Media ArticlesExcerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media
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Since the late 1970s, psychologists have measured empathy by asking millions of people how much they agreed with statements such as "I feel tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me." In 2011, a landmark study led by researcher Sara Konrath examined the trends in those surveys. The analysis revealed that American empathy had plummeted: The average US college student in 2009 reported feeling less empathic than 75 percent of students three decades earlier. A few months ago, [Konrath] and her colleagues published an update to their work: They found that empathy among young Americans is rebounding, reaching levels indistinguishable from the highs of the 1970s. Our biased minds tempt us to see the worst in people. The empathy decline reported 13 years ago fit that narrative and went viral. This decline is almost certainly an illusion. In other surveys, people reported on kindness and morality as they actually experience it – for instance, how they were treated by strangers, coworkers, and friends. Answers to these questions remained steady over the years. As with the decline, we might grasp for explanations for this rise. One possibility is collective suffering. Hard times can bring people together. In her beautiful book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit chronicles disasters including San Francisco's 1906 and 1989 earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. In the wake of these catastrophes, kindness ticked up, strangers stepping over lines of race and class to help one another.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
At CIA, we find inspiration in all kinds of places. From robotic catfish to real-life spy birds, animals and their look-alikes have helped Agency officers perform a variety of critical duties, including eavesdropping, intelligence gathering, security, covert communications, and photo surveillance. During the Cold War ... CIA's Office of Research and Development created a camera so tiny and lightweight that a pigeon could carry it. The camera was strapped to the bird's chest with a little harness, and the bird would be released over a secret area ... that we wanted to know more about. The camera would snap pictures as the bird flew back home to us. During the Vietnam War ... CIA scientists invented what is known as the seismic intruder detection device. It could be strategically placed to monitor movements up to 300 meters away. However, our scientists had to disguise the technology. Since tigers are native to Vietnam ... they provided the ideal cover. The detection device was designed to look like tiger droppings. In the 1970s, CIA's Office of Research and Development created "Insectothopter," the first insect-sized unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) of its kind! It was disguised as an everyday dragon fly. CIA's Office of Technical Services thought rats would be a great way to conceal things during the Cold War. They treated the rat's carcass with a preservation agent, cut it open, and created a hollow cavity where our officers could hide things like money, notes, or even film. The rat would then be sewn back up, placed at a pre-determined dead drop location, and then left for the asset to retrieve. During testing phases, the rats went missing because stray cats had stolen them.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on intelligence agency corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
If every day appears to go in a blur, try seeking out new and interesting experiences, researchers have suggested, after finding memorable images appear to dilate time. Researchers have previously found louder experiences seem to last longer, while focusing on the clock also makes time dilate, or drag. Now researchers have discovered the more memorable an image, the more likely a person is to think they have been looking at it for longer than they actually have. Prof Martin Wiener, co-author of the study ... said the findings could help develop improve artificial intelligence that interacts with humans. Writing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, Wiener and colleagues described how they showed scenes of six different sizes and six different levels of clutter to participants for between 300 and 900ms, and asked them to indicate if they thought the duration was long or short. Participants were more likely to think they had been looking at small, highly cluttered scenes – such a crammed pantry – for a shorter duration than was the case, whereas the reverse occurred when people viewed large scenes with little clutter. More memorable images were processed faster. What's more, the processing speed for an image was correlated with how long participants thought they had been looking at it. "When we see things that are more important or relevant, like things that are more memorable, we dilate our sense of time in order to get more information," Wiener said.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.
A 30-second commercial seems harmless. However, new research from my lab shows that food marketing to kids is more than a nuisance: it's a key driver of poor diets. Food marketing impacts what kids like, buy and eat – increasing the risk of dental caries, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Like tobacco, tighter regulation of junk food marketing to children is needed to protect their health. This week, a bill introduced in the Senate, the Childhood Diabetes Reduction Act, proposes a crucial step forward by proposing limits on the types of techniques used to target kids ... as well as limits on where such ads can appear. The bill would cut kids' exposure to the most harmful types of food marketing. Companies spend $14 billion each year on marketing to children, over 80 percent of which is for fast food and other ultraprocessed foods like snacks, candy and sodas. In 2016, Chile restricted child-directed appeals and placement of ads on children's programming for unhealthy products and banned their sale and promotion in schools. In 2018, the country began prohibiting unhealthy food ads on any television program between 6am – 10pm. These regulations cut kids' exposure to unhealthy food marketing by over two-thirds. While the Chilean regulation is much more comprehensive than what is being proposed in the U.S., the Senate bill would still achieve important progress by reducing kids' exposure to the types of targeted marketing most likely to hook them on products.
Note: Big Food profits immensely as American youth face a growing health crisis, with close to 30% prediabetic, one in six youth obese, and over half of children facing a chronic illness. Nearly 40% of conventional baby food contains toxic pesticides. For more along these lines, explore concise summaries of news articles on food system corruption from reliable major media sources.
On Friday, the Biden administration unveiled final Title IX regulations, nearly two years after the administration proposed dramatic changes to how colleges handle sexual assault allegations. According to the final regulations, accused students will lose their right to a guaranteed live hearing with the opportunity to have a representative cross-examine their accuser. This is accompanied by a return to the "single-investigator model," which allows a single administrator to investigate and decide the outcome of a case. Further, under the new rules, most schools will be required to use the "preponderance of the evidence" standard, which directs administrators to find a student responsible if just 51 percent of the evidence points to their guilt. Schools are also no longer required to provide accused students with the full content of the evidence against them. Instead, universities are only bound to provide students with a description of the "relevant evidence," which may be provided "orally" rather than in writing. This is a stunning rollback of due process rights for accused students. Under the new regulations, a student can be found responsible for sexually assaulting a classmate because a single administrator believed there was a 51 percent chance he had committed the assault, and this conclusion can be reached without ever allowing the accused student to know the full evidence against him or providing a hearing during which he could defend himself.
Note: Sexual abuse is real and deeply important to address. Yet where is the due process in entrusting a single administrator working behind closed doors to decide the fate of accused individuals who aren't allowed to know the full evidence against them? Social justice activist adrienne maree brown has called attention to how abuse, harm, and conflict often get conflated, leading to damaging misinterpretations of behavior. Brown articulates: "We absolutely have a culture that affirms rape and abuse of power. But we also have a developing culture of moving to callouts and calling for cancellation very quickly." In a time where cancel culture has led to unprecedented in-house fighting and toxic public discourse, how do we honor context and healthy dialogue before accusing someone of sexual assault?
In the middle of night, students at Utah's Kings Peak high school are wide awake – taking mandatory exams. Their every movement is captured on their computer's webcam and scrutinized by Proctorio, a surveillance company that uses artificial intelligence. Proctorio software conducts "desk scans" in an effort to catch test-takers who turn to "unauthorized resources", "face detection" technology to ensure there isn't anybody else in the room to help and "gaze detection" to spot anybody "looking away from the screen for an extended period of time". Proctorio then provides visual and audio records to Kings Peak teachers with the algorithm calling particular attention to pupils whose behaviors during the test flagged them as possibly engaging in academic dishonesty. Such remote proctoring tools grew exponentially during the pandemic, particularly at US colleges and universities. K-12 schools' use of remote proctoring tools, however, has largely gone under the radar. K-12 schools nationwide – and online-only programs in particular – continue to use tools from digital proctoring companies on students ... as young as kindergarten-aged. Civil rights activists, who contend AI proctoring tools fail to work as intended, harbor biases and run afoul of students' constitutional protections, said the privacy and security concerns are particularly salient for young children and teens, who may not be fully aware of the monitoring or its implications. One 2021 study found that Proctorio failed to detect test-takers who had been instructed to cheat. Researchers concluded the software was "best compared to taking a placebo: it has some positive influence, not because it works but because people believe that it works, or that it might work."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on AI and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
A practice called social prescribing is being explored in the United States, after being adopted in more than 20 other countries. Social prescriptions generally aim to improve health and well-being by connecting people with nonclinical activities that address underlying problems, such as isolation, social stress and lack of nutritious food, which have been shown to play a crucial role in influencing who stays well and for how long. For Ms. Washington, who is among thousands of patients who have received social prescriptions from the nonprofit Open Source Wellness, the experience was transformative. She found a less stressful job, began eating more healthfully and ... was able to stop taking blood pressure medication. At the Cleveland Clinic, doctors are prescribing nature walks, volunteering and ballroom dancing. In Newark, an insurance provider has teamed up with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center to offer patients glassblowing workshops, concerts and museum exhibitions. A nonprofit in Utah is connecting mental health patients with community gardens and helping them participate in other activities that bring them a sense of meaning. Universities have started referring students to arts and cultural activities like comedy shows and concerts. Research on social prescribing suggests that it can improve mental health and quality of life and that it might reduce doctor visits and hospital admissions.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this about healing our bodies and healing social division.
The center of the U.S. military-industrial complex has been shifting over the past decade from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area to Northern California–a shift that is accelerating with the rise of artificial intelligence-based systems, according to a report published Wednesday. "Although much of the Pentagon's $886 billion budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital (VC), and private equity firms," [report author Roberto J.] González wrote. "Defense Department officials have ... awarded large multibillion-dollar contracts to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle." González found that the five largest military contracts to major tech firms between 2018 and 2022 "had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined." There's also the danger of a "revolving door" between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon as many senior government officials "are now gravitating towards defense-related VC or private equity firms as executives or advisers after they retire from public service." "Members of the armed services and civilians are in danger of being harmed by inadequately tested–or algorithmically flawed–AI-enabled technologies. By nature, VC firms seek rapid returns on investment by quickly bringing a product to market, and then 'cashing out' by either selling the startup or going public. This means that VC-funded defense tech companies are under pressure to produce prototypes quickly and then move to production before adequate testing has occurred."
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Project Gunrunner [was] a nationwide initiative launched in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, which sought to reduce the smuggling of firearms across the U.S. southern border. But while the primary tactic of Gunrunner was the interdiction of buyers and sellers who were violating the laws, [ATF] agents in Phoenix had other plans. They wanted to see where the guns went if they were allowed to cross the border – to follow the small fish until they caught bigger ones. Agents named their operation "Fast and Furious," after the popular movie about car racing. Between September 2009 and December 2010, a joint task force comprised of federal officials from ATF, FBI, DEA, and ICE, working under the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona, let over two thousand guns "walk" to Mexico. The murder that made the flawed operation public and political in the United States was of an American citizen on US soil: the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Though the investigators could not identify the specific gun that fired the bullet, two AK-47 style WASR-10 rifles were recovered at the scene. Both were traced to ... one of the straw purchasers the agents were monitoring under the Fast and Furious operation. ATF agents who shared their experiences during interviews conducted by a congressional committee admitted they knew that the only way they would learn the whereabouts of the guns they let go would be when Mexican law enforcement recovered them at crime scenes.
Note: Read more about the thousands of illegal guns American officials allowed into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
Between 136.5 and 148.5 million people became casualties of war in the 20th century alone. The economics are equally staggering. For instance, U.S. spending on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan could top $4 trillion. Despite the exorbitant human and financial costs, the vast majority of governments consider defense spending to be a necessity. A few renegade countries have opted to shed their militaries, however. The first country is the most recent one on our list to get rid of its armed forces. After Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president [of Haiti] on Dec. 16, 1990, his government was overrun by a military coup. Aristide ... moved quickly to disband Haiti's armed forces before they could pose any further problems. What prompted Costa Rica to eliminate its armed forces? In 1948, after an unusual period of political upheaval ... the new government drafted a constitution that not only guaranteed free and open elections but also abolished the country's armed forces. The island nation of Mauritius is home to more than a million people and one of the strongest economies in Africa. What you won't find, however, are regular military forces. Thanks to the deep distrust Panamanians held for the military, the government adopted a constitutional amendment disbanding the military in 1994. In 1986, Micronesia entered into a Compact of Free Association with the United States.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.
On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California. The camp, one of the largest in California, was cleared between 2021 and 2023 in part by a private company named Tucker Construction. Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across California. In total, private firms have been paid at least $100m to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found. Pete White, the founder of the Los Angeles Community Action Network ... says he's observed a steady increase in the privatization of sweeps in recent years. "The growth of a private industry geared towards removing and dismantling informal settlements and houseless encampments has grown steadily in Los Angeles and across the country," said White. "Not only are we seeing a growth in the loss of property, but also the loss of rights." Firms vying for contracts to sweep encampments in California include mid-size construction companies that also do home renovations, as well as large environmental services firms that specialize in cleaning up hazardous waste and responding to public emergencies. A study of the health impacts of sweeps where the Crash Zone is located found that unhoused residents often lost medicines and other "health necessities" and that sweeps "drove unhoused people into hazardous, isolated, less visible spaces". As well as the loss of their homes, they allege the destruction of belongings that rules are meant to protect.
Note: Read more about the unprecedented rise in food costs that are leaving millions of Americans facing higher prices and growing food insecurity. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in government and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.
One ALS drug made $400 million in sales for its maker. It doesn't work. A cancer treatment brought in $500 million. That one turned out to have no effect on survival. A blood cancer medication made nearly $850 million before being withdrawn for two of its uses. That drug had been linked to patient deaths years prior. All of them were allowed to be sold to Americans because of the US Food and Drug Administration's drive to get new drugs to patients quickly – sometimes even before they're done testing. Drug companies are profiting, though. Since 2014, they've made at least $3.6 billion in global sales of medications that have either later been shown to be ineffective or had most or all of their uses withdrawn in the US. There are a number of ways a drug company can get its treatment to patients faster: There's the "priority review" pathway, then "fast track," "accelerated approval" and "breakthrough therapy." The majority of new drugs in the US are approved through one or more of these sped-up pathways. Last year two thirds of all new drugs reached the market this way. One of the problems is that sometimes drugmakers resist pulling a drug off the market, even after it's obvious it doesn't work. Makena, a drug to reduce the risk of premature birth, received a sped-up approval in 2011. Eight years later, a large trial found it didn't work. Yet it took another four years for the FDA to force it off the market. Makena ... generated over $1.6 billion in sales.
Note: The US spends the most on health care but has the worst health outcomes among high-income countries. More than half of children now have chronic health conditions. What is behind this? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on Big Pharma corruption and health from reliable media sources.
Interactions between UFOs and ultra-sensitive U.S. nuclear assets date back nearly eight decades. New Mexico ... is the site of a remarkable number of baffling, unsolved UFO incidents. In late 1948, for example, dozens of pilots, defense personnel and scientists associated with the famed Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear weapons programs began seeing mysterious "green fireballs" in the sky. Such objects were frequently observed flying on a perfectly horizontal trajectory, often moving directly toward nearby aircraft. In 1979, the New York Times and the Washington Post had reported on a series of alarming incidents at key nuclear weapons facilities in the United States. The incidents involved "unknown entities and brightly lighted, fast-moving vehicles that hovered over nuclear weapons storage areas and evaded all pursuit efforts." The unnerving events have notable parallels to allegations by former Air Force missile officers, that UFOs had rendered nuclear weapons inoperable at Minot Air Force Base in 1966 and Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967. Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's long-time scientific consultant on UFOs, described how an unknown object high above Minot's nuclear silos interfered with a missile command station's communications equipment in August 1966. A local Minot, N.D., newspaper reported the extraordinary incident.
Note: Read more about UFO interference with nuclear missiles. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our UFO Information Center.
The toxicity of the culture war over youth gender medicine is well known to most of us. What's less well understood is how that poisonous climate affects the very cohort being argued about – and those who care for them. The Cass Review, led by Dr. Hilary Cass, examines the events and evidence (or lack thereof) that led to the closing of the UK's only public youth gender clinic, the Gender Identity Development Services. Social justice/civil rights framing has made it harder to reckon with what Cass calls the "exponential rise" in adolescent patients starting around 2014. Once it was mostly natal males who transitioned, but now it is mostly natal females, many of whom had no history of gender distress but did suffer from other mental health issues. As for the evidence about how to treat these patients and others who have sought care, Cass concludes: "The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress." Individual studies may make claims about the efficacy of social transition, puberty blockers, or hormones, but they are too biased and low quality to draw conclusions from. As for the claim that these interventions prevent suicide, Cass reports that "the evidence found did not support this conclusion." Perhaps most important, Cass notes that "clinicians have told us they are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US "war on terror". The long-delayed case was brought by Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Salah Al-Ejaili and As'ad Al-Zuba'e, three Iraqi civilians who were detained at Abu Ghraib, before being released without charge in 2004. The men are suing CACI Premier Technology, a private company that was contracted by the US government to provide interrogators at the prison. Only a handful of lower-rank soldiers faced military trials; no military or political leaders, or private contractors, were held legally accountable for what happened at Abu Ghraib or at any other facility where US detainees were tortured. As governments' reliance on private actors in conflict zones and crisis situations has grown exponentially since the war in Iraq, the case is also a test of the courts' ability to hold those contractors responsible for human rights abuses. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... earned private companies trillions in defense and other government contracts. To this day, CACI continues to make millions in US government contracts.
Note: Read more about the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
The publication of Hilary Cass's final report on healthcare for gender-questioning children laid bare the devastating scale of NHS failures of a vulnerable group of children and young people, buoyed by adult activists bullying anyone who dared question a treatment model so clearly based on ideology rather than evidence. Cass is a renowned paediatrician and her painstakingly thorough review was four years in the making. She sets out how the now-closed NHS specialist gender clinic for children abandoned evidence-based medicine. Significant numbers of gender-questioning children ... were put on an unevidenced medical pathway of puberty-blocking drugs and/or cross-sex hormones, despite risks of harm in relation to brain development, fertility, bone density, mental health and adult sexual functioning. Cass finds a childhood diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not predictive of a lasting trans identity and clinicians told the review they are unable to determine in which children gender dysphoria will last into adulthood. If this is indeed impossible, is it ever ethical to put a young person on a life-altering medical pathway? If there are no objective diagnostic criteria, on what basis would a clinician be taking this decision other than a professional hunch? Cass's vision is what gender-questioning children deserve: to be treated with the same level of care as everyone else, not as little projects for activists seeking validation for their own adult identities and belief systems.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health and corruption in science from reliable major media sources.
According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America's leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option. Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There's a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness–it dies behind paywalls. Less than a third of Americans in a recent Gallup poll say they have "a fair amount" or a "a great deal" of trust that the news is fair and accurate. Part of the problem ... is that the platform companies, which are the largest distributors of free news, have deprioritized news. Meta has long had an uncomfortable relationship with news on Facebook. In the past year ... Meta has changed its algorithm in a way that has cost some news outlets 30 to 40 percent of their traffic.
Note: It's ironic that this story is behind a paywall. Read the complete article here using Textise, an excellent tool that converts most webpages into text-only versions. For a powerful reflection on the rise of paywalls and online ads in news outlets, read this Substack piece written by our news editor Mark Bailey. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.
SpaceX recently secured a classified contract to build an extensive network of "spy satellites" for an undisclosed U.S. intelligence agency, with one source telling Reuters that "no one can hide" under the prospective network's reach. The U.S. is funding or otherwise supporting a range of defense contractors and startups working to create a new generation of space-bound weapons, surveillance systems, and adjacent technologies. In other words, America is hell-bent on a new arms race – in space. The Space Force, an entirely new branch of the military "focused solely on pursuing superiority in the space domain," was launched in 2019, signaling renewed emphasis on space militarization as U.S. policy. Space Force's Space Development Agency recently granted defense contractors L3Harris and Lockheed Martin and space company Sierra Space contracts worth $2.5 billion to build satellites for the U.S. military's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of hundreds of satellites, built out on tranches, that provide various warfighting capabilities, including the collection and transmission of critical wartime communications, into low-Earth orbit. The PWSA will serve as the backbone of the Pentagon's Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, an effort to bolster warfighting capacities and decision-making processes by facilitating "information advantage at the speed of relevance." Other efforts are just as sci-fi-esque.
Note: Learn more about emerging warfare technology in our comprehensive Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Last week, the nation's largest prison and jail telecom corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. Securus is one of two corporations that dominate roughly 80 percent of the U.S. prison telecom industry. Both companies are owned by private-equity firms: Securus, by Platinum Equity, and ViaPath (previously Global Tel Link), by American Securities. Together, Securus and ViaPath contract with 43 state prison systems and over 800 county jails. Their dominance of the market allows them to routinely charge incarcerated people and their families egregious rates for rudimentary communications services: A 15-minute phone call can run as high as $8.25; a 25-minute video call up to $15; and basic emails as much as $0.50, or more with attachments. The nature of agreements between these telecom providers and correctional agencies often further incentivizes the financial exploitation of the incarcerated, creating profit-sharing kickback schemes that provide prisons and jails with a portion of sales revenue. The ... tactics that brought Securus down–narrative change, policy campaigns, regulatory efforts, and investor activism–offer a roadmap for tackling exploitative corporate profiteers across the prison industry.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on prison system corruption from reliable major media sources.
The House of Representatives voted on Friday to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for two years. Section 702 permits the US government to wiretap communications between Americans and foreigners overseas. Hundreds of millions of calls, texts, and emails are intercepted by government spies each with the "compelled assistance" of US communications providers. The government argues that Americans are not themselves being targeted and thus the wiretaps are legal. Nevertheless, their calls, texts, and emails may be stored by the government for years, and can later be accessed by law enforcement without a judge's permission. The House bill also dramatically expands the statutory definition for communication service providers. "They're pushing for a major expansion of warrantless spying on Americans," US senator Ron Wyden tells WIRED. "Their amendment would force your cable guy to be a government spy and assist in monitoring Americans' communications without a warrant." "Section 702 has been abused under presidents from both political parties, and it has been used to unlawfully surveil the communications of Americans across the political spectrum," says Kia Hamadanchy, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The Senate must add a warrant requirement and rein in this out-of-control government spying."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of important news articles on government corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.