A new project by the Center for Public Integrity takes a close look at the telecommunications industry and its regulatory body, the Federal Communications Commission.

The Central Intelligence Agency classified and withheld from public release a 25-year-old joke item in a weekly terrorism report about the terrorist threat to Santa Claus, notes a new report on government secrecy. "The CIA's secret Santa" leads what the report calls a "lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the U.S.

An angry public response forced the Pentagon to publicly back away from its Total Information Awareness surveillance program. Now it's back, with one major revision: a name change. Instead of "Total Information Awareness," they're calling it "Terrorism Information Awareness." According to Washington Post correspondent Ariana Eunjung Cha, the proposed system "would have the power to track people as never before.