Crapaganda.com

That photo of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala.? He took it. The well-known image of black sanitation workers carrying “I Am A Man” signs in Memphis? His. He was the only photojournalist to document the entire trial in the murder of Emmett Till, and he was there in Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, King’s room, on the night he was assassinated.

But now an unsettling asterisk must be added to the legacy of Ernest C. Withers, one of the most celebrated photographers of the civil-rights era: He was a paid FBI informant.

On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two FBI agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil-rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the “Original Civil Rights Photographer,” famous in part for the trust he had engendered among high-ranking civil-rights leaders, including King.

“It is an amazing betrayal,” said Athan Theoharis, a historian at Marquette University who has written books about the FBI. “It really speaks to the degree that the FBI was able to engage individuals within the civil-rights movement. This man was so well trusted.”

From at least 1968 to 1970, Withers, who was black, provided photographs, biographical information and scheduling details to Howell Lowe and William H. Lawrence, two FBI agents in the bureau’s Memphis domestic surveillance program, according to numerous reports summarizing their meetings. The reports were obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on its website.

A clerical error appears to have allowed for Withers’ identity to be divulged: In most cases in the reports, references to Withers and his informant number, ME 338-R, have been blacked out. But in several locations, the FBI appears to have forgotten to hide them. The FBI said Monday that it was not clear what had caused the lapse in privacy and was looking into the incident.

Civil-rights leaders have responded to the revelation with a mixture of dismay, sadness and disbelief. “If this is true, then Ernie abused our friendship,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a retired minister who organized civil-rights rallies throughout the South in the 1960s.

Others were more forgiving. “It’s not surprising,” said Andrew Young, a civil-rights organizer who later became mayor of Atlanta. “We knew that everything we did was bugged, although we didn’t suspect Withers individually.”

Many details of Withers’ relationship with the FBI remain unknown. The bureau keeps files on all informants but has declined repeated requests to release Withers’, which would presumably explain how much he was paid by the FBI, how he was recruited and how long he served as an informant.

At the time of his death, Withers had the largest catalog of any individual photographer covering the civil-rights movement in the South, said Tony Decaneas, the owner of the Panopticon Gallery in Boston, the exclusive agent for Withers. His photographs have been collected in four books, and his family was planning to open a museum and name it after him.

His work shows remarkable intimacy with and access to top civil-rights leaders. Friends used to say he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. But while he was growing close to top civil-rights leaders, Withers was also meeting regularly with the FBI agents, disclosing details about plans for marches and political beliefs of the leaders, even personal information like the leaders’ car-tag numbers.

David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who has written biographies of King, said many civil-rights workers gave confidential interviews to the FBI and CIA, and were automatically classified as “informants.” The difference, Garrow said, is the evidence that Withers was being paid.

Although Withers’ motivation is not known, Garrow said informants were rarely motivated by the financial compensation, which “wasn’t enough money to live on.” But Marc Perrusquia, who wrote the article for The Commercial Appeal, noted that Withers had eight children and might have struggled to support them.

One daughter of Withers, Rosalind Withers, told local news organizations that she did not find the report conclusive.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of this in my life,” Withers told The Commercial Appeal. “My father’s not here to defend himself. That is a very, very strong, strong accusation.”

Other children of Withers did not respond to requests for comment.

Source: Seattle Times

President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

It’s “the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government” to centralize efforts toward creating an “identity ecosystem” for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

The Obama administration is currently drafting what it’s calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

“We are not talking about a national ID card,” Locke said at the Stanford event. “We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities.”

The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said.

Details about the “trusted identity” project are unusually scarce. Last year’s announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.

Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. “I don’t have to get a credential if I don’t want to,” he said. There’s no chance that “a centralized database will emerge,” and “we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this,” he said.

Inter-agency rivalries to claim authority over cybersecurity have exited ever since many responsibilities were centralized in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its creation nine years ago. Three years ago, proposals were were circulating in Washington to transfer authority to the secretive NSA, which is part of the U.S. Defense Department.

In March 2009, Rod Beckstrom, director of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Center, resigned through a letter that gave a rare public glimpse into the competition for budgetary dollars and cybersecurity authority. Beckstrom said at the time that the NSA “effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions,” and has proposed moving some functions to the agency’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

Source: CBS News

South Korean police have found evidence that Google illegally collected private data while producing its Street View mapping service, a report said Thursday, amid similar claims elsewhere in the world.

Yonhap news agency said the police’s cyber crime unit had decoded data stored on hard disks used for Google Street View and found evidence of illegal gathering of private information.

Street View allows users to see panoramic street scenes on the Google Maps site.

There have been claims in several countries that while compiling the images, Google violated home-owners’ private Wi-Fi Internet connections.

“We’ve discovered records and contents of e-mails and online messenger chats individuals exchanged through Wi-Fi networks,” said a South Korean police official quoted by Yonhap.

Around 10 Google employees in South Korea and the United States said during the South Korean probe that they had no knowledge of what had been collected, the report said.

A police agency spokesman confirmed the report but refused to give details.

Google said Thursday it was “profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected” personal data, saying it was cooperating with Seoul’s telecommunication authorities and the police.

“Our ultimate objective remains to delete the data consistent with our legal obligations and in consultation with the appropriate authorities,” the company said in a statement.

Police investigations have also taken place in the United States, Germany and Italy.

Google has admitted its Street View cars, which have been cruising and taking photographs of cities in over 30 countries, inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems.

Google agreed last November to delete private emails and passwords mistakenly picked up from wireless networks in Britain by its Street View cars.

It has also agreed to improve the way it trains staff on data protection issues as it seeks to manage the global row.

Source: Raw Story

A Texas man declared innocent Tuesday after 30 years in prison could have cut short his prison stint twice and made parole – if only he would admit he was a sex offender.

But Cornelius Dupree Jr. refused to do so, doggedly maintaining his innocence in a 1979 rape and robbery, in the process serving more time for a crime he didn’t commit than any other Texas inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.

DNA Exonerates Man after 30 Years Behind Bars

“Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.

Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, and Lawrence McKinney spent more than 31 years in a Tennessee prison.

Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980 for the rape and robbery of a 26-year-old Dallas woman a year earlier. He was released in July on mandatory supervision, and lived under house arrest until October. About a week after his release, DNA test results came back proving his innocence in the sexual assault.

A day after his release, Dupree married his fiancee, Selma. The couple met two decades ago while he was in prison.

His exoneration hearing was delayed until Tuesday while authorities retested the DNA and made sure it was a match to the victim. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins supported Dupree’s innocence claim.

Looking fit and trim in a dark suit, Dupree stood through most of the short hearing, until state district Judge Don Adams told him, “You’re free to go.” One of Dupree’s lawyers, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck, called it “a glorious day.”

“It’s a joy to be free again,” Dupree said.

This latest wait was nothing for Dupree, who was up for parole as recently as 2004. He was set to be released and thought he was going home, until he learned he first would have to attend a sex offender treatment program.

Those in the program had to go through what is known as the “four R’s.” They are recognition, remorse, restitution and resolution, said Jim Shoemaker, who served two years with Dupree in the Boyd Unit south of Dallas.

“He couldn’t get past the first part,” said Shoemaker, who drove up from Houston to attend Dupree’s hearing.

Shoemaker said he spent years talking to Dupree in the prison recreation yard, and always believed his innocence.

“I got a lot of flak from the guys on the block,” Shoemaker said. “But I always believed him. He has a quiet, peaceful demeanor.”

Under Texas compensation laws for the wrongly imprisoned, Dupree is eligible for $80,000 for each year he was behind bars, plus a lifetime annuity. He could receive $2.4 million in a lump sum that is not subject to federal income tax.

The compensation law, the nation’s most generous, was passed in 2009 by the Texas Legislature after dozens of wrongly convicted men were released from prison. Texas has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 – more than any other state.

Dallas County’s record of DNA exonerations – Dupree is No. 21 – is unmatched nationally because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test. In addition, Watkins, the DA, has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing.

Watkins, the first black district attorney in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls “a convict-at-all-costs mentality” that he says permeated his office before he arrived in 2007.

At least a dozen other exonerated former inmates from the Dallas area who collectively served more than 100 years in prison upheld a local tradition by attending the hearing and welcoming the newest member of their unfortunate fraternity. One of them, James Giles, presented Dupree with a $100 bill as a way to get his life restarted.

At one point, Scheck pointed out that eyewitness misidentification – the most common cause of wrongful convictions – was the key factor that sent Dupree to prison. The attorney then asked how many of the others were wrongly imprisoned because an eyewitness mistakenly identified them. A dozen hands went in the air.

“We know what went wrong here, it was bad identification procedures and we know how to fix it,” said Scheck to CBS News.

Not in attendance Tuesday was Dupree’s accused accomplice, Anthony Massingill, who was convicted in the same case and sentenced to life in prison on another sexual assault. The same DNA testing that cleared Dupree also cleared Massingill. He says he is innocent, but remains behind bars while authorities test DNA in the second case.

Dupree was 19 when he was arrested in December 1979 while walking to a party with Massingill. Authorities said they matched the description of a different rape and robbery that had occurred the previous day.

Police presented their pictures in a photo array to the victim. She picked out Massingill and Dupree. Her male companion, who also was robbed, did not pick out either man when showed the same photo lineup.

Dupree was convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. According to court documents, the woman and her male companion stopped at a Dallas liquor store in November 1979 to buy cigarettes and use a payphone. As they returned to their car, two men, at least one of whom was armed, forced their way into the vehicle and ordered them to drive. They also demanded money from the two victims.

The men eventually ordered the car to the side of the road and forced the male driver out of the car. The woman attempted to flee but was pulled back inside.

The perpetrators drove the woman to a nearby park, where they raped her at gunpoint. They debated killing her but eventually let her live, keeping her rabbit-fur coat and her driver’s license and warning her they would kill her if she reported the assault to police. The victim ran to the nearest highway and collapsed unconscious by the side of the road, where she was discovered.

Dupree was convicted and spent the next three decades appealing. The Court of Criminal Appeals turned him down three times.

“What did happen happened,” Dupree told CBS News. “It’s in the past and in order for me to get my life together I have to forgive.”

Source: CBS News

In what may set a Delaware precedent, a Superior Court judge has gutted a criminal case against a Newark man who was pulled over with 10 pounds of marijuana because police used a GPS tracking device without a warrant to follow him for nearly a month.

In court papers, Deputy Attorney General Brian Robertson argued that information from a global positioning device that police attached to the car of Michael D. Holden was only a part of a larger “multifaceted” case against the 28-year-old by officers with the interagency Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force.

On the day in question, Feb. 24, police saw what they believed to be an exchange of cash for drugs in New Jersey — though they did not see cash or drugs, only bags. They called the Delaware River and Bay Authority Police to stop Holden’s car as it crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge. During that traffic stop, police recovered a duffel bag with 10 pounds of marijuana inside.

But defense attorney John P. Deckers countered that the 20-day-long use of a GPS device to track his client — weeks before police got a tip about the Feb. 24 exchange — amounted to an unreasonable search under the state constitution and violated his client’s privacy without probable cause.

While police have long been allowed — without a warrant — to follow suspects as they drive from place to place, Superior Court Judge Jan R. Jurden wrote earlier this month that using a GPS device is different.

“The advance of technology will continue ad infinitum,” she wrote. “An Orwellian state is now technologically feasible. Without adequate judicial preservation of privacy, there is nothing to protect our citizens from being tracked 24/7.”

Though police can follow a suspect in public, there are limits to how long officers can keep up the tail, whereas a GPS device never sleeps and “provides more information than one reasonably expects to be ‘exposed to the public,’ ” the judge wrote.

To get the same level of detail using only old-fashioned police surveillance techniques would require “millions of additional police officers and cameras on every street lamp,” Jurden wrote. And if no warrant is required for such surveillance, “any individual could be tracked indefinitely without suspicion of any crime. … No one should be subject to such scrutiny by police without probable cause,” she concluded.

And with that, Jurden ruled that the evidence of the duffel bag must be suppressed, forcing prosecutors to drop marijuana trafficking and possession charges against Holden that carried a minimum punishment of two years in prison and up to 20 years behind bars if he was convicted.

The judge made clear she was not prohibiting law enforcement from using GPS tracking, she was just requiring “a warrant be justified and issued” before the devices are used.

“This is a case of first impression in Delaware,” said Deckers. “I think the ruling reinforces our general right to privacy, and specifically, signals that Delawareans have a legitimate expectation that their every movement by automobile will not be remotely tracked and recorded by private parties or by law enforcement.”

There is a split among courts across the country looking at this same issue, according to experts, and Robertson said the Attorney General’s Office is considering appealing the ruling to the Delaware Supreme Court.

Widener University associate professor Wesley Oliver said Jurden’s ruling puts Delaware in line with many other state courts — including New York, Oregon and Massachusetts — that have found warrantless 24/7 tracking by police to be an infringement.

Without modern technology, Oliver said, it would be impossible for police to get the same level of detail about a suspect’s life and travels.

“So the opinion makes a lot of sense from a practical perspective,” he said, comparing it to wiretapping limits that were adopted in the 1930s after being unregulated for decades.

Without such restrictions, Oliver said, an incumbent candidate for sheriff could track an opponent with a GPS device — searching for visits to a strip club, mistress’ house or clinic — and be perfectly within the law.

But professor Laurie Levenson of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles expressed surprise at Jurden’s ruling, citing federal court decisions that have sided with police on the issue.

Levenson said the federal courts have followed the logic that if it is permissible for human surveillance without a warrant, it is permissible for GPS surveillance. “There is a different expectation of privacy in a car,” she said.

“If you want privacy,” Levenson said, according to federal rulings, “Go in your house and pull down the shades.”

Levenson said the U.S. Supreme Court also seems pointed in that direction, but she said Jurden’s ruling is not likely to end up there because Jurden — like other state court judges — ruled on protections contained in the state constitution.

And as Jurden wrote, “The Delaware Constitution affords greater protection than the United States Constitution” in this area.

Source: Delaware Online

Last fall, as he had done hundreds of times, Iranian-American businessman Farid Seif passed through security at a Houston airport and boarded an international flight.

He didn’t realize he had forgotten to remove the loaded snub nose “baby” Glock pistol from his computer bag. But TSA officers never noticed as his bag glided along the belt and was x-rayed. When he got to his hotel after the three-hour flight, he was shocked to discover the gun traveled unnoticed from Houston.

“It’s just impossible to miss it, you know. I mean, this is not a small gun,” Seif told ABC News. “How can you miss it? You cannot miss it.”

But the TSA did miss it, and despite what most people believe about the painstaking effort to screen airline passengers and their luggage before they enter the terminal, it was not that unusual.

Experts tell ABC News that every year since the September 11 terror attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert “red team tests,” where undercover agents try to see just how much they can get past security checks at major U.S. airports. And while the Department of Homeland Security closely guards the results as classified, those that have leaked in media reports have been shocking.

According to one report, undercover TSA agents testing security at a Newark airport terminal on one day in 2006 found that TSA screeners failed to detect concealed bombs and guns 20 out of 22 times. A 2007 government audit leaked to USA Today revealed that undercover agents were successful slipping simulated explosives and bomb parts through Los Angeles’s LAX airport in 50 out of 70 attempts, and at Chicago’s O’Hare airport agents made 75 attempts and succeeded in getting through undetected 45 times.

Watch the ABC News report

Officers will start random bag inspections on the sprawling Washington subway system, the Washington Metro Transit Police said on Thursday, a week after a man was arrested for making bomb threats to the rail system.

Metrorail police officers plan to randomly select bags before passengers enter subway stations and they will swab them or have an explosives-sniffing dog check the bags, according to the Metro police.

There is “no specific or credible threat to the system at this time,” Metro said in a statement. Passengers who refuse to have their bags inspected will be denied entry into the subway system.

“The program will increase visible methods of protecting our passengers and employees, while minimizing inconvenience to riders,” Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said in a statement announcing the new checks.

The decision to launch the new security checks, similar to programs in New York and Boston, comes after two people were arrested in recent months, accused separately of threatening to explode bombs in the Washington subway system.

The Washington Metro system consists of five separate rail lines with 86 stations that stretch from Maryland through the capital city and into Virginia. Passengers have made some 217 million trips through the system so far this year, Metro said.

A Virginia man was arrested last week for allegedly making threats to use explosives in the Washington area including the subway.

Two months earlier, another Virginia man was arrested in a sting operation, accused of trying to help who he thought were al Qaeda militants bomb Metrorail stations.

U.S. security officials have been increasingly worried about terrorism plots being launched in the United States, particularly by individuals who have no direct affiliation with militant groups but sympathize with their causes and have adopted their ideologies.

Source: Reuters

Next month, 13 law enforcement agencies in the region will begin using a new handheld device that lets an officer scan a person’s fingerprints and seek a match in an electronic database – all without going anywhere.

Police say taking fingerprints in the field will allow them to work more efficiently and safely. But the ACLU North Carolina in Raleigh worries that the device may allow officers to violate privacy rights.

The ACLU is concerned about what will become of fingerprint scans that are sent to other databases, such as the National Crime Information Center.

“Part of the danger is the idea of the government creating a database on its citizens,” said Sarah Preston, policy director for ACLU North Carolina. “Citizens should be allowed some degree of privacy.”

But those concerns are unwarranted, said Sam Pennica, director of the City-County Bureau of Identification, the agency that processes fingerprints in Wake County and is providing the devices to local agencies. The software for the device, known as Rapid Identification COPS Technology, would not store fingerprints of any individuals, even those charged with a crime, Pennica said.

“It will not retain the fingerprints of any individuals under any circumstances,” he said, adding that fingerprints would only be compared to those in the Wake County database. “They will not be submitted to any state or federal agency.”

ACLU North Carolina has asked CCBI for copies of its policies governing use of the device. The organization made a similar request to the Charlotte Police Department last month, after it announced a pilot program to determine the effectiveness of Rapid ID.

“Mainly, we are looking for protocols on how it’s going to be used on the streets,” Preston said.

Pennica said he would send ACLU North Carolina a packet this week, outlining how, and under what circumstances, the device will be used by law officers. He noted that state law does not allow officers to coerce or threaten a person with arrest for refusing to submit to a fingerprint scan.

CCBI plans to distribute 120 of the devices to 13 law agencies throughout the region, including Raleigh police and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office, at the beginning of the year.

“The agencies have to sign an agreement saying under what circumstances they can use the device, and they will,” Pennica said.

Preston said even with the legal protections in place, the ACLU is concerned that a person may produce identification and still be asked for fingerprints, or that an officer may try to obtain fingerprints from anyone under suspicion.

“It could be used to profile Latinos because a law enforcement officer may not believe they have a valid driver’s license,” Preston said.

ACLU North Carolina expressed similar concerns earlier this year when state law officials, including Attorney General Roy Cooper, supported a bill that would allow the police to obtain DNA samples from anyone charged with a violent felony. Cooper estimated that the collection of DNA at the time of arrest would enable law enforcement agencies across the state to solve at least 100 previously unsolved cases in the first year.

Preston described the measure as “an end-run around constitutional protections.”

The state legislature passed that bill last summer, and Gov. Bev Perdue signed it into law.

Source: NewsObserver

Shoppers at Walmart will soon have something other than glossy magazines and chewing gum to look at when in the checkout line: A “video message” from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to look out for “suspicious” activity and report it immediately.

It’s part of a new Department of Homeland Security program that could see Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s face on video screens in malls, retail outlets and hotels across the United States.

The Walmart video, which will soon be launched at 230 locations nationwide and may eventually be expanded to nearly 600 locations in 27 states, features Napolitano thanking the retailer by name for participating in the program.

Napolitano then says: “If you see something suspicious in the parking lot or in the store, say something immediately. Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff. If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance.”

The video, which doesn’t appear to offer any advice on what constitutes “suspicious” activity, is part of DHS’ “If You See Something, Say Something” program. It was launched originally in the New York City public transit system and, according to the DHS, is about to go nationwide.

Besides Walmart, the program has partnered with Mall of America in Minneapolis, the US’s largest mall, as well as the American Hotel and Lodging Association, rail operator Amtrak, and the Washington, DC, public transit system.

“In the coming months, the Department will continue to expand the ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ campaign nationally with public education materials and outreach tools designed to help America’s businesses, communities and citizens remain vigilant and play an active role in keeping the country safe,” DHS said in a statement.

The following video was posted to YouTube by the DHS.

Not unlike what Orwell foresaw in Nineteen Eighty-Four

Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows.

The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called “Hotwatch” orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department’s increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight.

For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person’s purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed. Agents can also go the traditional route — going to a judge, proving probable cause and getting a search warrant — which means the target will eventually be notified they were spied on.

The document suggests that the normal practice is to ask for all historical records on an account or individual from a credit card company, since getting stored records is generally legally easy. Then the agent sends a request for “Any and all records and information relating directly or indirectly to any and all ongoing and future transactions or events relating to any and all of the following person(s), entitities, account numbers, addresses and other matters…” That gets them a live feed of transaction data.

It’s not clear what standards an agent would have to follow to get a “Hotwatch” order. The Justice Department told Sogohian the document is the only one it could find relating to “hotwatches” — which means there is either no policy or the department is witholding relevant documents.

The Justice Department did not return a call for comment.

Every year, the Justice Department does have to report to Congress the numbers of criminal and national security wiretaps undertaken, as well as the number of National Security Letters issued. Tens of thousands of NSLs are issued yearly — most with gag orders that forbid ISPs or librarians from ever saying they have ever been served with such a subpoena.

But the Justice Department does not report or make public the number of times it got real time or historic cell phone location information, nor how often it is using these so-called “hotwatch” orders.

Source: Wired