Social networking giant Twitter has released a new report outlining all subpoenaed, court ordered, and search warranted requests made by the U.S. government for private information about the site's users throughout the past year. And based on the figures, not only is the overall number of such requests steadily expanding, but Twitter is also increasingly being coerced into releasing this confidential data without legitimate probable cause or warrant.

Despite the TSA admitting on its own website that there is no law which prevents people from filming TSA checkpoints, a man traveling through San Juan airport in Puerto Rico had his camera confiscated and footage deleted.

Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption

An essential pillar of democracy is openness. There is no way that people can meaningfully participate in government, even if only by voting for representatives, if they do not have access to accurate information related to government operations. This was well understood by the founders of the US and embedded in the Bill of Rights. Conversely, a salient characteristic of undemocratic systems of all types, such as Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany is a high degree of governmental secrecy.

Detroit residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own.

It was billed as a chance to taste the “glitz and glamour” of Hollywood or enjoy VIP treatment in some of the most exclusive shopping areas in the world. But when a group of 2,000 elderly British cruise ship passengers docked at Los Angeles for a short stop-off during a five-star cruise around America it was, in the words of one of them, more like arriving at Guantanamo Bay.