This inquiry, which began in April 2003, examined measures to safeguard classified and security sensitive information during court or tribunal proceedings, or in the course of other investigations including those relating to criminal prosecutions, civil suits, immigration matters or freedom of information applications ... the ALRCs̉ recommendations were tabled in federal Parliament on 23 June 2004.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.
The official report that has shaped the international debate about NSA surveillance "We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own history, that at some point in the future, high-level government officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public officials."—The NSA Report This is the official report that is helping shape the international debate about the unprecedented surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. Commissioned by President Obama following disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden, and written by a preeminent group of intelligence and legal experts, the report examines the extent of NSA programs and calls for dozens of urgent and practical reforms. The result is a blueprint showing how the government can reaffirm its commitment to privacy and civil liberties—without compromising national security.
The study edition of book the Los Angeles Times called, "The most extensive review of U.S. intelligence-gathering tactics in generations." This is the complete Executive Summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the CIA's interrogation and detention programs -- a.k.a., The Torture Report. Based on over six million pages of secret CIA documents, the report details a covert program of secret prisons, prisoner deaths, interrogation practices, and cooperation with other foreign and domestic agencies, as well as the CIA's efforts to hide the details of the program from the White House, the Department of Justice, the Congress, and the American people. Over five years in the making, it is presented here exactly as redacted and released by the United States government on December 9, 2014, with an introduction by Daniel J. Jones, who led the Senate investigation. This special edition includes: • Large, easy-to-read format. • Almost 3,000 notes formatted as footnotes, exactly as they appeared in the original report. This allows readers to see obscured or clarifying details as they read the main text. • An introduction by Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones who led the investigation and wrote the report for the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a forward by the head of that committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein.
The terrorist attacks occurred in the United States on 11 September 2001 have profoundly altered and reshaped the priorities of criminal justice systems around the world. Atrocities like the 9/11 attacks, the Madrid train bombings of March 2003, and the terrorist act to the United Kingdom of July 2005 threatened the life of democratic nations. The volume explores the response of democratic nation-states to the problems of terrorism and counter-terrorism within the framework of the Rule of Law. One of the primary subjects of study is the ways in which the interests of the state (security from external threats, the maintenance of civil peace, and the promotion of the commonwealth) are balanced or not with the liberty and freedom of the citizens of the state. The distinctive aspect of this focus is that it brings a historical, political, philosophical and comparative approach to the contemporary shape and purposes of the criminal justice systems around the world.
This text presents a comparative, international study of commissions of inquiry that have been convened in response to extraordinary failures and scandals. In recent years, commissions of inquiry have been common to the politics of the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia. Recent years have seen a much wider range of states establish commissions of inquiry into intelligence and security issues, and they have also played important roles in transitions in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Commissions of inquiry are no longer even the exclusive preserve of states, as transnational institutions such as the United Nations and European Union have begun to convoke them. This groundbreaking book comprehensively examines commissions of inquiry around the world, which have become important and increasingly invoked tools to discover truth, curb abuses, and reconcile national security imperatives with the constraints of law and human rights. It offers timely insights for national security analysts, government officials, diplomats, lawyers, scholars, human rights monitors, students, and citizens.
