Surveillance

They don't make many power couples like this: He's a self-proclaimed whistle blower, the focus of international headlines and Obama administration ire. She describes herself as a "world-traveling, pole-dancing super hero. " Edward Snowden and Lindsay Mills lived in a modest blue clapboard house with white trim here in a Honolulu suburb until about six weeks ago. Their former neighbors described them as quiet and private. On Sunday, Snowden announced that he was responsible for leaking secrets about America's telephone and Internet surveillance pograms to the media, reviving a global debate about Big Brother-style government surveillance of private citizens.

Baltimore County Police on Thursday released surveillance photos of three men who they said tied up victims in a Catonsville home last month, before taking bank cards and other valuables. Police said the three armed men entered a home in the 300 block of Stratford Road on May 12, where they tied up the victims and took cell phones, electronics, money, bank and credit cards. The three men fled on foot and later attempted to use the stolen cards at different locations. Anyone with information on the suspects is asked to call detectives at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers 1-866-756-2587.

AN FBI agent visited the Engineering and Physical Sciences Library at the University of Maryland, College Park, in April 1986, asking staff members to report on the reading habits of "anyone with a foreign-sounding name or foreign-sounding accent." That same day, the agent visited the Chemistry Library, asking again for surveillance and also requesting any records of database searches. At the University of Maryland, as at most American universities, a large percentage of faculty and students have "foreign-sounding names or foreign-sounding accents."

The contradictions at the heart of the Obama presidency are finally out in the open. As a result, a man who came into office hell-bent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival. There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to be a nonideological problem-solver, keen on working with anybody to fix things. And there is The One: the partisan, left-leaning progressive-redeemer. As E.J. Dionne, a columnist who can usually be counted on to make the case for Mr. Obama better than Mr. Obama can, recently wrote, the president "has been a master, as good politicians are, at presenting different sides of himself to different constituencies.

When Baltimore first installed crime cameras in 2005, they numbered fewer than 200 and were largely confined to high-crime areas. Two mayors later, the number of cameras in the city's police surveillance system has quadrupled. Baltimore owns 583 and has access to feeds from more than 250 installed by various businesses. Now that system is likely to become much larger. The city's Board of Estimates agreed last week to create a database that will make it easier for businesses to give the Police Department access to their private security cameras.

The surveillance state expands. The Patriot Act allows our phones to be wiretapped. Our email and Internet transactions leave a trail for some to follow. The police can access our GPS location data through our smartphones without a warrant. Retailers record our purchasing habits with painstaking detail. Apparently, Target studies those purchases to determine when customers are pregnant - in the second trimester, no less - for specialized marketing purposes. And now, there will be surveillance drones.

Cry me a river! It's inconvenient to have neighbors applying for jobs in the defense and intelligence sectors because you might get interviewed ("Secrecy industry hits home," Commentary, July 26)? You blame the loss of neighborhood camaraderie on the fact that local children grow up to work for NSA, etc. Let's be real, the historic decline in citizens participating in civic life and neighborhood exchanges is nationwide and cannot be solely attributed to the presence of the intelligence and defense industries.

Baltimore police have released two pictures of possible suspects in Tuesday night's shooting of a customer during a holdup of a Royal Farms store in Hamilton. The Sun's Steve Kilar wrote: "According to spokesman Det. Donny Moses, officers responded about 9:40 p.m. to reports of a shooting at the store. There, they found a 46-year-old man who had been shot in the chest. "He was conscious and breathing as medics took him to Johns Hopkins Hospital. As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, Moses said the victim was hospitalized in good condition and, barring any setbacks, was scheduled for release later in the day. "According to witnesses, two seemingly masked men - one armed with a silver handgun - came in and announced a robbery, Moses said.

The Maryland Transit Administration has begun installing an advanced surveillance system at its Metro, MARC train and light rail stations to protect against terrorism and reduce crime, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced yesterday. MTA officials held a news conference at the Camden Yards Light Rail and MARC station to demonstrate the new technology, which is designed to provide around-the-clock coverage at transit stations. Ehrlich said the MTA is one of the first transit agencies in the country to introduce the technology, which relies on digital security cameras and a computer software program to analyze images.

Baltimore County police are searching for two woman who allegedly stole two bottles of vodka from a Glyndon liquor store last month. Police released images on Wednesday of two woman at The Wine Post on Railroad Avenue where one of them took two bottles of vodka off the shelf and placed them in a bag, according to a police statement. The women took off in a tan or silver Toyota Sienna van and headed toward Owings Mills Boulevard. Anyone with information is asked to call police at 410-307-2020.

For us aging Vietnam War protesters, the secret domestic surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden, a young former CIA contractor, is like a bad flashback. In 1968, Lyndon Johnson demanded that something be done to curb the demonstrations that were erupting on college campuses. They had begun as anti-war protests but had broadened to include social issues, especially civil rights. The president believed the demonstrations were part of an organized effort to destabilize the government, and the gloves came off. It wasn't until 1974 that Seymour Hersh, reporting for The New York Times, revealed that the CIA had been conducting a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation against the anti-war movement and other dissident groups.

The American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the National Security Agency, seeking an end to the collection of data about nearly every phone call made by Americans, provides an almost unprecedented opportunity for the public to challenge the legality of the surveillance being conducted in its name. Although the government maintains that the program is authorized by the Patriot Act, and a special court designed to handle such matters has agreed, it has not been subject to anything like the kind of review we typically expect of the government's actions.

A 21-year-old man has been charged with killing a 2-year-old in West Baltimore, and detectives were investigating a fatal shooting of a 27-year-old man and two nonfatal shootings elsewhere in the city. Police said Damond Stansbury has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of the child, Marlo McFadden, who was found unresponsive Monday morning in his grandmother's home in the 1600 block of Mountmor Court in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood. Officers were initially told that the child appeared to have fallen from a bunk bed, and Marlo's grandmother said she had frantically splashed water onto his face in a futile attempt to revive him, charging documents show.

Your editorial about phone record surveillance was certainly thought-provoking ("Surveillance state," June 7). What is of most concern about our government is the top-secret court that, we now know, actually exists. Where in a democratic republic is there justification for any top-secret court? Joy Shillman, Baltimore

The revelation that the federal government has spied on millions of supposedly private phone and Internet communications makes President Barack Obama's headache over the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exemptions seem like a passing migraine. The leaks about the policy to the British newspaper the Guardian and to the Washington Post, provided in convincing detail, cast a president who claims to be a champion of individual privacy and a free press as just another hypocritical politician bending to intelligence-gathering mission creep.

Regarding recent reports of the massive government surveillance program carried out by the National Security Agency ("Surveillance state," June 7), as a college student in 1970 I worked at night for Maryland National Bank's downtown Mastercard headquarters as a telephone authorizer of charge card sales. A friend of mine who was a student as well and who worked nights for C & P Telephone Company told me then to be careful what I said on the phone, because the company was routinely tapping calls in the Johns Hopkins University area.

Authorities investigating the strange circumstances of Violet R. Ripken's abduction hope that tips made in response to grainy images of the suspect will lead to an arrest. "We are attempting to look at other sources of video, photos" to release publicly, FBI spokesman Special Agent Richard Wolf said Monday. He would not say where authorities might be looking for surveillance footage, or where the suspect might have stopped during his daylong ride with Ripken in Ripken's 1998 Lincoln Town Car. Last week, Aberdeen police released two images of a man wearing an orange baseball cap and light-colored shirt standing in front of what appears to be a business.

On her first full day on the job, the new Anne Arundel County executive shut down a surveillance operation inside the county office building that included 500 cameras recording minute-by-minute activity in and around numerous county government facilities. County Executive Laura Neuman said she became "suspicious" upon discovering the surveillance equipment, and called law enforcement officials about the operation, which was conducted from a small, unmarked room at the Arundel Center complex that few seemed to know about.

The 29-year-old former CIA employee who admitted over the weekend to leaking documents about the National Security Agency's targeting of phone records, email accounts and Internet use of millions of Americans exemplified the ethical dilemma facing those who consider themselves government whistleblowers: They may firmly believe their fellow citizens have a right to know what the government is doing in their name, but if everyone with access to sensitive...

You make a call from your land line or text a friend from your smartphone. You browse an online retailer for clothing, a book or music; you create a wish list or write a review. You walk past a security camera outside your home; you use GPS to find your way to a business meeting. At the supermarket, you buy groceries with a credit card. Or you pay cash — but enter a loyalty card for the discount. As you move through the ordinary activities of everyday life, you're leaving an electronic trail rich in data about your whereabouts, your interests and your relationships.