Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
A month ago, EPIC liberated documents pertaining to the Department of Homeland Security’s web monitoring program, including a list of terms (starting on page 20) that DHS’ contractors search for in an effort to monitor threats. The domestic security search terms include “attack,” “shooting;” the terrorism search terms include “suicide bomber” and “suicide attack.” This […]
[youtube]Hd6awqDpUe0[/youtube] As Watertiger said on Twitter, Welcome to Gomorrah, Touchdown Jesus. #youhavegottobekiddingme There’s some other NFL news, too, about the Saints being slammed for their bounties. But that’s nowhere near as funny as the thought of Tim Tebow in NY. Update: Ut oh. Maybe Goddess doesn’t love the world as much as I hoped. Filed […]
Peter King is having another of his fear-mongering hearings on the Islamic threat in the US–this one focused on “Iran, Hezbollah, and the Threat to the Homeland.” As part of that, they’ve released a whopping 2-page report on that threat, including such claims such as this one: After 9/11, many in law enforcement and intelligence […]
I noticed the same thing Charlie Savage did in this letter from Senators Wyden and Udall to Eric Holder complaining about the government’s secret interpretation of the PATRIOT Act. The Senators suggest that the secret program is not very useful. We would also note that in recent months we have grown increasingly skeptical about the […]
[youtube]oYNXVgYhPOc[/youtube] Congressman Hank Johnson asked NSA Director Keith Alexander about James Bamford’s Wired article describing the data storage and analysis center in UT. Unfortunately, rather than ask Alexander about these activities–storage and analysis–Johnson asked Alexander about data collection. Here are excerpts of the exchange: Johnson: Does NSA have the ability to identify Cheney bashers based […]
The other day, Teddy Partridge noted a second instance of someone in the military–the previous one being the Commander-in-Chief–weighing in on Bradley Manning’s guilt. Echoing his commander in chief in issuing statements that provide improper command influence in the trial of Bradley Manning, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, stated […]
This is not really my beat, but after spending the weekend in an unseasonably warm DC and returning to even warmer temperatures here in MI, I felt it deserves a post. In DC all weekend, people were enjoying the gorgeous cherry blossoms, but bemoaning the fact that the peak bloom pretty much has preceded the […]
MoJo, which did a superb report on the FBI’s use of informants last year, reports that one of the guys they profiled in that package, Shahed Hussain, got sniffed out by a Pittsburgh area man, Khalifah Al-Akili, whom he was trying to ensnare in a sting. Shahed Hussain, a long-time FBI terrorism informant Mother Jones […]
In his must-read report on the bottomless data pit containing the NSA is building in Utah, James Bamford described the public explanations NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis made when he broke ground on the facility. [NSA deputy director Chris Inglis] arrived in Bluffdale at the site of the future data center, a flat, unpaved runway […]