NEWS
November 20, 2009
RE MICHAEL Smerconish's op-ed "Again, Eavesdropping Makes Sense": There is real "debate" over electronic surveillance, FISA or NSA, because virtually everyone supports spying in some instances, with safeguards. What sparked a debate over surveillance was when the Bush administration authorized warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens without any FISA oversight or accountability. The idea that the government should never, in any circumstance, be allowed to track communications is insane.
NEWS
September 16, 1987 | By Fredric N. Tulsky and Thomas J. Gibbons Jr., Inquirer Staff Writers
Mayor Goode yesterday announced new guidelines requiring police for the first time to get permission from a civilian authority before conducting surveillance to gather intelligence on political organizations. Stefan Presser, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said no other city in the country required civilian review of police surveillance. The new policy was outlined by Goode in a letter to a coalition of protest groups that have sued the city over police surveillance during the Constitution bicentennial celebration.
NEWS
March 22, 2012 | By Jeff Bliss, Bloomberg News
Iranian diplomats may have carried out "hostile reconnaissance" of sites in New York as many as six times, a warning sign that the city might be targeted for terrorist attack, according to a police official. The incidents took place between 2002 and 2010 and involved videotaping or photographing landmarks, rail service and bridges, said Mitchell Silber, director of the city police department's intelligence analysis unit, in testimony before a U.S. House panel Wednesday. Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran that has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, also has ties to the New York region, he said.
NEWS
February 10, 2006
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had a hard time peddling what he was selling to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. Maybe he had better luck at the closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday. Then again, the Bush administration's approach to defending its warrantless eavesdropping has been to declare that it's legal because the President says it's legal, period. On Monday, Gonzales offered the judiciary panel chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) another unsatisfying explanation of why the administration did an end run around the law, the courts and Congress to initiate new forms of surveillance of overseas calls and e-mail involving American citizens.
NEWS
June 7, 2012 | By Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A Muslim civil rights group that has worked closely with the Obama administration to build better relationships with American Muslims is suing the New York Police Department over its surveillance programs. Eight Muslims filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in New Jersey to force the NYPD to end its surveillance and other intelligence-gathering practices that have targeted Muslims since the 9/11 attacks. The lawsuit alleged that the NYPD's activities were unconstitutional because they focused on people's religion, national origin and race.
NEWS
October 15, 1987 | By Emilie Lounsberry, Inquirer Staff Writer
Government prosecutors yesterday defended hiding microphones in Common Pleas Court Judge Kenneth S. Harris' chambers and robing room and on his telephone, saying the surveillance was vital to the investigation that led to his indictment. "The government cautiously used a valid investigative tool . . . to investigate serious crimes involving a member of the state judiciary," prosecutors Gary S. Glazer and Pamela L. Donleavy said in court documents. "The essence of the government's case is that the defendant conducted his judicial office through a pattern of bribery and extortion.
SPORTS
December 28, 2005 | Daily News Wire Services
Fearing possible terrorism at the Turin Olympics, Italian authorities are conducting surveillance on "numerous" people through telephone wiretaps and other intelligence operations, an Italian security official said yesterday. Luigi Rinella, the Italian police's liaison with the U.S. government, said those under surveillance included suspected Islamic militants, but he stressed that anti-globalization protesters and anarchists could also make trouble during the Feb. 10-26 Games.
NEWS
January 6, 2011 | By WILL BUNCH, bunchw@phillynews.com 215-854-2957
The balding, 60-something man shown in a Christmas week security camera video is well-dressed in a dark suit and an open-collared shirt - but he appears to be lost or confused. The video - which Newark, Del., police say captures prominent defense expert John "Jack" Wheeler III two days before he was murdered and thrown into a trash dumpster - shows him wandering a couple of times up and down the office corridor of a downtown Wilmington parking garage. It shows Wheeler stopping at one point to speak with the office attendant; later he is seen in a second hallway, walking past a bank of ATM machines and onto a parking level.
NEWS
March 1, 2004 | By RICHARD C. GILLIAM
LIKE thousands of Philadelphians, I mourn the death of Faheem Thomas-Childs. I too am the father of a 10-year old-son, and Faheem's horrific death is every parent's worst nightmare. As someone who thinks seriously about public policy, I've asked myself one question: What can we do to better protect our children going to and from school? My solution is simple. It's time for Philadelphia to look seriously at video surveillance of safe corridors for our children. No one is more sensitive to the civil-liberties implications of this suggestion than I. But the state of domestic terrorism that some communities face is considerable; I believe a critical mass exists to examine new solutions to protect our children.
NEWS
February 28, 2012 | By Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Monday that it has no control over how the New York Police Department spends millions of dollars in White House grants that helped pay for NYPD programs that put entire American Muslim neighborhoods under surveillance. In New York, the police commissioner said he wouldn't apologize. The White House has no opinion about how the grant money was spent, spokesman Jay Carney said. The Associated Press reported Monday that the White House money has paid for the cars that plainclothes NYPD officers used to conduct surveillance on Muslim neighborhoods and paid for computers that stored even innocuous information about Muslim college students, mosque sermons, and social events.