Background Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Patriot Act), Public Law 107-56, directs the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ or Department) to undertake a series of actions related to claims of civil rights or civil liberties violations allegedly committed by DOJ employees. It also requires the OIG to provide semiannual reports to Congress on the implementation of the OIG’s responsibilities under Section 1001. This report summarizes the OIG’s Section 1001-related activities from July 1, 2016, through December 31, 2016. The Report Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Report to Congress on…
Author: John Greenewald
Background The Nuclear Weapon Characteristics Handbook, dated September 1990, was first requested in June of 2009, and it was not until February of 2017 that it was finally released. Nearly EIGHT years passed from the point of requesting, to actually receiving the below document. The following was written by A. Nareth as an introduction to the document found below: For more than forty years, deterrence has been the cornerstone of US defense policy, consisting of a stockpile of nuclear weapons and the missiles} aircraft, and artillery to deliver them. Sandia National Laboratories’ special mission, as part of the Department of Energy,…
Background Enacted in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, gives any person the right to access federal agency records or information. The FOIA is based on the presumption that the government and its information belong to the people. A 1996 amendment to the FOIA, required federal agencies to make many types of records available online. Internally, agencies produce reports that offer other FOIA staff members status updates, reports, statistics, etc. about the ongoing effort to deal with the onslaught of FOIA Requests they receive from the public. In November of 2016, I requested all internal FOIA Status Reports…
Background In October of 2016, I read the following article written by Muira McCammon, which was published on SLATE: Generally, when we hear about undersea fiber-optic cables, it’s because some sharks are trying to shut down the Internet with their teeth. But there’s more to them than that. Right now, there is a kind of magic at work beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Xtera Communications Inc. is in the midst of building an undersea fiber-optic cable from Dania Beach, Florida, to Guantánamo Bay. The $35 million project, which the Defense Department awarded to the Texas-based firm in May 2014, hasn’t been…
Background On August 12, 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Office of Inspector General (OIG) discovered that [REDACTED] Senior Counsel, Division of Enforcement (ENF), may have transmitted nonpublic information from his work email to his personal America Online (AOL) email account. The Investigation SEC Investigation: Improper Transmission of Nonpublic Information via E-mail, May 29, 2015 [10 Pages, 1.9MB]