Citizenfour must have been a maddening documentary to film. Its subject is pervasive global surveillance, an enveloping digital act that spreads without visibility, so its scenes unfold in courtrooms, hearing chambers and hotels. Yet the virtuosity of Laura Poitras, its director and architect, makes its 114 minutes crackle with the nervous energy of revelation. [...]

NATO and Afghan officials are disputing an airstrike in E. Afghanistan that killed at least seven people. An Afghan official said all the dead were civilians, including a 12-year-old child, but NATO said the "precision" strike only killed militants. Abdul Wali Sahi, deputy governor of Paktia province, told Reuters that villagers had found seven bodies in the Udkey area of Gardez city and brough [...]

An investigation concerning the use of federal civil forfeiture law by local law enforcement agencies across the United States has exposed problems with a routine but rarely discussed police tactic. After obtaining 43,000 reports from agencies across the United States, journalists at the Washington Post wrote over the weekend that the budgets of police departments and drug task forces are being [...]

With his second and final term in office nearly half-way done, United States President Barack Obama, who enjoyed record popularity after first being elected in 2008, is struggling to keep up with the ratings of wildly unpopular predecessor George W. Bush. Fallout isn’t unexpected during so-called “lame duck” sessions in which reelection is ruled out and campaigning for office is no longer [...]

Airplane cabin cleaning crews at New York's LaGuardia International Airport began a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, citing, in part, possible exposure to the Ebola virus. Meanwhile, a poll found most Americans want flights banned from Ebola-ravaged areas. Around 200 Air Serv employees who work on domestic flights to LaGuardia began their strike on Wednesday evening. [...]

Video has surfaced appearing to show a New York City police officer taking $1,300 from a man who says he was robbed and then pepper-sprayed by the cop during a stop-and-frisk last month that ended without arrest. The New York Daily News published exclusive video of the September 16 incident on Wednesday this week and reported that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office is now investigation a [...]

The FBI counter-terrorism division is calling on to Americans to report on fellow citizens engaged in suspicious activities to help identify possible terrorists, in the first place those connected to terrorist activities overseas. In a statement published by the FBI on Tuesday, assistant director of the counter-terrorism division Michael Steinbach said the Bureau needs “the public's assistanc [...]

Former CIA Director Leon Panetta says that he was cursed at by President Barack Obama's former chief of staff after he agreed to cooperate with the Senate's investigation into his agency's torture tactics in the wake of 9/11. In passages taken from his new book and published online bythe Intercept, Panetta explains the event that triggered the outburst, which flowed from the former chief of sta [...]

The worlds' biggest hotel operator Hilton Worldwide has sold the iconic Waldorf Astoria in New York to a Chinese insurance company for nearly $2 billion, a record for a US hotel. The deal marks the continued Chinese real estate shopping spree in America. Hilton Worldwide Holdings sold the historic landmark to Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group for a record breaking $1.95 billion, which is the [...]

Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, so it can release more information about national security requests. The company wants to publish its full transparency report. It alleges that its First Amendment rights to free speech are being violated by rules that prevent it from disclosing the quantity of national security requests it receives. Twitter can publish the number of nati [...]

An analysis of cartridges used by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria shows that their newest ammunition is of American origin. China and the Soviet Union were identified as the biggest sources of munitions, but with bullets made 25 years ago. The Conflict Armament Research (CAR) group analyzed the origin of some 1,700 small-caliber cartridges collected from areas in Syria and Iran where [...]

Tuesday this week commemorates 13 years since the start of the Afghan War "America's longest running campaign of its kind" yet an end to the operation is hardly on the horizon. Under the terms of the Bilateral Security Agreement, the pact signed last week by representatives for both the United States and Afghanistan, the US will significantly reduce the number of soldiers involved in its post-9 [...]

At age 29, Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with aggressive terminal brain cancer and given only six months to live. She has since moved to Oregon, which has a death-with-dignity law, and is advocating for more assisted-death legislation in the US. After suffering from debilitating headaches, Maynard, called a vivacious, adventurous individual from birth by her mother, was diagnosed on Jan. 1 wit [...]

The Pentagon's 1033 Program, which is militarizing state and local police forces with everything from high-powered firearms to armored vehicles, is also giving weapons to officials who have no law enforcement functions. The practice is leading watchdogs and even some US government officials to question why the US military is so desperate to unload its cache of used military hardware that it is [...]

At the Autumn Meeting of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (PA), Russian official Sergey Naryshkin made the Ukrainian crisis a top European security issue, while speaking at a conference on new security challenges in the region. At a meeting on "New Security Challenges: The Role of Parliaments" on Friday, Naryshkin, the Head of the Lower House of Russian Parliament, who leads the Moscow delegatio [...]

The election of Barack Obama in 2008 brought hope and optimism to Americans and non-Americans alike. But after one and a half terms, the reality is sinking in that for all the promised change, it’s the “same old, same old.” The big question is why, writes Australian Greg Maybury. For folks who were fans of the late, great comedian Bill Hicks, they likely will be familiar with one of his m [...]

Video footage of American officials force feeding inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison complex in Cuba cannot be kept secret and must be released to the public, a federal judge ruled on Friday. Specifically, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said the US government must release 28 videos that show hunger-striking inmate Abu Wa’el Dhiab – a Syrian man who has been in custody since 2002 � [...]

Intelligence service BND failed to protect the private data of German citizens as it handed over internet data collected at a Frankfurt traffic hub to the US, German media report citing secret documents. The documents cited by VDR and EDR television and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which broke the news together, were obtained from the federal government during an ongoing parliamentary in [...]

The Russian government has decided to pull out of a major student exchange program with the US. The American side apparently violated the terms and conditions, with a Russian schoolboy not returning home, having been adopted by a gay couple. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented a note to the US Embassy in Moscow, saying that the country is canceling the largest US-Russian educational excha [...]

An armed man who has been convicted of assault and battery three times was somehow able to slip past the Secret Service and ride in an elevator with President Barack Obama earlier this month, several media reports have said. The incident – which reportedly took place just three days before a man with a knife in his pocket climbed over the White House fence and made it into the building – is [...]

ulian Assange has transcended the confinement of his Ecuadorian embassy asylum to attend the 2014 Nantucket Project – as a hologram. In his ghostly entirety Assange was speaking about censorship, control and manipulation of history. Speaking with filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, Assange closed the 2014 event, sharing his thoughts on importance of research and free access to information, and risks of [...]

Less than two weeks after the 13th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, three New York firefighters who worked at Ground Zero died of cancer, all on the same day, the Fire Department of New York said. Lt. Howard Bischoff, 58, and firefighters Robert Leaver, 56, and Daniel Heglund, 58, died within hours of one another Monday. [...]