v3rgEz - Slashdot User

Submission + - Terabytes of Enron data have quietly gone missing from the Department of Energy (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Wednesday January 30, 2019 @01:10PM

v3rgEz writes: Government investigations into California’s electricity shortage, ultimately determined to be caused by intentional market manipulations and capped retail electricity prices by the now infamous Enron Corporation, resulted in terabytes of information being collected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This included several extremely large databases, some of which had nearly 200 million rows of data, including Enron's bidding and price processes, their trading and risk management systems, emails, audio recordings, and nearly 100,000 additional documents. That information has quietly disappeared, and not even its custodians seem to know why.

Submission + - EFF and MuckRock partner to see how local police are trading your car's location

Submitted by v3rgEz on Thursday November 15, 2018 @11:09AM

v3rgEz writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation and transparency non-profit MuckRock helped file over a thousand public records requests, looking into how local police departments were trading away sensitive data on where you drive and park, picked up by their use of automated license plate recognition devices. They've just published the results of those requests, including looking at how hundreds of departments freely share that data with hundreds of other organizations — often with no public oversight. Explore the data yourself, or, if your town isn't yet in their database, requests its information free on MuckRock and they'll file a request for it.

Submission + - The FBI's fight to safeguard Hans Bethe's atomic secrets (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Monday March 05, 2018 @04:06PM

v3rgEz writes: Documents newly released under FOIA show the lengths to which the Soviet Union went to get its hand on America's nuclear secrets ... and what the US had to do to defend them. The files of Hans Bethe, widely considered the "grandfather of the atomic bomb," trace a Cold War story of double crosses, love triangles, and an undercover agent who took a midnight train to Mexico.

Submission + - Keep Calm and : the CIA's declassified OpSec posters (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Friday November 10, 2017 @04:16PM

v3rgEz writes: "If the face fits — where it!" is just one of many inspirational messages the CIA used in a internally crowdsourced effort to come up with better OpSec posters, released to MuckRock after a FOIA request. The results made up for a lack of polish with abundant enthusiasm — as well as the occasionally off-color, racially charged joke. See the posters on MuckRock.

Submission + - Magazine for Museums Publishes Its 2040 Issue -- 23 Years Early

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10, 2017 @03:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Alliance of American Museums has just published an ambitious Nov/Dec 2040 issue of Museum, the Alliance's magazine. The columns, reviews, articles, awards, and even the ads describe activities from a 2040 perspective, based on a multi-faceted consensus scenario.

Submission + - Inside SIGNA: A look at CIA's secret society of (not-so-retired) officers (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Tuesday October 03, 2017 @10:24AM

v3rgEz writes: MuckRock contributor Emma Best has a deep dive into the SIGNA Society, a secret society of former CIA officers that recently released documents show have a tendency to stay involved with pushing the Agency's message. While the agency's official website is highly restricted, the documents — released after a FOIA request for the CREST archive — give a rare look into the society's annual meetings, close contacts with current agency leadership, and how agency alumni made a coordinated push to give the CIA even broader exemptions from public records laws.

Submission + - Breitbart's FBI file details how site accidentally DDoS'd itself (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Tuesday September 19, 2017 @02:04PM

v3rgEz writes: On January 17, 2016, the alt-right news site Breitbart found itself under siege: A number of IP addresses were sending a large amount of traffic its way, straining its servers. Writing to the FBI two days later with the subject line “Request for assistance,” someone (identity redacted) shared the source of the IP addresses and asked that the FBI “explore the possibility that the identity of the criminal be identified from this fingerprint.” It turns out, documents FOIA'd by MuckRock show, it was an inside job.

Submission + - Documents: In the early 80s, CIA showed little interest in "supercomputer" craze (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Friday April 07, 2017 @09:23AM

v3rgEz writes: In 1983, cybermania would grip the nation: The movie WarGames is released over the summer, becoming a blockbuster hit for the time and intriguing President Ronald Reagan enough to summon his closest advisors to help study emerging cyberthreats and ultimately pass the first directive on cybersecurity. But according to declassified documents, made fully public thanks to MuckRock’s lawsuit, one intelligence agency made a hard pass on the computer craze.

Submission + - The same billionaire that funded Trump's campaign bankrolled Milo's college spea (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Friday March 24, 2017 @09:00AM

v3rgEz writes: Curious how much college Republicans were shelling out to have Milo Yiannopoulos come to their campus, Matthew Guariglia requested records related to his speaking tour. Turns out, it's not exactly a grass-roots movement that has been funding the alt-right provocateurs' rise.

Submission + - Albert Einstein, as described by CIA psychics (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Wednesday March 15, 2017 @02:58PM

v3rgEz writes: In 1988, as part of the CIA's ongoing research into weaponized ESP, CIA psychics were tasked with identifying a photo of a famous individual inside of an opaque folder. That individual was Albert Einstein. The individual the psychics came up with was off, but not that far off: A moody hippie pharmacist named Alfer Aferman. Read the documents, released under FOIA, at MuckRock.

Submission + - Were police snooping on protesters' cellphones? Most departments won't say (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Friday January 27, 2017 @11:00AM

v3rgEz writes: Attend any of the protests over inauguration weekend? Wondering if your phone was surveilled doing so? Unfortunately, with law enforcement’s continued silence about cell site simulators use, it’s almost impossible to know. MuckRock has surveyed almost 200 local and state police departments to get details on policies regarding the use of StingRays, which can track calls, user location, and even read text messages — all without a warrant. Here's what various police departments did — and didn't — release.

Submission + - After MuckRock FOIA suit, CIA puts declassified database online (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @05:45PM

v3rgEz writes: For the first time ever, the CIA has posted its database of declassified documents online for anyone to view. The publication of the approximately 12 million pages of historical documents was in response to a lawsuit by FOIA site MuckRock, which had won a court order for the documents to be put on the Internet. Previously, the documents had been technically public, but only accessible to those willing to drive to a few federal facilities, where usage was closely monitored via CCTV. You can search the database here.

Submission + - MuckRock launching volley of FOIA requests at Trump administration

Submitted by v3rgEz on Tuesday January 17, 2017 @05:35PM

v3rgEz writes: For seven years, MuckRock has helped journalists, activists, and every day people extract information from the government using public records laws. Now we're doing to the same for the Trump administration, and want to get as many people who care about transparency involved as possible.

We've launched a dedicated page collecting and discussing FOIA requests about the incoming Trump administration, and are experimenting with a new Slack channel to help folks workshop their requests and disseminate documents that come back.

Submission + - The other Russian cyberattack that never happened (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Friday January 06, 2017 @11:44AM

v3rgEz writes: Earlier this week, the Washington Post made headlines of its own for reporting that “intelligence sources” were saying Russia had hacked into the U.S. power grid, which is a thing that did not happen. In fact, this wasn't even the first time it hadn't happened — just five years ago, a Senate report tore into Homeland Security for making the same claims with even less evidence. Will legislators ever learn?

Submission + - Trump's Treasury pick appears to be part of a federal investigation (muckrock.com)

Submitted by v3rgEz on Monday January 02, 2017 @01:28PM

v3rgEz writes: Trump's transition strategy of picking some of the shadiest people on earth is still going strong. The latest: According to the FBI, his Treasury pick Steven Mnuchin is involved with an "ongoing investigation", as reported by Mike Best over at the FOIA site MuckRock. Best requested Mnuchin's FBI files, but the request was rejected under the grounds of an open investigation, likely related to Mnuchin's superbly-timed exit from Relativity Media — right before it cratered.

Slashdot Top Deals