This page 1 story, part of the "No Place to Hide" project, explains how a company collecting and selling person information about millions of Americans is transforming itself into a private intelligence service for the government.
In No Place to Hide, award-winning Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow, Jr., lays out in unnerving detail the post-9/11 marriage of private data and technology companies and government anti-terror initiatives to create something entirely new: a security-industrial complex. Drawing on his years of investigation, O'Harrow shows how the government now depends on burgeoning private reservoirs
President George W. Bush's nominees to some of the most influential positions on the federal bench during his first term are notable for their close ties to corporate interests, especially the energy and mining industries, according to a new investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Many of the nominees have been appointed to judgeships
With his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner, Frank McCulloch was one of the great journalists of the past 50 years. Unfortunately, far too few people know that. Over the past year, as the conflict in Iraq slid from
Note: This story is based in part on reporting by O?Harrow for his forthcoming book, to be published in January by Free Press and supported by the Center for Investigative Reporting. One day in January 2003, an entrepreneur from Florida named Hank Asher walked into the Roosevelt Room of the White House to demonstrate a
Is the Bush White House using the courts as another way to pay back special interests? When President Bush nominated William G. Myers III for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in May 2003, judicial experience apparently wasn't a factor in the choice. Myers has spent little time in the courtroom
Forty-four states in the United States today bar people with mental illnesses from voting. Apart from laws affecting felons, these are the last overt voting restrictions on the books for citizens over 18. The exclusionary laws typically used in most states apply to those found to be "mentally incompetent" by the court and then placed
Millions of Americans are routinely stymied when attempting the most basic right of our democracy – casting a vote. In the radio documentary "Whose Vote Counts?," CIR associate reporter Rebecca Perl investigates how citizens are legally denied or left out of the voting process. In an important election year, an estimated 10 million votes (or
Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark helped an Arkansas information company win a contract to assist development of an airline passenger screening system, one of the largest surveillance programs ever devised by the government. Starting just after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Clark sought out dozens of government and industry officials on behalf of Acxiom
Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism database designed to give law enforcement agencies around the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of records about both criminals and ordinary Americans. Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police
