Emailing your auntie in Pakistan, or your old roommate in France? The NSA's computers already know.

A newly released 2011 report from the CIA's inspector general reveals that the CIA embedded four officers inside the NYPD's intelligence division after 9/11. The CIA, of course, is not allowed to spy on Americans. And they didn't, according to the CIA!

As the dust settles on yesterday evening's revelation that the U.S. government has been mining data from most of Silicon Valley's largest companies in a program called "PRISM," one question stands out: How did the NSA get access?

It's quaint how people still manage to get outraged about surveillance. You are being monitored, right now, just like everybody else with a phone or a computer or a bank account or a pressure cooker, because Total Information Awareness is real. ‘Welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak…

Today in True Historical Misadventures of the CIA: the time they tried to turn a cat into a spy.

In what must have been like a total James Bond scenario, a NASA researcher at Langley named Bo Jiang was arrested on a plane bound for China as it pulled away from the gate at Dulles International Airport. No facts confirm that this was actually an action movie-worthy moment, but one can imagine.

Hours before the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Vice President Nicolás Maduro ejected two U.S. diplomats from the country, accusing them of plotting to "destabilize" Venezuela and implying that the U.S. had infected Chávez with cancer. "We have no doubt," Maduro said in a television address, that a…

Last August, the NYPD announced they'd partnered with Microsoft to create an elaborate city-wide spying/surveillance program, called the Domain Awareness System. The program provides the department with access to over 3,000 public and private security cameras, information that's then instantly cross-referenced with…

It's no secret that the CIA and FBI can read your emails for any old reason they choose without having to clear it with anyone first (because you're a terrorist). That was on track to change with an amendment attached to an upcoming bill... before said amendment was quietly dropped from said bill.

Among the many odd, swirling facts surrounding the unfolding David Petraeus scandal: Jill Kelley, the longtime friend of the former CIA director who reportedly went to the FBI complaining of harassing emails from Petraeus' mistress Paula Broadwell, has reacted to the mess by bringing out the scandal equivalent of…

Remember a couple years ago when those Russian spies (including one very or at least averagely sexy one) were busted after infiltrating some of New Jersey and Yonkers' most powerful third-tier social circles?

Wal-Mart is trying to open a new store in LA's Chinatown area. Local labor groups, among others, are challenging the store's permitting. It's a fight with big stakes for Wal-Mart, as it goes right to the heart of the company's strategy of expanding in large cities. And now, one labor group says that an employee of a…

A coroner has found that a British spy whose naked corpse was found locked inside a duffle bag, itself inside his bathtub, was "likely" killed in a criminal act.

The Washington Post has served up a juicy story about the secrecy surrounding the divorces of CIA agents and their non-spook spouses. Hoo-boy, is it worth a read.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So we should all be proud that, according to a Foreign Policy investigation by Mark Perry, Israeli intelligence officers pretended to be CIA agents so they could recruit Pakistani religious fanatics to assassinate Iranians. How sweet.

Earlier this week we learned that Iran and its pal Hezbollah had caught dozens of CIA spies who always met at a super-secret Pizza Hut in Beirut (using the super-secret code word "PIZZA" to communicate meeting times). Now an Iranian parliamentary leader says that 12 of the spies have been arrested and jailed in cells…

The CIA has basically lost its network of spies in Lebanon and suffered a major setback in its efforts to infiltrate Iran, all because it screwed up basic tradecraft—including communicating with spies on trackable cell phones and using the indecipherable code word "PIZZA" to denote planned meetings at a Beirut Pizza…

Former military intelligence officer Anthony Shaffer is suing the Pentagon and the CIA over their extraordinary attempts to censor Operation Dark Heart, the book he wrote recounting his days as a military spy in Afghanistan and elsewhere. One problem he's run into: The government has the original unredacted manuscript…

You know how on Wednesday the the Obama administration accused Iran of planning the assassination of the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil, leading to a renewed call for sanctions against the country? Turns out that "hard evidence" of the Iranian government's involvement in the plot "is scant." But don't worry! U.S.…

In a scenario that sounds like a right-wing fever dream, the Justice Department today filed a criminal complaint against two Iranian men—one a member of the nations ultra-secret Quds force, another who has dual Iranian-American citizenship—of trying to hire a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in…