MuckRock / News

A recently released background check Steve Jobs submitted to in 1991 covers a range of potential security clearance red flags: past drug use (marijauna, LSD), his character (“dishonest”) and close relatives living in communist-controlled countries (none).

An FBI file on the founder of Apple Computers and Pixar Films, consisting primarily of a background check for a White House appointment to the President’s Export Council, was released to MuckRock last week.

Read more »

Reports by a specially-tasked agency looking for fraud in Afghanistan reveal allegations ranging from simple pay-to-play bribery schemes to concerns about whether a security contractor paid the Taliban to not attack U.S. forces and kill a rival.

In most cases, however, the investigations went nowhere. According to the heavily redacted reports, the situation in Afghanistan is often too chaotic - and the actors too transient - for Special Inspector General for Afganistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) investigators to do anything but declare “further investigation is unwarranted.”

Read more »

On May 3, 2011, Aaron Swartz filed a request for "photos or videos from the 2011 operation to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan". On Jan. 9, his request was denied.

The reason was expected to be that they were exempted from disclosure. Instead, the Defense Department replied saying the documents could not be found.

Read more »

Government investigators looking for fraud in Afghanistan reconstruction efforts have chased leads ranging from military officers soliciting bribes to contractors using shoddy materials, but one investigation of possible abuse stands out: Documents provided by the little-known Special Inspector General for Afganistan Reconstruction show concerns about nearly non-existent oversight for a program that paired impoverished Afghans with goats.

The heavily redacted report doesn’t reveal how much money the U.S. government spent on the program, dubbed the Livestock Improvement Program, in its initial 2007 run but the investigator appeared skeptical of its effectiveness and worried about the potential for fraud.

Read more »

A recent FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for "manuals, documents or other written guidance used to access or analyze data gathered by programs developed or deployed by Carrier IQ" was met with a telling denial. In it, the FBI stated it did have responsive documents - but they were exempt under a provision that covers materials that, if disclosed, might reasonably interfere with an ongoing investigation.

Carrier IQ came under fire after a security researcher demonstrated that the previously little-known company had software installed on a variety of phones on a variety of networks that could track user locations, keystrokes, encrypted Internet traffic and more, some of which was or could be sent back to either the cell phone owner's service provider or Carrier IQ's own servers.

Read more »