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The family of a fallen active-duty marine said they are overwhelmed by the outpouring of support as hundreds of flags go up to greet the family outside a local funeral home.

A former co-owner and chief operating officer of a firm in Clayton was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in prison and a $100,000 fine for orchestrating a scheme in which participation in minority business enterprise programs was falsified.

Two men reached plea agreements with the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office on Thursday in connection with shootings in 2018 that left one woman dead and a man critically injured.

Bloomsdale Excavating Safety Director Brian Bauman said the company installed seismographs and decibel readers to ensure no harm would come to the neighborhood.

William Malik Pearson Jr. was sentenced to 10 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. His co-defendant, Terez Cook Jr., was sentenced to five years in prison for assault.

Darius T. Griffin, 32, of Lawrenceville, Georgia, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Vernell Julion.

Experience a magical evening of music performed by internationally acclaimed pianist and recording artist Daniel Schene. A master of both the classical canon and the music of living composers, Schene

The post WCHOF Music Series: Rachmaninoff 150th with pianist Daniel Schene appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

St. Louis aldermen voted 12-to-2 Thursday in favor of a roughly 40% water rate increase. It still needs one more vote before it would head to the mayor's desk.

You may recall that, back during the last net neutrality open comment period, the FCC’s comment system was overrun by millions of faked comments, including from many dead people. Not surprisingly, it was eventually determined that legacy broadband companies funded the fake comment submissions, which they felt they needed to do because actual activists were […]

According to court documents, Sewell started an online conversation with an FBI agent posing as a 15-year-old girl and made plans to meet for sex in Collinsville.

Kick off your weekend at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park! Each Thursday Night at the Museum will be the most fun, engaging, uplifting, thought-provoking, perspective-shaping night of your

The post Thursday Nights at the Museum appeared first on Explore St. Louis.

The FBI and other intelligence agencies use Section 702 for warrantless backdoor searches on data of Americans, including journalists.

Rob Young, via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Fast on the heels of revelations that the FBI misused a controversial surveillance law that gives it access to huge amounts of Americans’ data, several senators — both Republicans and Democrats — say they’re fed up with intelligence agencies’ excuses. Congress is right to be skeptical of the law, known as Section 702 of FISA, which the FBI has used to spy on Black Lives Matter activists and others. But Congress doesn’t have to limit itself to railing against the law’s abuse. It should use Section 702’s coming expiration to make critical reforms and rein in rampant warrantless spying on Americans, including journalists.

Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to conduct “backdoor searches”: accessing the communications of Americans without a warrant, as long as they’re talking to someone outside the U.S. While Section 702 requires intelligence agencies to “target” a foreigner for intelligence collection, once Americans’ communications data is swept up in their surveillance, the agencies can search it without a warrant for any reason. As a result, despite being touted as a national security measure focused on foreigners, Section 702 has become a powerful tool for domestic spying. It’s routinely used in cases that have nothing to do with national security. The FBI has even used Section 702 data for searches targeting journalists.

Unsurprisingly, the FBI and other intelligence agencies oppose significant changes to Section 702. Instead, the FBI recently suggested just a few weak reforms, such as a “three-strike policy” for searches that break the rules and including FISA compliance in senior officials’ performance reviews.

Suggesting that the FBI police itself is laughable in the face of the history of vast warrantless surveillance of Americans and other surveillance abuse. Self-regulation won’t work. For proof, look no further than the approximately 200,000 backdoor searches the FBI conducted in 2022. Using the FBI’s own compliance rate, even after its latest internal “reforms,” that includes more than 8,000 searches that violate its own rules.

Instead, Congress should adopt the reforms recommended by a coalition of more than 20 privacy, civil rights and civil liberties organizations, including Freedom of the Press Foundation. It must close the backdoor searches loophole by requiring the government to get a warrant before it can search the massive Section 702 data trove for Americans’ communications. It also must narrow Section 702’s parameters to target genuine national security needs. Separate from Section 702 reform, passing the PRESS Act would also help protect journalists from surveillance of their electronic communications data.

In addition, Congress should increase transparency of surveillance activities under Section 702 and another surveillance authority, Executive Order 12333. These surveillance schemes operate as a black box, with little information available to the public, lawmakers and courts. Even the court opinion revealing the FBI’s abuse of Section 702 to monitor BLM activists didn’t come out for more than a year after the opinion was issued, despite a law requiring it to be made public.

Such lack of transparency makes news reporting about surveillance abuses particularly difficult, and journalists must often rely on information revealed by whistleblowers to inform the public. The secrecy allows problems like overclassification and faulty legal interpretations of surveillance authority to run rampant, and surveillance abuses to continue, with little oversight or accountability.

Without changes to Section 702 and other surveillance authorities, intelligence agencies will continue to abuse their power to spy on Americans. For too long, these agencies have been permitted to surveil journalists, activists, politicians and anyone else they consider suspect. Congress should put an end to that by only agreeing to reauthorize Section 702 with these essential changes.

WOOD RIVER - A vehicle smashed and downed a utility line Wednesday night on Old St. Louis Road between West Ferguson and Madison Avenues, Wood River Police Chief Brad Wells reported on Thursday. Chief Wells said the accident led to a power outage. Brian Bretsch, an American Illinois spokesperson, confirmed there was a power outage and said the pole damage took multiple hours to completely rectify. A total of 1,369 customers in Wood River and two customers in East Alton suffered a power outage, Bretsch said. "The vehicle struck a power pole and one wire fell into other ones and caused the power outage," Wells said. "We got there and there was damage to the cross arm on the pole. Crews were dispatched at 9:15 p.m. Thursday and were there for about an hour and were able to restore power to 834 customers by re-routing their power to a different substation. Another 384 customers were re-routed at 11:10 p.m. and that left us with 155 customers. The cross arm had to be repaired and everyone's

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ST. LOUIS COUNTY - On Thursday, June 15, 2023, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office issued charges on suspect Tio Robinson, 29 years of age, of the 1500 block of Paceville Court in Conyers, Georgia 30012, for one count of Stealing $25,000 or more. A booking photo of Robinson is attached. Robinson is being held on a $75,000 cash-only bond. The probable cause statement reads : During a period of approximately one week in late May 2023, Defendant and others visited convenience stores in Affton and South St. Louis County where “electronic no chance amusement devices,” similar to video slot machines and other gaming devices, are located. The men were able to obtain winnings from the machines by altering a $100 bill inserted into the machine to begin game play; the bill could be retained, and the game re-played, without any money being retained by the machine. The devices paid out in the form of vouchers for cash payment that were either cashed out at another

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A Godfrey, Illinois, woman has been charged in connection with an altercation inside an Alton business that ended with her striking an employee with a gun and resulted in her being shot.

Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic has added three non-U.S. health systems to its shared-data platform, which already includes St. Louis-based health system Mercy.

Mark Eckert, a former four-term mayor of Belleville, died Wednesday of cancer. He was 67.