Portside

Bolton is an old hand at using allegedly damning intelligence on Iran to advance a plan of aggressive U.S. war.

Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever.

Forty years ago, the US Senate’s Church Committee conducted a massive investigation into the intelligence community and expressed concerns that the privacy rights of US citizens had been violated by activities conducted under pretenses of foreign intelligence collection. The Secret Fisa courts were supposed to solve the problem -- however, they have made the problem worse.

Citizenfour, Laura Poitras's new film on Edward Snowden, with breaking news at film's end: there is indeed at least one new, post-Snowden whistleblower who has come from somewhere inside the U.S. intelligence world with information about a watchlist (that includes Poitras) with "more than 1.2 million names" on it and on the American drone assassination program. No matter how fiercely the government may set out after whistleblowers, there will be more. It's unstoppable.

A careful examination of the Obama administration's summary of the intelligence on which it is basing the case for military action to punish the Assad regime for alleged use of chemical weapons reveals misleading language evocative of the infamous 2002 Iraq WMD intelligence estimate.

‘Restore the Fourth’ is aimed at restoring the fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment – the part of the Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures. Participants will display an online banner which reads, “This 4th of July, we stand by the 4th Amendment and against the U.S. government’s surveillance of internet users.”