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.

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 …

UK gathering secret intelligence via covert 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 …

Obama Calls Surveillance Programs Legal and Limited  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday offered a robust defense of the government surveillance programs revealed this week, and sought to reassure the public that his administration has not become a Big Brother with eyes and ears throughout the world of online communications.