The archive
Everything we've published
The full record. Every piece traces back to its primary sources.
192 pieces
FinCEN bans A7 Network transfers to stop $17 billion in illicit funds
After four years of entity-by-entity sanctions (Garantex 2022, takedown 2025, Grinex and A7 LLC 2025) the network kept moving money, so FinCEN shifted to a class-of-transactions ban enforced through a non-public list. The trade: speed again
DOJ watchdog finds misconduct by retired Marshals official it cannot compel to answer
Inspectors general can compel testimony only from current employees; retirement ends both compulsion and, often, adjudication. Horowitz testified the FBI closed adjudications on departure in more than 10% of 2017-2018 cases, leaving neither
Eden Prairie Police Withhold Somali Gang Link In Homecoming Shooting
The disclosure gap: police withheld unconfirmed details for investigative reasons; newsrooms filled the gap with anonymous attribution and a congressman with a label police had not used; the sheriff's widely repeated figures rest on a lives
Judge voids $48 million arbitration award after finding United Networks committed fraud
A 7-year private arbitration never surfaced the concealed documents; the fraud came out only through a separate public lawsuit where a judge pierced privilege under the crime-fraud exception. Arbitration's privacy and narrow review protect
Dutch court orders release of doctors who questioned teen euthanasia
Dutch euthanasia review happens after the death and cleared this case; outside doctors who doubted it had no formal role and wrote to prosecutors under names they did not expect to reach the family. The ruling tests whether professional con
Maryland IT contractor pays $2.25M over small-business set-aside claims
The accountability gap: set-aside eligibility rests on applicant-supplied facts about location, control and origin; GAO showed in 2010 that bogus addresses passed certification, and this case surfaced only through a whistleblower five years
California man charged with routing $300M in controlled servers to China
The accountability gap: export controls rest on the buyer's own end-user paperwork and lawful first stops in transit countries, with enforcement arriving years after the shipment, while policy simultaneously approves some of the same proces
Declassified CIA note on Smartmatic: what it says, and what it does not
The accountability gap runs both ways: a 2006 assessment and a 2007 CFIUS action reshaped the U.S. voting-machine market in secret for 19 years, and the 2026 release is a selective, uncoordinated summary whose caveats contradict the most-re
Florida county finds 11 plate reader cameras nobody will claim
The accountability gap: a permit is the only paper tying a roadside reader to an owner who controls and audits its data; 14 of 66 known cameras had none, so for 11 of them nobody can say who searches what they record.
Former Hall County investigator arrested for misusing license plate reader system
The accountability gap: Georgia made plate-data misuse a crime in 2018 but shields the data from public inspection, so the only check is an audit someone has to read; Hall County let 124 users search without case numbers until a records req
Six Agencies Hid DOGE Access Records From GAO Audit
The accountability gap: the Privacy Act and GAO's statutory access both assume a paper trail of who could see what and why; the agencies did not produce it, so neither the administration's assurances nor the critics' fears can be tested aga
Lakeway Police Shared Login Ran 19 License Plate Searches Without Case Numbers
The accountability gap: a shared login removes the name, a missing case number removes the purpose, and a search run on another agency's request removes the chain of custody, so neither the state's official-purpose limit nor Lakeway's valid
Supreme Court Blocks Notice For Secret US Deportations To Third Countries
The accountability gap: the transfer agreements, the payments attached to them, and any monitoring of what happens after landing are not published, so the government's stated rationale cannot be tested against a public record; the Court's D
FCC Seeks Committee To Manage 4.9 GHz Public Safety Band
The incumbents keep their spectrum and are frozen in place, while the agreement that determines their protection and any future expansion is negotiated between the Band Manager and FirstNet — two parties that do not include them. The consul
Supreme Court to decide if DOGE must release records under FOIA
The remedy names the gap. An office created to make other parts of government account for their spending is arguing, through the Solicitor General, that it is not the kind of body the public records law reaches. Whether that is legally righ
India Election Commission Orders Check Of ECINet Software Compliance
The remedy names the gap. Ordering a committee to establish whether the software complies with the statute concedes that nobody had established it before deployment. Two of three commissioners objected on the file 14 times over additions, d
FTC asks if social media platforms should stop impersonation scam ads
The 2024 Impersonation Rule reaches the impersonator and not the company optimizing the ad — a gap the FTC frames in Coasean terms as an unpriced externality. The agency already tried to close it with a means-and-instrumentalities provision
British Ministry of Defence hid 97 million records from Afghanistan inquiry
A statutory inquiry has no investigators of its own, so its whole evidentiary base is whatever the audited institution says it holds. The failure here is not a lie or a leak — it is 3 years of answers given without the archive being searche
DOJ Audit Reveals No Plan To Protect Judges From Commercial Data Brokers
The exposure is built entirely from commercially collected records rather than any breach, so there is no system to harden and no law to comply with — the auditors looked for a governing rule and found none, which is why an inspector genera
FAA Cannot Detect GPS Spoofing In Real Time, GAO Report Finds
The finding is not that attacks happen. It is that the agency responsible has no instrument to observe one in progress, so detection is outsourced to pilot reports filed after landing, and every domestic count is therefore an estimate.
DHS Retaliation Complaints Surge But Only Coast Guard Findings Emerge
A complaint count measures who filed; a finding count measures what the system concluded. The components generating the most complaints produce no findings, and nearly all findings come from the one service already under sustained outside s
HHS Failed To Include Cybersecurity Controls In 988 Suicide Hotline Contracts
The security obligations were supposed to live in two contracts. HHS wrote the standard and defined the oversight roles, then never carried the required control areas into the instruments that would have made them enforceable, so there was
AP sues to unseal immigration court records hidden by federal rule
Nothing here is sealed. Rule 5.2(c) does not hide the file; it relocates the public, making the record available only at the courthouse. The AP's sharp argument is that this is a CONTENT-BASED restriction — the trigger is the subject of the
Universal Music Sues DistroKid Over Unlicensed AI Music Pipeline
UMG is not fighting AI music — it settled with Udio, Warner settled with Suno, and the expanded Suno case moved toward partnership. UMG said outright this suit is not aimed at AI music that is clearly disclosed. The line being enforced is l