Tag: secrecy

Doug Ford launches war on transparency, shielding cabinet from Freedom of Information records

Ontarians, the government is coming for your right to know.

For years, freedom of information requests have been one of the few tools ordinary citizens, journalists, and researchers have had to hold power to account and peel back the curtain on government decisions.

That tool is now under direct assault.

Public and Business Service Delivery Minister Stephen Crawford confirmed the Doug Ford Progressive Conservative government’s plan to exempt the premier, his cabinet ministers and their staff from freedom of information laws entirely.

They’re selling it as “modernization” and a way to “protect against Chinese spies,” but it smells more like a brazen Big Government power grab to operate in total secrecy.

This comes hot on the heels of Premier Ford facing intense pressure to release his personal cellphone records — the same phone he uses for official business, with sources saying that his chief of staff and senior aides dodge government communication disclosure laws by utilizing encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal.

When access to information shrinks, accountability dies.

Journalists can’t break stories. Researchers can’t expose failures. Families and communities lose their voice against policies that reshape their lives.

This isn’t partisan; it affects everyone. The government may view transparency as a “burden,” but really, it’s the bare minimum in a democracy.

If the government is truly acting in the best interest of the public, then why make it harder for the public to see how they’re shaping policy and decisions?

The public has a right to know, and that means access that isn’t coming in the form of heavily redacted fragments months later.

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CIA faces furious backlash after hidden document with potential cure for cancer is declassified after 60 years

A newly surfaced CIA document suggests US intelligence once reviewed research that hinted at a possible cancer treatment more than 60 years ago. 

The document, produced in February 1951 and declassified in 2014, summarizes a Soviet scientific paper that examined striking similarities between parasitic worms and cancerous tumors. 

The report describes how researchers believed both organisms thrived under nearly identical metabolic conditions and accumulated large reserves of glycogen, a form of stored energy. 

The research also highlighted experiments showing that certain chemical compounds were capable of targeting both parasitic infections and malignant tumors. 

One drug, Myracyl D, was reportedly effective against bilharzia parasites as well as cancerous growths, hinting that treatments developed for parasites might also attack tumors. 

Other compounds were found to interfere with nucleic acid production, a process essential for the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. 

Experiments on mice even showed that tumor tissues reacted differently to certain chemicals than normal tissues, further reinforcing the perceived biochemical overlap between parasites and cancers.

Although the document was declassified more than a decade ago, it has recently resurfaced online, fueling outrage among some Americans who say it raises troubling questions about why Cold War research hinting at possible cancer treatments sat in intelligence archives for decades. 

‘The Americans knew. They read it, classified it CONFIDENTIAL, and locked it in a vault for 60 years,’ one person shared on X, including the CIA documents in the post. 

Another X user said: ‘The CIA knew from 1951 that cancer was parasites.’

However, the document itself does not say cancer is caused by parasites, only that a Soviet study noted biochemical similarities between tumors and parasitic worms and observed that some compounds affected both in experiments. 

Daily Mail has contacted the CIA for comment. 

The CIA document was based on a 1950 article published in the Soviet scientific journal Priroda by Professor V V Alpatov, a researcher studying the biochemical behavior of endoparasites, organisms that live inside the body of a host. 

American intelligence analysts translated and circulated the paper because it was considered potentially relevant to biomedical and national defense research during the early years of the Cold War.

According to the Soviet research summarized in the report, one of the most striking similarities between parasitic worms and cancer cells was their metabolism. 

Parasitic worms that inhabit the human intestine rely heavily on anaerobic metabolism, meaning they generate energy without requiring large amounts of oxygen. 

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House kills effort to release all congressional sexual misconduct and harassment reports

The House on Wednesday voted to scuttle an effort by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace to shed more light on sexual misconduct allegations against members of Congress.

Mace, a conservative Republican who is running to be governor of South Carolina, forced a floor vote on her resolution directing the House Ethics Committee to make public all reports on allegations of congressional lawmakers and aides engaging in sexual misconduct or harassment.

But in a 357-65 vote, the House voted to refer the Mace resolution to committee — a move that effectively killed it.

The Ethics Committee had encouraged members to vote to refer the resolution. In a joint statement, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee argued it “could chill victim cooperation and witness participation in ongoing and future investigations” and would make it harder for the committee “to investigate and eliminate sexual misconduct in the House.”

“Here and elsewhere, perpetrators of sexual misconduct should never be shielded from responsibility for their misdeeds,” Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., and ranking member Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., said.

But, they added, “victims may be retraumatized by public disclosures of interim work product, excerpts of interview transcripts, and certain exhibits. And witnesses, who often only speak to the Committee confidentially or on condition of future anonymity, could fear retaliation if their cooperation is made public.”

Mace has spoken openly about her own experiences as a sexual assault survivor, and she’s been at the center of the fight over releasing the government’s Jeffrey Epstein files. She was one of just four House Republicans who teamed with Democrats on a discharge petition last fall that circumvented her own GOP leadership and eventually led to the Justice Department’s release of the Epstein files.

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Zohran Mamdani Has Already Broken His Promise to Be Transparent

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has come under fire for using the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with elected officials while conducting government business.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani repeatedly promised his administration would be transparent. Yet, a Politico report revealed that the mayor used Signal from a personal phone number to communicate with elected officials and political strategists. In at least one of these exchanges, he discussed official city business.

Three people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO that as mayor Mamdani has used the encrypted messaging app to communicate with fellow elected officials and political advisers. In at least one instance, he’s discussed government business over the app, according to one of those people, who like the others, was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

POLITICO independently confirmed that Mamdani’s Signal account, registered to his personal cell phone number, remains active.

Norman Siegel, a veteran First Amendment lawyer who previously helmed the New York Civil Liberties Union, said mayors should never use Signal to communicate with other government officials as a rule of thumb — and that there’s another particularly important reason why Mamdani himself should avoid the app.

“With our new mayor, so much of what he’s articulating is a breath of fresh air,” Siegel said. ”I would urge him to not engage in Signal or similar kinds of applications that basically are meant to hide information and prevent the public from knowing the inner workings of government.”

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SCOTUS Blocks California School Policy Hiding Kids’ ‘Gender Presentation’ From Parents

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major win for California parents seeking to protect their children from LGBT ideology in state schools on Monday.

In its per curiam opinion, the high court vacated a stay (“pause”) issued by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a December injunction by a California-based district court judge. That permanent injunction prohibited enforcement of a California policy that permitted or forced school employees to “mislead[] the parent or guardian of a minor child in the education system about their child’s gender presentation at school.”

In his order, District Judge Roger Benitez, a Bush 43 appointee, further required California officials to notify school personnel of his ruling and to include in materials for parents and faculty a statement acknowledging parents’ “federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence.”

California parents’ victory was short-lived, however, because the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals froze Benitez’s order a few weeks later. In its unanimous ruling, the appellate court’s three-judge panel of Democrat appointees claimed that state officials “have shown that ‘there is a substantial case for relief on the merits,’” and said it was “skeptical of the district court’s decision on the merits.”

The 9th Circuit’s decision prompted plaintiffs to file an application with SCOTUS, in which they requested that the high court vacate the 9th Circuit’s stay and allow Benitez’s injunction to take effect.

In its unsigned opinion, SCOTUS granted the plaintiffs’ request to vacate the 9th Circuit’s injunction “with respect to the parents because this aspect of the stay is not ‘justified under the governing four-factor test.’” The high court noted that the parents are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims and that they will suffer “irreparable harm” if the 9th Circuit’s ruling is allowed to remain in place.

The court’s order does not apply to the plaintiff teachers suing over the policy, however. Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have granted the plaintiffs’ application in full.

Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

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Cardinal found with phone during secret conclave to elect Pope Leo, book says

The secret conclave that elected Pope Leo head of the Catholic Church in May 2025 was interrupted when one of the 133 cardinals involved was found carrying a cellphone, a massive security breach, a book released on March 1 revealed.

As the clerics were preparing to take their first vote inside the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, which was fitted with jamming equipment to prevent outside communications, security officials picked up the signal of an active mobile connection.

The cardinals stared at each other incredulously, then one of the older clerics discovered he had a phone in his pocket and handed it over, according to The Election of Pope Leo XIV, a new book by two long-time Vatican correspondents.

The book does not name the cardinal or suggest he had any motive for keeping his phone, saying the moment left him “disoriented and distressed”.

Security breach was ‘better than fiction’

The scene was “unimaginable even for a film and never before seen in the history of modern conclaves”, wrote authors Gerard O’Connell and Elisabetta Pique.

One such film, the 2024 hit Conclave, imagined a tangled web of intrigues during the fictional selection of a pontiff. The unprecedented discovery of a phone in 2025 was in its own way more startling than anything portrayed in that movie, O’Connell told Reuters. “Reality (was) better than fiction,” he said.

Clerics taking part in a conclave take a vow not to communicate with the outside world and surrender their phones and all other communication devices for the duration of the proceedings, which can last for days.

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NED leader cut off in Congress after boasting of ‘deploying’ 200 Starlinks to Iran amid violence

The National Endowment for Democracy’s president, Damon Wilson, bragged to a House committee of his group’s aggressive efforts to spark unrest in Iran, including by smuggling Starlink terminals and fashioning anti-Iran narratives for the media.

Damon Wilson, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was interrupted by a member of Congress during a House oversight hearing on February 24 after revealing that his agency “began supporting the deployment [and] operation of about 200 Starlinks early on” amid the violence which swept through Iran last month.

Before he could finish the sentence, he was cut off by the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Rep. Lois Frankel, who told Wilson: “You know what, I’m going to interrupt you – we’d better not talk about it.”

Wilson’s comments had been prompted by a question from Frankel, who requested details of what appears to be a new and apparently secret initiative by the State Department to provide Starlink terminals to Iranians.

Wilson appeared to take credit for both the recent unrest and Iran and subsequent media framing of the chaos. “What we’re seeing today, the Endowment has been making investments over years that have ensured that there have been secure communications, including Starlinks… that allowed information to go both in and out of the country,” he stated.

According to the New York Times, the Elon Musk-produced internet systems had been smuggled into the country by a “ragtag network of activists, developers and engineers [who] pierced Iran’s digital barricades.” It is clear now that the NED was at least partly responsible for funding and coordinating that network.

With Starlink emerging as a key weapon in the information war waged against Iran, it’s unclear how anti-government actors have managed to smuggle the devices into the country. But a recent incident in which a senior Dutch diplomat was caught trying to sneak multiple Starlink units and satellite phones through security at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Airport gives a hint.

The National Endowment for Democracy was founded in 1982 under the auspices of then-CIA Director William Casey to topple socialist and independent governments through the direct sponsorship of NGO’s, media organizations and political parties. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein said of the Endowment’s work in 1991. 

Despite its mission of promoting transparency and “fundamental freedoms” abroad, the NED is now a dark money group which conceals the names of its local partners under a “duty of care” policy announced in 2025. During his congressional testimony this February, Wilson insisted the policy was necessary for the security of grantees on the ground.

The NED’s work to smuggle Starlink terminals into Iran is therefore a covert operation aimed at promoting unrest. And according to Wilson, it is now a key part of the Endowment’s most aggressive initiative.

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The Deep State Strikes Back: James Comey’s Leaker Claims ‘The Epstein Files Shouldn’t Have Been Released’

Decades from now, when historians finish poring through the millions of Epstein documents and 300+ gigabytes of data, the uproar of today, I suspect, will be lumped into the same category as the Satanic panic of the 1980s and the daycare sex-abuse hysteria of the 1990s: More hype than substance; more conspiratorial fearmongering than fact-based reporting.

Because, after both Republican and Democratic administrations reviewed them, there’s just not any there there. Instead of an avalanche of evidence about foreign espionage, blackmail schemes, and Jeffrey Epstein being the James Bond of pedophilia, a far gloomier image emerges:

Epstein wasn’t abusing children because a foreign government told him it was a good idea. He did it because he’s a disgusting, vile sociopath who enjoyed abusing young girls — as did his “friends.”

He’s not a puppeteer. He’s simply a pervert.

And he’s a pervert whose financial model demanded constant, high-level networking with wealthy businessmen, VIPs, and powerful dignitaries. Epstein leveraged his personal connections into business partners; that’s how he made money. I’m sure his parties and/or harem were part of his pitch.

Sex sells. That’s the sad reality.

Fun fact: Early in my career, I worked for a PR firm that had a prostitute on standby. When an important brand manager visited Tampa, he (and it was almost always a he) would go partying with the PR executives — and wouldn’t you know it, he’d just so happen to bump into a beautiful woman and have a fantastic time.

From the firm’s perspective, it was the cheapest, most cost-efficient way to protect a six-figure PR account: If the brand manager had fun, he’d be less likely to dump us for another firm.

I’m not saying it was right, honorable, or ethical. Obviously, it’s sleazy as hell. No, it wasn’t my decision — but I was aware of it and didn’t quit, which says something ugly about my moral character, too.

Nor is it a perfect parallel to the Epstein situation: For starters, this prostitute was an adult woman. Furthermore, nobody forced, intimidated, or coerced her; she happily did it for the money — and she could (and did) reject certain assignments.

But the common thread of leveraging sex to monetize relationships is 100% applicable. It happens a lot.

And that’s the biggest blessing of the Epstein Files: It took the repulsive practice of peddling flesh for financial favors out of the shadows. Today, the whole world knows the truth.

Sunlight really is the best disinfectant.

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Epstein Hid Secret Files in Storage Units Across the US, May Include Unseen Evidence of Crimes

The secretly stashed Epstein files.

It’s long been known that late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein kept a trove of files on his ‘friends and clients’, but a new report by British paper The Telegraph reveals that he secretly hid computers, photographs, and other equipment in storage units scattered across the US.

It is also believed that he paid private detectives to shuffle the material around when police started closing in on him.

The New York Post reported:

“Financial records and emails […] revealed that the dead pedophile rented at least six storage lockers nationwide, some starting in 2003, and paid for them until 2019.

[…] The units were used to house items from Epstein’s homes, including computers and CDs from his private Caribbean island, Little Saint James.”

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FBI Wins Court Ruling to Keep Twitter Payments Secret

A federal judge has handed the FBI a win in its attempts to keep secrets. On February 4th, Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled that the bureau can keep secret the precise amounts it paid Twitter between 2016 and 2023 for complying with legal process requests.

Judicial Watch, which had sued under the Freedom of Information Act, walked away empty-handed.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

You may remember our earlier reporting on how the FBI was paying Twitter. The payments totaled at least $3.4 million between October 2019 and February 2021 alone. That figure emerged from the Twitter Files released in December 2022. The FBI has never confirmed it. Neither has Twitter. And now, thanks to Boasberg’s ruling, the quarterly breakdown that would show exactly when the money flowed, and how much, stays buried.

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