Within the last 30 years, while we’ve chased bogeymen overseas and here at home, our Democracy has fallen. We have been taken over; defeated; our voices neutered; our freedoms trampled; our democracy vanquished.No invading force accomplished this; no jackboots echoed across our republic; no alien flag was raised above our lands. Not a single shot was fired by our vaunted military to halt this ta [...]

Russia has become the first member of the Treaty on Open Skies to be allowed to use digital surveillance equipment during its observation flights. Moscow, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, will be able to maintain this technological advantage over Canada, Italy, France, the UK and the US, who still use analog cameras, for several years. [...]

In a huge win for internet freedom, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was within its jurisdiction to enact sweeping net neutrality regulations last year.That means the internet will remain a public service classified under Title II of the Communications Act—upholding the FCC's power to ensure that all carriers, including mobile an [...]

Thanks to Edward Snowden’s revelations, the US government can no longer directly collect everything that we communicate with each other electronically, Tom Devine, legal director at the Government Accountability Project, told RT America’s Manila Chan. [...]

Legal double standards are the norm in the U.S. – no jail for law-flouting Wall Street bankers but mass incarceration for average citizens, especially minorities, who get caught up in the prison-industrial-complex, as Michael Brenner describes. Illicit financial behavior has been decriminalized in the United States – for all practical purposes. [...]

A lawyer's advice on how to assert your rights when it comes to drugs and the police. If you use pot you are a criminal. This is true [according to federal authorities] even in Colorado and Washington, where the feds continue to outlaw cannabis. This is also true in California and other states that provide medical protection. [...]

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist is joining the RT America team. Author and social critic Chris Hedges will host a weekly interview show called ‘On Contact,’ which will air “dissident voices” currently missing from the mainstream media. [...]

Austria’s extremely close-run presidential vote reveals people are disappointed with the political system and don’t feel represented any longer, while the refugee crisis, the euro crisis and dissatisfaction with the EU have also caused the shift to the right in Austria, experts say. [...]

Journalist David Miranda says the public has the right to see documents leaked by Edward Snowden, which he plans to release soon. However, Miranda told RT that he has been pressured from US and UK security agencies not to disclose the documents. [...]

Recent revelations that expose how the U.S. government retaliates against national security whistleblowers show why it was necessary for Edward Snowden to go public with his mass surveillance leaks, author Mark Hertsgaard said in an interview with Democracy Now! on Monday. One day after high-ranking Department of Defense official John Crane exposed the Pentagon's legacy of retaliation against w [...]

We have some fairly odd opinions. Cultural differences exist across borders, and because monoliths are mostly fantasies, often within them, too. That said, America, in particular, is culturally perplexing, and even confounding, to a lot of the rest of the world. I am not, as Americans are wont to do, laboring under the delusion that people in other places spend all that much time thinking about us [...]

The anonymous source behind the Panama Papers stepped out of the shadows on Friday to offer justification for what has been called the biggest leak in history. The whistleblower's gender and name remain secret, as does their occupation. [...]

The US Central Intelligence Agency has become increasingly focused on monitoring social media, according to a document obtained by The Intercept; the intelligence agency is pouring money in start-ups mining tweets, Instagram photos and Facebook posts. Every time you post a message on Facebook or share a photo on Instagram, remember this: Big Brother is watching you. [...]

The whistle blower who exposed the totality of the America’s mass domestic surveillance program suggested that users should look to free and open source software to preserve their privacy. On Saturday, NSA whistle blower spoke to the Free Software Foundation’s LibrePlanet2016 conference [...]

Bulk data gathering programs used by US intelligence have no effect in combating terrorism and have failed to prevent any attacks in their 10 years of operation, whistleblower and former NSA contactor Edward Snowden, claims in a recent interview. “In the wake of the revelations of mass surveillance the [US] president [Barack Obama] appointed two independent commissions to review the efficienc [...]

Controversial changes to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal brought in by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, following its election in October 2015, have been blasted as "crippling" and undermining the basic principles of democracy. A report by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe — a separate body from the European Union founded in 1949 to protect democracy, human rights and the rule [...]

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, whose novel Time of the Octopus provided the basis for the upcoming movie “Snowden” shot by Oliver Stone, spoke to RT about the unexpected challenges filmmakers encountered in the US. Simply called Snowden, the biographical thriller directed by Oliver Stone tells the story of the US National Security Agency whistleblow [...]

In a troubling sign of domestic operations by the US military, the Pentagon has admitted to flying spy drones over the continental United States during the past decade. Human rights activists have long questioned the ethical implications of Washington’s drone use. [...]

The United Nations human rights chief on Friday warned that the U.S. government risks opening a "Pandora's Box" if it successfully forces Apple to unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the suspected San Bernardino shooters. "Encryption and anonymity are needed as enablers of both freedom of expression and opinion, and the right to privacy," [...]

Governments worldwide in 2015 capitalized on supposed national security threats to trample over human rights. That's Amnesty International's assessment of global human rights in its latest report. "Your rights are in jeopardy: they are being treated with utter contempt by many governments around [...]

Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the US for alleged drug trafficking, has told reporters about numerous violations of his rights and “deliberate attempts to kill him” through cruel conditions and poor medical treatment. [...]

Most people believe that we are living in a more enlightened age of increasing press freedom, but the latest censorship reports tell a different story. Censorship is still a big issue around the world. Censorship remains at high levels in many countries, despite the fact that we tend to think we live in a world without that much of it (at least in the so-called “enlightened and developed West [...]