Surveillance

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The U.S. military is expanding its secret intelligence operations across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator, according to documents and people involved in the project. At the heart of the surveillance operations are small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private planes. Equipped with hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up...

BERLIN — An official says Germany has canceled plans to purchase and modify U.S.-made Global Hawk surveillance drones for 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion). The drones made by Northrop Grumman were to be equipped with special signal interception devices and re-named Euro Hawk. One experimental drone already purchased will continue to be used for testing purposes. A government official said Tuesday the decision not to buy four more drones was taken after it became clear that getting the...

Video surveillance has become a fact of everyday life. Each time you withdraw cash from the corner ATM, travel through an airport or visit a national monument, your image is probably being recorded. But you may be surprised to learn that there are no federal laws governing how these images can be used, where they should be stored, with whom they may be shared and when they must be destroyed. In this age of YouTube, TMZ and "Cops," it's hard to know where your image might reappear.

JERUSALEM — Israel's military has grounded a fleet of high altitude surveillance drones after one was downed over the Mediterranean Sea. The military says it intentionally crashed the unmanned aircraft late Saturday because of a malfunction. The military would not say how many aircraft were grounded. The planes will stay down during an investigation. An Israeli defense official said the drone was the Israeli-made Heron 1, which flies at high altitudes and can stay in the air for about...

Legislation approved yesterday by the Senate would expand government powers to eavesdrop on terrorism and intelligence suspects. • Key provision : Expands government's authority to intercept -- without a court order -- the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States communicating with others overseas. U.S. intelligence agencies previously needed warrants to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of whether the calls began or ended overseas.

I thank The Post for the July 24 letter from Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, about Maryland State Police surveillance of antiwar protesters and opponents of the death penalty at public meetings some years ago. Mr. Cox found the police activity "shocking" and "outrageous. " And he said it was "mind-boggling" that "organizing and expressing dissent" were "treated as criminal. " But was dissent treated as a criminal activity? Can Mr. Cox identify a single dissenter who was arrested, an organizer who was indicted, a...

It is shocking that undercover Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on antiwar protesters and death penalty opponents for more than a year ["Police Spied on Activists in Md.," front page, July 18]. Among the targets of this surveillance were Amnesty International meetings, events and activists. Peacefully organizing and expressing dissent is a fundamental right. It is outrageous that such activity has been treated as criminal; the longevity of the program reveals a mind-boggling disregard for the rights of American citizens.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would re-authorize U.S. government antiterrorist surveillance programs but would not grant immunity from lawsuits to telecom providers that have participated with surveillance programs in the past. An amended version of the House bill, called theRestore Act, would require prior court approval of surveillance of U.S. residents talking to overseas suspects. The House passed the bill by a margin of less than 20 votes on Friday.

The Dec. 1 front-page article " High-tech help for repressive regimes? " shined a spotlight on repressive countries' use of intercept and surveillance technology. This technology is frequently used by repressive regimes to spy on dissidents and commit other human rights violations. All businesses, including technology companies, have a responsibility to identify and prevent or mitigate potential human rights abuses involving their products. The U.N. Guiding Principles and other international guidelines make that clear.

Surveillance targets U.S. officials have said that al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant organizations are expanding their presence in Africa. Some of the key groups: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb Originally based in Algeria, the group has shifted south and found a home in northern Mali. Kidnaps Westerners for ransom. Boko Haram Nigerian insurgents seeking to impose Islamic law are forging links with other al-Qaeda groups, U.S. officials say. Lord's Resistance Army Ugandan guerrillas have destabilized...

America's top intelligence official said Thursday that there is no evidence so far that the Boston Marathon bombers had help from foreign terrorist networks. "At this point, I haven't seen anything that raises a concern there was a bigger plot, but we're still investigating," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in an interview. He was responding to a query about a recent newspaper story citing two Russian militants as possible accomplices. Clapper's comments are another sign that the bombings, allegedly by Tamerlan and...

BERLIN — The United States is an on-camera nation, as the efforts to identify suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings showed this week. In the battle of security vs. privacy, many European countries have made a different calculation. U.S. authorities in recent days reviewed thousands of videos before they released the images of two brothers suspected of planting bombs in Boston , and there were hints that they could tap into far larger police databases to speed their search.

Five days of harrowing footage from Boston has allowed a voracious nation to experience Monday's bombings and their aftermath almost as the events were happening, with ever-present cameras at once documenting history and pushing it relentlessly forward. Fueling this situation has been a series of technological shifts that are likely to accelerate in the years ahead as police, corporations and even private citizens gain access to unprecedented troves of video imagery and the...

Fairfax County police have released surveillance video of a suspect who may be responsible for a series of gropings in and around the Springfield area over the last seven months. The brief clip shows a man entering an Alexandria HomeGoods store, where a 31-year-old woman was sexually assaulted around 3 p.m. on Thursday, police said. The woman was grabbed from behind and the suspect fled the scene. The suspect was described as a Hispanic man around 30 years of age. He wore a black jacket,...

District police have released surveillance video from a downtown nightclub and a nearby parking lot in an effort to identify two men described as "persons of interest" in connection with a March 21 homicide in the 1000 block of 17th Street NW. Police said the video shows the men walking from their vehicle out of a parking garage and into a nearby club. The tape also shows a black BMW with unknown tags as it leaves the garage, police said, "just prior to" the fatal shooting of Paul Aime Tanoh...

Federal investigators in Northern California routinely used a sophisticated surveillance system to scoop up data from cellphones and other wireless devices in an effort to track criminal suspects — but failed to detail the practice to judges authorizing the probes. The practice was disclosed Wednesday in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California — in a glimpse into a technology that federal agents...

BELTSVILLE, 6900 block, Muirkirk Dr., Sept. 1. An employee at a business reported a stray dog running in the parking lot. The employee agreed to monitor the dog via exterior security cameras until help arrived. An animal control officer picked up the 2-year-old white male Shih Tzu. The dog was reunited with its owner the next day. Among case reported by the Prince George's County Department of Environmental Resources Animal Management Group.

A federal court in California has ruled that a surveillance tool widely used by the FBI to obtain information on Americans without court oversight is unconstitutional because the gag order that accompanies it violates the First Amendment. The ruling by Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California would bar the issuance of national security letters — a form of administrative subpoena — on constitutional grounds. The ruling on the 1986 statute has been stayed while the government weighs an appeal.

Since arriving in the Senate in 2011, Rand Paul has been probing here and there for issues of populist resonance. Audit the secretive, sinister Federal Reserve . Rein in those TSA screeners patting down little girls . In each instance, Paul (R-Ky.) has evoked the fear of oppressive government without tipping over into the paranoia of his father's most dedicated supporters. It has been a diluted, domesticated, decaffeinated version of the ideology that motivated Ron Paul's presidential races.