Art in a Time of Surveillance
Artists of all stripes are exploring what it means to live in a state of surveillance — and building a thriving cultural movement in the process.
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The Digital Hunt for Duqu, a Dangerous and Cunning U.S.-Israeli Spy Virus
In 2011, Hungarian researchers found an exquisitely sophisticated virus. Its target: the infrastructure of trust that makes the internet work.
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Frosted Glass Falcons and Other Gifts for Your Favorite CIA Employee
CIA agents are mostly gifted rugs, so many rugs. The lucky agents get wristwatches and daggers.
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Senator Who Put Pentagon Papers Into Public Record Urges Udall To Do Same With Torture Report
Mike Gravel is urging Sen. Mark Udall to read the CIA torture report into the Congressional Record.
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We Need Someone to Judge the Judges
The process for investigating federal judges is opaque, secretive, and incredibly hard to set in motion, with 99 percent of complaints dismissed.
John Cook is Leaving The Intercept to Return to Gawker At the End of the Year
The Intercept‘s editor-in-chief, John Cook, who spent the year tripling our staff size and significantly increasing our daily journalistic output, is leaving at the end of the year to return to Gawker Media. Deputy Editor Ryan Tate will continue to work with John and the rest of the newsroom to effect a smooth transition until>>
Secret Cash Pays for U.S. Drone Mistakes
Victims of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia are being compensated with large amounts of cash — but it’s not officially U.S. money.
Obama Administration Reverses Bush Policy, Says U.S. Torture Ban Applies Abroad
As Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported last month, President Obama’s legal team was debating whether to reaffirm a Bush administration position that the United Nations Convention Against Torture imposes no legal obligation on the U.S. to bar cruelty outside its borders. The debate is over. And the good guys won — this>>
EU Scrutinizes Spyware Exports To Sketchy Regimes
The European Union will start paying closer attention to sales of invasive surveillance software, which has previously flowed from European companies to countries with questionable human rights records. Under new EU rules issued recently, certain kinds of monitoring software will require a license to export. Those license applications would provide more transparency about where the software is going, and could potentially allow governments to block>>
An Innocent Man, Tortured by the U.S., Asks the U.N.: Where’s the Accountability?
U.S. officials are in for a serious grilling on Wednesday as they get hauled before the U.N. Committee against Torture and questioned about about a multitude of ways in which the U.S. appears to be failing to comply with the anti-torture treaty it ratified 20 years ago. As Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human>>
What Happened to the Humanitarians Who Wanted to Save Libyans With Bombs and Drones?
Just three years after NATO’s military intervention in Libya ended and was widely heralded by its proponents as a resounding success, that country is in complete collapse. So widespread is violence and anarchy there that “hardly any Libyan can live a normal life,” Brown University’s Stephen Kinzer wrote in The Boston Globe last week. Last month, the Libyan Parliament,>>
A Letter from the Norwegian Nobel Committee to Barack Obama
President Barack H. Obama The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear President Obama: It was late in the evening when we first learned of your decision Friday to deploy an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq. Sorry, we were catching up on the latest episode of “Lilyhammer.” But, seriously, is that a tradition in the States?>>
Toilet Encryption, the Neal Archive, and Citizen Journalism in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom
The final season of HBO’s “The Newsroom” — an Aaron Sorkin-penned, hourlong drama featuring tousle-haired reporters intently thumbing their BlackBerrys during world events — has an Edward Snowden-esque plot line for its last six episodes. When we are not committing fearless acts of journalism, e.g. covering up what REALLY happened in Benghazi, we watch premium cable>>
Buy Your Daughter All the Butch Dolls You Want, She Still Won’t Be Able to Get an Abortion in Texas
We should disabuse ourselves of the notionthat social institutions can be subverted through buying stuff.
How Voter Suppression Helped Produce the Lowest Turnout in Decades
Evidence is piling up that systematic voter suppression played a significant part in bringing Tuesday’s turnout to the lowest level since the 1940s.