Under J. Edgar Hoover, one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top priorities was to keep tabs on the director’s critics. Unsurprisingly, the 35-page FBI file on Gore Vidal reads like an enumeration of the liberal author’s slights against Hoover, all of them reported by Bureau agents or Hoover’s fans.

The daily deal website Groupon was the subject of 140 consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaints between July 2011 and May 2012. The documents released to MuckRock include allegations of false advertising, spam emails and unresponsive customer service by the company.

The Ohio Army National Guard conducts training flights on surveillance UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) out of three sites in Springfield, Ravenna and Clinton County. A boilerplate memo from the National Guard Bureau outlines that drones may not target U.S. citizens during these training missions, but that incidental information collected in-flight may be retained and disseminated to other government agencies.

The FBI has released its file on the late transparency activist Aaron Swartz. The files make no mention of his alleged intrusion into the JSTOR academic journal system, for which Aaron was facing criminal charges when he ended his life. Instead, the 21-page file mostly focuses on Swartz’s bulk download of PACER records - and the FBI’s inability to understand how he was doing it.

We’re grateful and humbled to share that the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) has announced a grant to MuckRock for reporting on emerging techno-surveillance techniques in use by local and state law enforcement agencies.

The Colbert Report may have begun as a showcase for comedian Stephen Colbert and a spiteful spoof of Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly, but complaints filed with the Federal Communications Commission against the parody show suggest that the program has also become the nation’s top purveyor of castration anxiety and teabagging gags.

Drones have received considerable coverage recently - while this has brought unprecedented public debate on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as implements of war, a casualty of such intense focus has been a blurring of domestic and foreign drones and the issues surrounding them. In turn, recent developments regarding drones deployed on the homefront merit examination.

In the midst of Virginia’s proposed moratorium on law enforcement drones, the state emergency management agency has released documents outlining a rejected proposal to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to monitor radiation. The documents also reveal that Virginia’s Army National Guard has drones in its inventory. But without authorization documents, it is unclear to what extent or purposes the UAVs can be flown.

The U.S. Navy’s close collaboration with the makers of the board game-based blockbuster Battleship came with script approval, an on-set trailer and other Hollywood perks.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has just announced the results of its first crowdfunding campaign, and we at MuckRock are extremely grateful and humbled by the outpouring of support, enthusiasm and assistance.

The Canyon County Sheriff’s Office hopes to use a Draganflyer drone for aerial reconnaissance ranging from search-and-rescue operations to “active shooter situations,” according to documents released through the Drone Census.