Informant

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

His wife was a patient at the clinic where I worked in my early days as a doctor. I saw her regularly for hypertension. But on one visit, she was more concerned about her husband - let's call him Pedro. He was having stomach pains and difficulty swallowing. I told her to make an appointment for him with me. When I saw him, Pedro explained that he had lost weight and was having trouble swallowing solid food. A barium swallow study confirmed my fears: He had esophageal cancer. Another doctor at the clinic received the report before I saw Pedro again and made an urgent referral to surgery.

A Rialto police officer working on a drug task force and an Orange County criminal defense lawyer were arrested Monday after a federal grand jury indicted them on bribery charges in connection with a 2009 criminal case. Officer Aaron Scott Vigil, 41, of Highland, and attorney Lawrence Anthony Witsoe, 67, of Mission Viejo, surrendered to the FBI after being named in the three-count indictment, which was unsealed Monday. The indictment, handed down June 1, alleges that Vigil, while serving as a task force officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration in Riverside, agreed to accept a $2,500 bribe from Witsoe in exchange for falsely telling a prosecutor that a man facing assault and battery charges was a useful federal informant.

WASHINGTON -- The unauthorized disclosure of a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. His information was said to have led to the U.S. drone strike that killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, on May 6, 2012. U.S. officials say Quso had helped direct the terrorist attack on the Cole, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, in a Yemeni harbor in October 2000.

WASHINGTON -- The unauthorized disclosure of a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. His information was said to have led to the U.S. drone strike that killed a senior Al Qaeda leader, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, on May 6, 2012. U.S. officials say Quso had helped direct the terrorist attack on the Cole, a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, in a Yemeni harbor in October 2000.

Prosecutors are considering whether to file criminal charges against a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy accused of assaulting an inmate who was helping federal authorities investigate a suspected international drug trafficker, according to records and interviews. The inmate accused Deputy Michael Camacho of targeting him, at least in part, because he was cooperating with detectives as an informant, internal records show. The records indicate that in July, the inmate told his sheriff's handlers that Camacho punched him in his torso and ribs.

Mark Whitacre is, according to one biographer, the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower ever. The former Archer Daniels Midland divisional president helped expose his company's involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy that, as actor Matt Damon puts it, "robbed everyone in America and around the world, jacking up the price of everything in their kitchen cupboard." So when Damon and director Steven Soderbergh finally got to make "The Informant!" -- based on Kurt Eichenwald's chronicle of the case -- they naturally went for, well, laughs.

As the case of five men charged with plotting to blow up a Cleveland-area bridge goes forward, one of the key questions will revolve around the role of the FBI's confidential informant in the case. That informant was at the center of discussions and, according to at least one defense lawyer, may have been too active. The five men are scheduled to appear in federal court Monday for a hearing on charges including conspiracy and trying to bomb property used in interstate commerce.

The Informant! Warner, $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.99 Boundary-pushing director Steven Soderbergh temporarily abandons his cinematic experiments (sort of) for the rollicking corporate intrigue comedy "The Informant!," which stars Matt Damon as real-life whistle-blower Mark Whitacre. Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns use a funny Damon voice-over to help explain the ins and outs of price fixing and FBI stings, while also exploiting the viewer's natural sympathy with Damon to do a clever bit of sleight-of-hand with the plot.

An FBI/DEA confidential informant helped smuggle firearms from the ATF's Fast and Furious gun-trafficking surveillance operation to drug cartels in Mexico, according to evidence compiled by congressional investigators. The investigators said the informant obtained the weapons from Manuel Celis-Acosta, considered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be the "biggest fish" of 20 individuals indicted in Fast and Furious. At the same time the informant was receiving large amounts of "official law enforcement funds as payment" for his services, they said.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

Officials at Bloomberg, the New York financial news and information service, scrambled to deal with an unfolding customer privacy scandal after admitting its journalists had snooped on business clients for years through its network of terminals ubiquitous on Wall Street. Seeking to calm Bloomberg's 315,000 subscribers worldwide, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News said Monday: "Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. " "Last month, we immediately changed our policy so that reporters now have no greater access to information than our customers," Matthew Winkler said in a post on Bloomberg's website.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors secretly obtained telephone records from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press and its journalists in an attempt to learn who leaked information on how the CIA thwarted an apparent terrorist plot hatched in Yemen. The Associated Press on Monday called the action a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news gathering. The government subpoenaed records covering a two-month period in early 2012 from telephones in the wire service's offices in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., as well as the homes and cellphones of at least five reporters and an editor.

WASHINGTON - A top Internal Revenue Service official knew as early as June 2011 that conservative groups seeking nonprofit status were being singled out for additional scrutiny, raising questions about when senior officials were informed and why the IRS allowed the agency's commissioner to deny the targeting effort in March 2012 testimony before Congress. The IRS has said the commissioner was not aware of the targeting at the time, but it has not explained why the testimony was never corrected.

Massing the heavy legal artillery of 1st Amendment principles, a federal appeals court has ruled that the federal government can't order businesses to post signs informing employees that they have a right to join a union and to bargain for better wages. It's a troubling ruling. The case stems from a 2011 decision by the National Labor Relations Board that employers must "post notices to employees, in conspicuous places," informing them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and include the information in electronic mailings.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote Thursday on President Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, drawing accusations of obstructionism from Democrats. Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said McCarthy had not adequately responded to their requests for information, so they didn't show up for the scheduled vote. They want more information on how the EPA makes decisions on new regulations, how it has used private email to conduct public business, and other transparency issues.

Scott Bakula is a theater person first. Or a sports fan first. Or both first -- evident as he extols the virtues of spending a month in Decatur, Ill., with the cast and crew of "The Informant!" during filming. "One of the good things they talk about in sports is that teams bond when they're on the road because you don't have the distractions of home. That's why they take shows on the road before they go to New York; 24/7 you're living that experience. There was nowhere to go, nothing else for us to do except focus on the movie," he says.

Prosecutors were ordered Friday to hand over material about a jailhouse informant who helped authorities secretly record hours of conversation with the man accused of gunning down eight people in the deadliest mass shooting in Orange County history. The recordings were made a week after the arrest of Scott Dekraai, 43, in the 2011 midday rampage at a Seal Beach salon where his ex-wife worked. Defense attorney Scott Sanders argued that he needs more information about the informant and his involvement with other criminal cases, including Dekraai's, to determine whether his client's right to a fair trial has been violated.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies and animal control officers were searching by air Thursday for four pit bulls believed to have mauled a woman to death earlier in the day in the Antelope Valley community of Littlerock. Hours after the attack, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the dogs' capture. The 63-year-old woman was out for her morning walk about 9 o'clock when she was mauled by the dogs. Her name has not been released.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.