Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was quick to lash out at the Obama administration’s handling of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. Yesterday, when reports circulated that U.S. embassy officials had communicated threats to Chen’s family, Romney blasted the administration, saying, “if the reports are true” then the episode was a “dark day for freedom.”

The situation on the ground in Beijing remains uncertain but new reports suggest that progress is being made by the State Department in reaching an agreement with Chinese authorities to permit Chen to take up a fellowship from an American University, “where he can be accompanied by his wife and two children,” reports State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. But while Romney was quick to attack the Obama administration while sensitive negotiations were underway yesterday between U.S. diplomats and Chinese authorities, the presumptive Republican nominee has never answered questions about whether his own family has profited from Chinese surveillance of its own citizenry.

In March, The New York Times revealed that a Bain-run fund, in which a Romney family blind trust had invested between $100,000 and $250,000, purchased Uniview Technologies in December. Uniview is a Chinese company that claims to be the biggest supplier of surveillance cameras to the Chinese government and produces “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that allow police to share images in real time and provide technology for an emergency command center in Tibet “that provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s web site.

Security cameras played a central role in the house-arrest imposed on Chen Guangcheng’s family. After his escape to Beijing and the U.S. embassy, Chen reported that Chinese authorities installed seven video cameras and an electric fence at his house. However, it is not known whether Uniview supplied these cameras.

Yesterday, in a surprise call to a Congressional hearing, Chen told lawmakers, “I’m really afraid for my other family members’ lives” and “[n]ow those security officers in my house basically have said, ‘We want to see what else Chen Guangcheng can do.’”

With the news that Chinese authorities may permit Chen to leave China with his family, a political crisis may be averted. But Mitt Romney and his family’s investment of between $100,000 and $250,000 in Uniview Technologies should raise questions about Romney’s ties to a company that openly advertises its close ties to the Chinese government’s state security apparatus and the use of its technologies in “both peacetime and wartime.”

Yesterday, the Columbia University-based Pulitzer Prize board announced that four Associated Press journalists won the investigative reporting award “for their spotlighting of the New York Police Department’s clandestine spying program that monitored daily life in Muslim communities, resulting in congressional calls for a federal investigation, and a debate over the proper role of domestic intelligence gathering.”

The right-wing New York Post is none too pleased about the AP’s “Pulitzer for its year-long, non-stop hit-job on the NYPD’s counterterrorism efforts,” seizing on the Pulitzer board’s recognition of a public debate on when the government gets to spy on its own citizens:

Debate? There’s none on the streets of this city, where a recent Quinnipiac poll shows 58 percent of New Yorkers reject the AP’s smear that the NYPD “has unfairly targeted Muslims,” and where fully 82 percent — including majorities of every demographic group — say the department “has been effective in combating terrorism.”

The poll the Post cites did not ask respondents about the program to monitor Muslim communities solely for being Muslim (or in some cases, solely for belonging to certain Muslim sects), but the stats are by-and-large accurate: Many New Yorkers do support the NYPD’s counterterror efforts. Nonetheless, it would be nice to know what New Yorkers think about domestic spying on their neighbors solely because of their religion.

There are, however, at least some New Yorkers who object to the surveillance: some of the leaders of those communities that were targeted. Local television covered organized boycotts of interfaith meetings with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office:

Muslims, however, are not a monolith, and some Muslims did support NYPD efforts. One was Zuhdi Jasser, a Muslim whose organization is dedicated to combatting extremism. But Jasser comes with his own baggage: He sits on the board of the Clarion Fund and has yet to disavow his ties to the Islamophobic organization.

The Post writes that the AP stories “never even cited a single thing the cops did that is illegal, or even ill-advised.” Finding out illegal activities needn’t be the threshold for great reporting (Does the New York Post limit itself to covering alleged crimes?). And the AP’s stories certainly have uncovered some “ill-advised” surveillance techniques that are troubling regional leaders. New Jersey Governor Chis Christie criticized the NYPD for “arrogance or paranoia” in its failure to coordinate its efforts and the top FBI official in Newark said the NYPD program is “starting to have a negative impact” because Muslim sources are pulling back their cooperation. (HT: Adam Serwer)

In June 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers can search travelers’ laptops and copy their entire contents without probable cause or “reasonable suspicion.” CBP officers “can review and analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, reenter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States,” including information from laptops and other electronic devices. A CBP official dismissed growing public concern regarding this draconian policy at the time, saying the policy is akin to simply searching one’s backpack (it’s not).

The Washington Post reports today that the Obama administration will largely continue this policy:

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.

The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border.

Privacy law expert Peter Swire noted a number of problems with this severely intrusive policy, namely that it limits privacy, free speech and business secrets, sets bad precedent for other more untrustworthy regimes throughout the world, and could discourage foreign travel to the U.S.

Obama administration officials say that more protections have been put in place. In one new “oversight,” CBP officers “should now generally take no more than 5 days” to conduct searchers (more than enough time to copy the entire contents of large hard drives). Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the new policy “strike[s] the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers.” Civil Liberties advocates disagree:

“Under the policy begun by Bush and now continued by Obama, the government can open your laptop and read your medical records, financial records, e-mails, work product and personal correspondence — all without any suspicion of illegal activity,” said Elizabeth Goitein, who leads the liberty and national security project at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Electronic Frontier Foundation mobilized action campaigns last year calling on citizens to urge the federal government to abandon this policy. The Post reports that according to DHS data, “[b]etween October 2008 and Aug. 11, more than 221 million travelers passed through CBP checkpoints. About 1,000 laptop searches were performed, only 46 in-depth.”

A congressionally-mandated report by Inspectors General of five separate intelligence agencies confirms that the Bush administration carried out “unprecedented,” massive surveillance activities beyond the warrantless wirteapping program that had previously been revealed. The Bush administration authorized the program without fully notifying Congress:

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., told The Associated Press she was shocked to learn of the existence of other classified programs beyond the warrantless wiretapping.

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs in an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Harman said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

“He looked me in the eye and said ‘no,’” she said Friday.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony before Congress implied that “other programs exist for domestic spying” outside of the NSA program. Gonzales even stated in 2007 that “other intelligence activities” existed. The new report found Gonzales’ statements to be “incomplete and confusing” and “inaccurate,” though not intentionally misleading.

Attorney General John Ashcroft had originally given authorization for the program based on a “misimpression” of what activities the NSA was actually conducting. The lack of full disclosure led to the showdown in Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004, which almost caused a mass resignation at DoJ.

According to the report, top Cheney aide David Addington could personally decide who in the administration was “read into” the classified program. The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government. But because the inspectors general “lacked the authority to compel testimony,” five former Bush administration officials — Ashcroft, John Yoo, George Tenet, Andrew Card, and Addington — refused to be questioned.

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the “President’s Surveillance Program,” which began shortly after 9/11, did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. Moreover, the information produced was of “limited” value to intelligence officials.

White the IGs’ report does not yield any details about the secret programs, Radar reported in 2008 that a program called “Main Core” was engaged in massive data collection of Americans:

According to a senior government official… ”There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” … One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Glenn Greenwald notes that there likely “will be no consequences” for any of this “rampant and blantant” lawlessness because the Obama administration “opposes all Congressional investigations into Bush-era crimes and, worse, is engaged in extraordinary efforts to block courts from adjudicating the legality of Bush’s surveillance activities by claiming that even long-obsolete and clearly criminal programs are ‘state secrets.’”