http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-assassination-ows-sniper-227/

FBI classified information about OWS assassination plot

Published: 02 January, 2013, 21:29
Edited: 03 January, 2013, 20:30

Only one month into the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations last year, plans were formulated to identify key figures in the movement and execute them with a coordinated assault using sniper rifles, new documents reveal.

The revelation — discussed in a heavily redacted FBI memo unearthed late last month through a Freedom of Information Act request — reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of plans for a violent assault on the peaceful protest movement but stayed silent on rumors of an assassination attempt only until now.

Information on the alleged plot to kill off protesters appears on page 61 of the trove of documents obtained recently by a FOIA request filed by the Partnership For Civil Justice Fund. On the page in question, marked “SECRET,” the FBI acknowledges:

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/01/public_accountability.html

Intelligence Oversight Steps Back from Public Accountability
January 2nd, 2013 by Steven Aftergood

The move by Congress to renew the FISA Amendments Act for five more years without amendments came as a bitter disappointment to civil libertarians who believe that the Act emphasizes government surveillance authority at the expense of constitutional protections. Amendments that were offered to provide more public information about the impacts of government surveillance on the privacy of American communications were rejected by the Senate on December 27 and 28.

Beyond the specifics of the surveillance law, the congressional action appears to reflect a reorientation of intelligence oversight away from public accountability. The congressional intelligence committees once presented themselves as champions of disclosure. They no longer do so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vincent-warren/zero-dark-thirty-torture_b_2340967.html

Does Torture Work? Wrong Question!
Posted: 12/21/2012 11:27 am

The premier in New York and Los Angeles this week of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for and killing of Osama bin Laden, has touched off a national debate about the appropriateness of torture. Alarmingly, the conversation has revolved around when to torture, rather than whether to torture.

The film's opening 45 minutes feature U.S. intelligence officers torturing a prisoner at a CIA black site, until he gives up the clue that births an ultimately-successful hunt for bin Laden. For some the message is simple: "No waterboarding, no Bin Laden." Zero Dark Thirty, laments Adam Serwer in Mother Jones, "may do what Karl Rove could not have done with all the money in the world: embed in the popular imagination the efficacy, even the necessity, of torture." Meanwhile, others insist that #ZD30, as the film was quickly hashtagged, "leave[s] audiences to decide for themselves whether torture was necessary to stop al Qaeda."

Why, exactly, are we deciding whether torture was "necessary" to capture bin Laden?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/us/politics/senate-votes-to-extend-electronic-surveillance-authority-under-fisa.html?_r=2&

Federal Power to Intercept Messages Is Extended
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: December 28, 2012

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government’s power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 23, clearing it for approval by President Obama, who strongly supports it. Intelligence agencies said the bill was their highest legislative priority.

Critics of the bill, including Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, expressed concern that electronic surveillance, though directed at noncitizens, inevitably swept up communications of Americans as well.