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Nine recommendations for action by President Obama to reverse his deadly legacy of drone warfare, surveillance and entrapment, including revealing flawed government contracts with companies like AT&T & Yahoo.

A group of investigative journalists have revealed that General Atomics helped fund the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a major think tank in Washington DC, when it recommended that the Obama administration loosen export rules to allow the company sell more remotely piloted military aircraft.

U.S. Air Force officials has begun to hire private companies to fly drone aircraft operating over Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The unprecedented move is in response to demands from the Obama administration to dramatically expand the drone war just as the Pentagon faces a critical shortage of military pilots.

Swedish companies have been accused of profiting excessively from the recent influx of refugees to Europe, taking advantage of the government expenditures of some $7 billion to house and support over 150,000 new immigrants this year.

U.K. asylum seekers have gone on hunger strike to protest living conditions at Harmondsworth immigration detention centre, which is run by Mitie, a British outsourcing company. The protests come months after Mitie took over from the Geo Group whose contract was canceled after prison authorities found repeated problems.

Local government officials have the ability to track individual drivers in the U.S. in real time and take pictures of the occupants of their vehicles, with new "truly Orwellian" technology purchased from companies like Vigilant Solutions, according to new documents uncovered by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Article in German about how Silicon Valley has profited out of the NSA. (Wenn sich die Entrüstung über den NSA-Skandal gelegt hat, wird die IT-Branche Kassensturz machen. Und feststellen: Die Aufregung hat sich gelohnt.)

A federal jury here Wednesday convicted one former Blackwater contractor of murder and three of his colleagues of voluntary manslaughter in the deadly shootings of 14 unarmed civilians killed in Baghdad's Nisour Square seven years ago.

Negotiators for 191 countries attending the World Summit on Sustainable Development have agreed upon a Plan of Action to alleviate poverty and conserve the Earth's natural resources. Summit delegates are expected to adopt the action plan, with a political declaration, at the conclusion of the summit on Wednesday.

In war zones, private contractors can outnumber U.S. troops, but who controls them? NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Stanford's Joseph Felter and journalist Pratap Chatterjee about current safeguards.

A federal jury has found three former Blackwater contractors guilty of manslaughter and a fourth guilty of murder for killing 17 Iraqis in Baghdad's Nissour Square on September 16, 2007. The men were private security guards hired to provide security to U.S. government employees at the time.

Malicious software from Hacking Team of Italy that can be used to spy on cell phones has been found by Citizen Lab activists to have been used to target people in Saudi Arabia. The software was bundled into a fake phone application for Qatif Today, a local news site.

G4S, the Anglo-Danish security contractor, has agreed to withdraw from prison work in Israel after activists disrupted the company annual general meeting for the second year in a row. The company is also under fire for ill-treatment of detainees in the UK, including the death of an Angolan man.

Two U.S. companies - Linode of New Jersey and Rackspace of Texas - have been hosting surveillance software designed by Hacking Team of Italy, according to a new report. The software was allegedly been used by governments in Ethiopia, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to track dissidents.

Families of 12 Nepali workers killed in Iraq in August 2004 have been denied permission by a federal judge to sue KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton of Houston, in an abrupt reversal of a previous court decision.

Global Response Staff is a new unit set up by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) to hire private security contractors to accompany dangerous spying missions. Unlike Jason Bourne - the fictional character on which they appear to be modeled on - this gang cannot shoot straight.

Six global telecommunications companies - British Telecom, Interoute, Level Three, Verizon Enterprise, Viatel and Vodafone Cable - are the subject of a formal complaint by Privacy International for potential violation of human rights such as the right to privacy and freedom of expression.

U.S. Investigations Services (USIS), the company that signed off on a background check into Aaron Alexis, the military contractor who shot 12 people dead on a U.S. Navy base in Washington DC last week, has a record of rushing investigations, according to a number of former employees.

WASHINGTON (August 30, 2002) -- As citizens and governments descend on Johannesburg, South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the oil industry is gathering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the World Petroleum Congress. Ten years ago, Rio was host to the first Earth Summit, at which nations of the world promised to combat global warming and enhance global conservation efforts. But a new study released today by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that in the last ten years, over $22 billion in corporate handouts were given to the oil, gas and coal industry operating in Latin America.