Weekly

The San Francisco Police Department has admitted that it secretly searched the phone records for calls made from the press room at the city's Hall of Justice, the local NBC affiliate reports. The snooping was first revealed in a Sept. 27 SF Weekly article by A.C. Thompson. "Dealing with a leak problem of its own in 2003, the police department used HP-style tactics, covertly examining the phone records -- reflecting 2,478 phone calls -- of journalists covering the department," Thompson wrote. "By doing so, the SFPD could quickly identify any anonymous tipsters or inside sources within the department who communicated with the reporters." The department spokesperson told SF Weekly that the investigation was legal because the department owned the phone lines that were involved.

"When you talk about secrecy and indefinite detention, the problem is bigger than most people realize," SF Weekly Staff Writer A.C. Thompson tells In These Times magazine. Thompson has co-authored a new book, Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, with Trevor Paglen, an expert on clandestine military installations. The pair also discussed the book on the Sept. 15 Democracy Now! program, where Thompson told interviewer Amy Goodman, "I've written about police abuse in America for many years and about people being abused in American prisons. But the sort of similarity of the stories we heard from prisoners [in CIA facilities], the intensity of them, it kind of took us aback a little bit, and it was pretty gripping."