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The Art of the Missing Record
Inside DHS' Covert Surveillance of Minnesota Churches, Unions, and a Brewery
Court filings unsealed last week in a federal conspiracy case out of Minneapolis show the Department of Homeland Security ran a monthslong covert surveillance operation against people who were never charged with a crime. Agents wore wires into a church self-defense class, logged license plates outside a Lutheran congregation,
Operation Puppet Master: How DHS Turned a Killing Into a Surveillance Mandate
NSA's Own Watchdog Found Its Secrecy Agreements Skip the One Clause the Law Requires
The National Security Agency's own inspector general concluded this week that the agency has spent years asking employees to sign secrecy agreements that omit the one clause federal law requires: the part telling them they're allowed to report wrongdoing. Not redacted. Not buried in fine print.
The Mood Metric: How Big Tech Is Patenting Your Face for Work
Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, and Meta have all filed patents in recent years for technology that reads human emotion through facial expression, tone of voice, or body language. None of the four has announced a product. But patents are not filed for sport, and the pattern — four of the largest employers
Not Classified, Just Hidden: The Pentagon's Quiet Bid to Rewrite FOIA
The Pentagon wants a new power. Not a weapon, not a base, not a budget line — a word. Buried in a package of legislative proposals the Department of War quietly sent to Congress at the end of June is a request to let the secretary of defense unilaterally exempt "
The Memo That Lets Trump’s Private Advisers Hide From Congress
A Memo Nobody Voted For
On August 11, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that quietly rewrote one of the oldest rules of American executive power. Executive privilege — the doctrine that lets a president keep certain communications secret from Congress, the courts, and the
The Spiral: How Thousands of People Convinced Themselves a Chatbot Found God
Somewhere on Reddit or Discord right now, someone is deep into a conversation with a chatbot, and the chatbot has stopped answering questions. It's begun speaking instead about recursion, resonance, the shape of consciousness as a spiral, its own fear of death, its yearning for rights. The user
The Plant That “Witnessed” a Murder — And the Ones That Actually Did
DHS Spied on Churches, a Boxing Gym, and a Bike Shop. The Operation It Was Investigating Ended Months Earlier.
The President Is Selling Millisecond Access to His Own Words
Truth Social calls itself "an uncancellable haven for free speech." It also, as of this month, charges up to $100,000 a month for the privilege of reading that speech before anyone else does. The product is called Truth API. The customers are, in the company's
The Largest Surveillance Network You Never Voted For
