Two Internal Revenue Service agents working in the agency's Cincinnati office say higher-ups in Washington directed the targeting of conservative political groups when they applied for tax-exempt status, a contention that directly contradicts claims made by the agency since the scandal erupted last month.

The Cincinnati agents didn't provide proof that senior IRS officials in Washington ordered the targeting. But one of the agents said her work processing the applications was closely supervised by a Washington lawyer in the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, according to a transcript of her interview with congressional investigators.

Her interview suggests a long trail of emails that could support her claim.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had some harsh words Thursday for the Obama administration collecting phone records of millions of Americans.

Speaking with Yahoo! News, Paul said, "I think it would be remedial education for those who are doing this. They need to go back and read the Constitution, read the Fourth Amendment, and understand that our records are private."

OLIVIER KNOX, YAHOO! NEWS CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: So overnight, sir, we learned that the National Security Agency, with the blessing of a court order, has been collecting the Verizon phone records of millions of Americans. What's your reaction to that?

SENATOR RAND PAUL (R-KENTUCKY): I'm appalled. I'm absolutely opposed to the government sifting and sorting through millions of innocent people's records. I'm not opposed to them going to a judge and getting an order for an individual who you have probable cause to believe that they've been involved with a crime. So one thing it's a great invasion of our privacy, but it's also I don't think good police work. Better police work would be tracking down individuals who have come here from other countries, that are traveling in and out, that are associating with terrorists and going and looking at an individual's records with a judge's warrant. But I think when you look at millions of people's records, you get distracted.

It's sort of like the TSA at the airport. Because we treat everyone as a potential terrorist, we're wasting time with twelve-year-old kids and seventy five-year-old grandmothers. They're trying to get away from that, but it's been twelve years and they're still doing it. So it's the same thing here. We're sifting through too many people's records. It's a violation of the Bill of Rights. We need to have a better and a more thorough understanding of the Fourth Amendment.

No healthy democracy can endure when the most consequential acts of those in power remain secret and unaccountable

We followed Wednesday's story about the NSA's bulk telephone record-gathering with one yesterday about the agency's direct access to the servers of the world's largest internet companies. I don't have time at the moment to address all of the fallout because - to borrow someone else's phrase - I'm Looking Forward to future revelations that are coming (and coming shortly), not Looking Backward to ones that have already come.

But I do want to make two points. One is about whistleblowers, and the other is about threats of investigations emanating from Washington:

1) Ever since the Nixon administration broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office, the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message. That attempt will undoubtedly be made here.

I'll say more about all that shortly, but for now: as these whistleblowing acts becoming increasingly demonized ("reprehensible", declared Director of National Intelligence James Clapper yesterday), please just spend a moment considering the options available to someone with access to numerous Top Secret documents.

Phone Surveillance Cited as Latest Failure by President to Uphold Rights; Others Say Tactic Is Crucial in Fighting Terrorism

The disclosure of a broad government effort to collect phone records of millions of U.S. consumers has rekindled a debate about President Barack Obama's commitment to civil liberties, with some lawmakers and advocacy groups saying he has broken a campaign pledge to combat terrorism in ways that protect basic freedoms.

Mr. Obama's record on civil liberties was already drawing renewed scrutiny over reports that his administration has investigated journalists as part of criminal leak cases, his increased use of drones and other matters.

As a candidate in 2008, Mr. Obama took aim at then-President George W. Bush's assertion of certain executive powers in fighting terrorism. Once in the White House, he did away with some of the tools used by Mr. Bush's administration while keeping others intact.

In certain respects, the counterterrorism tactics of the two presidents seem indistinguishable, some civil-liberties advocates say.

Meet Google. The noun that became a verb. The world's favourite search engine, and the company whose motto is "Don't be evil..."

The world's largest Internet search company and the world's most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google -- and its users -- from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google's policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans' online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users' searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

Networks have been under attack -- and successfully handled by operators -- as long as they've been around. Be wary of calls for more government supervision of the Internet.

We marched into Baghdad on flimsy evidence and we might be about to make the same mistake in cyberspace.

Over the past few weeks, there has been a steady drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric about potential threats online. At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this month, chairman Carl Levin said that "cyberweapons and cyberattacks potentially can be devastating, approaching weapons of mass destruction in their effects."

The increased consternation began with the suspected Chinese breach of Google's servers earlier this year. Since then, press accounts, congressional pronouncements, and security industry talk have increasingly sown panic about an amorphous cyberthreat.

The annual conference of the secretive Bilderberg Group is meeting near Watford, with some leading political and business leaders from the US and Europe.

American "shock jock" Alex Jones joined Times columnist David Aaronovitch to discuss it - and ended up disrupting the show in spectacular fashion.

Presenter Andrew Neil described him as "the worst person" that he had ever interviewed.

In this season of college graduations, let us pause to remember the stirring words of America's beloved scholar, George W. Bush, speaking in Florida in 2007 at the commencement exercises of Miami Dade College: "In Havana and other Cuban cities, there are people just like you who are attending school, and dreaming of a better life. Unfortunately those dreams are stifled by a cruel dictatorship that denies all freedom in the name of a dark and discredited ideology." 1

How I wish I had been in the audience. I would have stood up and shouted: "In Cuba all education is completely free. But most of the young people sitting here today will be chained to a large, crippling debt for much of the rest of their life!"

As the security guards came for me I'd yell: "And no one in Cuba is forced to join the military to qualify for college financial aid, like Bradley Manning was forced!"

Wouldn't it be fun if we could somehow revive an average American citizen who had been frozen in a cryogenic capsule from, say, the 1950s? Then, on revival, we allow this presumably open-minded person to sample international news developments that have occurred over the intervening decades since the time he was put into deep-frozen sleep; and, more especially, recent international developments.

We may hazard a guess that the salient impression that this time-traveler would perceive is the stark role-reversal in geopolitics between his native United States of America and that of his country's supposed arch-enemy - Russia. While, the latter, of course, is no longer known as the Soviet Union and has adopted aspects of the capitalist economy, nevertheless Moscow still remains in many ways the primary centre of global rivalry to Washington.

However, what our awakened experimental subject would find shocking and disorientating is that the «evil empire» epithet that was so prevalently propounded against Russia during the Cold War era has now in fact become more fitting as a description for the foreign policy conduct of Washington.