NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others  —  • Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Skype and Yahoo  —  • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007  —  The National Security Agency …

President Obama's Dragnet  —  Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every …

Thank You for Data-Mining  —  The NSA's ‘metadata’ surveillance is legal and necessary.  —  Well, another day, another Washington furor.  This one is over a National Security Agency phone data monitoring program, but unlike the other White House scandals there seems to be little here that is scandalous.

Anti-Surveillance Activist Is at Center of New Leak  —  After writing intensely, even obsessively, for years about government surveillance and the prosecution of journalists, Glenn Greenwald has suddenly put himself directly at the intersection of those two issues, and perhaps in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors.

N.Y. Times changes scathing editorial  —  The New York Times editorial board has quietly changed the language in the most widely cited line from Thursday's scathing editorial about the Obama administration's surveillance of U.S. citizens.  —  The line — “The administration has now lost all credibility” …

UK gaining secret intelligence via NSA operation  —  Exclusive: UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world's biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme  —  The UK's electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence …

DNI Statement on Activities Authorized Under Section 702 of FISA  —  The Guardian and The Washington Post articles refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  They contain numerous inaccuracies.

DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information  —  The highest priority of the Intelligence Community is to work within the constraints of law to collect, analyze and understand information related to potential threats to our national security.

On whistleblowers and government threats of investigation  —  No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable  —  We followed Wednesday's story about the NSA's bulk telephone record-gathering with one yesterday …

Admit It, Rep. Sensenbrenner: You Were Wrong About the Patriot Act  —  An author of the controversial legislation keeps defending it — even though he's felt betrayed by related abuses three times.  —  Upon hearing that the FBI sought and received the phone data from millions …