WHO

The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets
The Snowden Documents are the gift that keeps on giving … particularly for The Intercept. They’ve rolled out another set of revelations about government spying gone wild. This new story details a “multi-year, sustained effort” by the CIA to crack open Apple’s iPads and iPhones. The documents detail spies’ ability to open backdoors into Apple’s propriety software over the last decade. Government spooks have basically found a way into every app in Apple’s App Store. Still want to drop $10k on Apple’s new watch?

Wikipedia Is Suing the NSA
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and Lila Tretikov, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote a scathing op-ed the New York Times calling for “the end to the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of Internet traffic.” They also announced a lawsuit claiming that mass surveillance of Internet traffic on American soil is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Immediately After Launching Effort to Scuttle Iran Deal, Senator Tom Cotton to Meet with Defense Contractors
Washington and Tehran are abuzz over the controversial “open letter” to Iran’s leaders by 47 Senate Republicans. The stunt was engineered by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark). The protégé of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is now angling to be the darling of the Military-Industrial Complex. Hey, if you are going to break some windows it makes sense that you’d line up an appearance in front of the national association of window installers, right? Well, Tommy is following the money right to an “off the record and strictly non-attribution” event with the National Defense Industrial Association.

Obama Declares Venezuela a National Security Threat
How much sleep have you lost worrying about the threat from Venezuela? Well, President Obama thinks you should be afraid … very afraid. He slapped sanctions on officials for cracking down on political dissent. Okay, Obama … can you say “Egypt”? How about “Saudi Arabia”? Or “Myanmar”? Oh, that’s right … those nations actually allow Big Oil to profit from their oil and gas reserves.

WHAT

With More Police Wearing Cameras, the Fight Over Footage has Begun in Florida
Use of body cameras is growing. But that was only the first step. Florida is ground zero in the battle over access to the footage generated by those cameras. Should that footage be subject to open records policies? It is privileged? Subject to evidentiary rules? The Columbia Journalism Review sails into the uncharted territory currently being mapped in Florida’s courtrooms.

WHY

Why Do Circus Elephants Get All the Sympathy?
The Pacific Standard examines the strong emotional feelings and highly organized outrage driving campaigns on behalf of elephants, killer whales or other “sexy” animal causes. The oddity, according to J. Wesley Judd, is the cognitive dissonance between those highly effective efforts on behalf of charismatic megafauna and the unwillingness to see pigs, for example, in the same context. The intelligence of pigs is a well-established fact. But many humans who rejoice over Ringling Bros. dropping elephants from their circus act have no problem turning around and eating bacon. What gives?

Sign Up

Like what you see? Sign up to subscribe.