NSA is one of 16 known US spy agencies. Perhaps others operate secretly. Black budgets conceal what's spent. Amounts are enormous. They're unconscionable.

By Garth Mullins - June 14, 2013

Putting an entire society under the microscope is a bad way to catch the enemy of the day. It is a search for a terrorist needle in a haystack of the global population of phone and computer users. It also happens every day at every airport. Anyone who flies on a plane becomes a suspect.

By Dana Gabriel

The Beyond the Border action plan is the most significant step forward in U.S.-Canada cooperation since NAFTA. It provides the framework for future North American integration. When fully implemented, the agreement can be expanded and updated. So far, the agenda has quietly slipped under the radar. By incrementally incorporating various pilot projects and excluding Mexico from the process, it has managed to avoid the controversy of past initiatives.

General Keith Alexander is NSA director. He's US Cyber Command head. He's in charge of lawlessly spying. He directs illegal hacking.

By Keith Jones - WSWS

On the basis of secret government directives, Canada’s national security apparatus is conducting mass surveillance of Canadians parallel to, if not directly patterned after, the domestic spying operations of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)...Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), the NSA’s Canadian counterpart and longstanding partner, has been scrutinizing the metadata of Canadians’ electronic communications since at least 2005.

By Jonny Bonner - AlterNet

Police shot a young woman to death "assassination style" as she sat in her car, amid "widespread and systemic corruption" in the undercover drug force, the woman's parents claim in court...Melissa Kennedy and Frederick Willard, parents of the late Danielle Willard, sued West Valley City, its police Officers Shaun Cowley and Kevin Salmon, Lt. John Coyle, Police Chief Thayle "Buzz" Nielsen, and 10 Doe officers, in Federal Court.

For over two weeks, daily anti-government protests rocked Turkey. Police attacked peaceful demonstrators intermittently. They've done so brutally. Turkey's notorious for police state viciousness.

A provincial investigation found the former Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre prisoner was handcuffed, shackled and stomped by jail guards in 2010. Ontario ombudsman André Marin made the assault central to the report he released Tuesday criticizing the Ottawa jail and the province’s corrections system as a whole.

By Robert Stevens - 13 June 2013

Around 1,200 riot police were mobilized in London Tuesday against anti-capitalist protesters. Throughout the day the police attacked supporters of the StopG8 group, making a total of 57 arrests...Mass arrests were made by police after they smashed their way into a squat with chainsaws, axle-grinders, crowbars and climbing gear.

By Jerome Stern - 12 June 2013

Metropolitan Police officers raided three sites in Ilford, east London, last month where homeless people were sleeping. In the course of the raid, police officers reportedly not only evicted the rough sleepers, they also took away their sleeping bags and food parcels they had been given.

By Andrew Cohen - Znet

It has been an extraordinary three weeks in the history of the American penal system, perhaps one of the darkest periods on record...[T]he systemic abuse and neglect of inmates, and especially mentally ill inmates, has been investigated, chronicled and disclosed in grim detail...The conclusions are inescapable: In our zeal to dehumanize criminals we have allowed our prisons to become medieval places of unspeakable cruelty so far beyond constitutional norms that they are barely recognizable.

He's Obama's FBI director choice. He'll replace current rogue head Robert Mueller.

Mass surveillance is official US policy. It's not for national security. It's not about discovering terror or other threats. None whatever exist. Claiming otherwise doesn't wash. Big Lies substitute for vital truths.

By Tana Ganeva - June 7, 2013

American law enforcement has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past few decades. The war on drugs, the world's most effective way to fill prisons with minorities while doing nothing to curtail drug use, has warped the priorities and practices of police departments around the country...The shift toward more aggressive, violent policing has had tragic results on the ground.

America honors its worst. It persecutes its best. Manning is heroic. He risked great personal harm. He did so to reveal vital truths. People have a right to know. Washington has no right to conceal them.