping' wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target," wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA -- the Wireless Association.

Note: For many major media reports on serious new threats to civil liberties, click here.

A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis. This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (Ł480.6bn) worth of sub-prime debt. Cleveland, Ohio, is an industrial city on the banks of Lake Erie in the US "rust belt". It is the sub-prime capital of the United States. One in ten homes in the city is now vacant, and whole neighbourhoods have been blighted by foreclosed, vandalized and boarded-up homes. Cleveland is facing a rising crime wave, and the cost of demolishing the vacant houses alone will cost the city $100m of its tax base. According to Jim Rokakis, the County Treasurer for Cleveland's Cuyahoga County, "Wall Street strategies that made the cycle of no-money-down, no-questions-asked lending possible have sucked the life out of my city". As the credit crunch continues to bite "families all over the country continue to lose homes in record numbers, stripping families of their wealth and destroying entire neighbourhoods," says Michael Calhoun of the Center for Responsible Lending, which tracks these issues. There have already been 1.7 million foreclosure proceedings in the US in the first eight months of 2007, and up to 2 million families are expected to lose their homes over the next two years, according to estimates by the US Congress's Joint Economic Committee. Many of these mortgages were sold by unscrupulous and little regulated mortgage brokers, who received handsome commissions for selling expensive and unsuitable products. Some customers were not told that their interest rates would go up sharply after two years; others were promised they could refinance their home before higher rates took effect. Others found that when they had difficulties paying, huge unexplained fees were added to their bills, putting them further in debt.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key 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.