The U.S. government has admitted that it made a significant courtroom mistake in arguments over a controversial surveillance technique.

The Justice Department claimed in court last month that companies receiving FBI letters demanding business records can reveal those requests even in the face of gag orders. But in a Nov....

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave the go-ahead Wednesday for the first major bill responding to the leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, in what could be a last-ditch effort at surveillance reform before Republicans take over the upper chamber.

Reid filed cloture on the motion...

When Minneapolis TV station KSTP aired a segment last week that claimed Mayor Betsy Hodges had flashed "gang signs" while posing for a picture with a young black man, the backlash online was intense. Commenters accused the station of making racially loaded assumptions about a simple, everyday gesture.

NEW YORK -- New Jersey Muslims suing over New York Police Department surveillance called the city's defense of the program under Mayor Bill de Blasio "truly troubling" in a court filing on Friday.

In a brief arguing that an appeals court should overturn a federal judge's ruling that the program...

Musicians and actors ranging from Russell Brand to Susan Sarandon expressed solidarity Monday with Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor whose leaking of sensitive documents last year led the U.S. government to charge him with three felonies.

Snowden is still in Russia and still facing Espionage Act charges, which is...

California approved a major shift against mass incarceration on Tuesday in a vote that could lead to the release of thousands of state prisoners.

Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession will be downgraded to misdemeanors under the ballot measure, Proposition 47. As many as 10,000 people could be eligible...

NEW ORLEANS -- Louisiana's fiercely fought Senate race is headed to a runoff that will decide the size of the GOP's Senate caucus, after neither incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu nor Republican challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy won a majority on Election Day.

Early results showed that tea party Republican candidate Rob...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Rob Maness finished his stump speech just as members of the downtown Kiwanis Club were picking over the last of their red beans and rice. In a half-hour of forceful delivery, he cited the Bible on homosexuality and Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men"...

NEW ORLEANS -- At a rally for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on Saturday, the speakers belted out "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," promising that if you call her name, wherever you are, she'll be there in a hurry.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was there, one among...

NEW ORLEANS -- Republicans trying to win a competitive Senate seat in Louisiana are professing outrage after Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Democratic incumbent, said race has hurt President Barack Obama in the South.

Landrieu told NBC's Chuck Todd on Thursday that Obama had a hard time in Louisiana...

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Bill Cassidy, the Republican challenger to Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), suggested during a debate Wednesday that residents of a desperately poor Louisiana parish could retire early to enjoy their Social Security benefits, even if the eligibility age rises.

Cassidy, a congressman leading Landrieu in polls ahead...

NEW YORK -- Legal changes in the wake of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's February death of a drug overdose have dramatically expanded access to a lifesaving drug that can reverse overdoses from prescription painkillers and heroin.

Eight states have passed laws allowing firefighters, police or members of the...

NEW YORK -- As the largest U.S. city grapples with its first case of Ebola, doctors, nurses, and Health Department officials have leapt to the forefront of a massive response effort.

But there's another, unlikely crew of professionals fighting the virus: The cleaners.

From Craig Spencer's Harlem apartment to a...

The Republican who may chair the Senate Intelligence Committee if his party wins control of the chamber in next month's election isn't too worried about CIA snooping on Congress, or about the agency's combative director.

Relations between CIA Director John Brennan and Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Afghanistan just produced a record poppy crop despite massive $7.6 billion in U.S. counternarcotics spending since the war there began, a new report from an independent watchdog found.

The value of opium poppy produced in Afghanistan spiked from $2 billion to $3 billion from 2012 to 2013, according to a...

Journalist Glenn Greenwald's name is indelibly associated with the explosive National Security Agency disclosures that began last year. But filmmaker Laura Poitras is the one who engineered them. After Greenwald brushed off Edward Snowden's initial attempt to contact him over encrypted email in December 2012, the NSA contractor turned to...

WASHINGTON -- FBI Director James Comey called Thursday for "a regulatory or legislative fix" for technology companies' expanding use of encryption to protect user privacy, arguing that without such a fix, "homicide cases could be stalled, suspects could walk free, and child exploitation victims might not be identified or recovered."

A high-ranking State Department official called for "flexible" interpretations of international drug control treaties at the United Nations in New York City last week, citing marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington.

Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield's Oct. 9 remarks were the third time this year he has...

LOS ANGELES -- With the public in the U.S. and Latin America becoming increasingly skeptical of the war on drugs, key figures in a scandal that once rocked the Central Intelligence Agency are coming forward to tell their stories in a new documentary and in a series of interviews with...

For decades, California's prison guard union was a feared political animal. It backed harsh sentencing laws and the construction of dozens of new prisons, and its membership rolls swelled. Now, a November ballot referendum could release thousands of non-violent prisoners, and the 33,000-member union's response has been surprising.