In today’s newsletter, Ronan Farrow on troubling inventions in spyware, and then:
Illustration by Nicholas Konrad
The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone
Other Western democracies have been roiled by the use of spyware to target political opponents, activists, journalists, and other vulnerable groups. Could it happen here?
Ronan Farrow, who has reported extensively on how political leaders have tracked their citizens, details the coming threats that Americans may face, as Donald Trump and his Administration will soon decide whether to curtail or expand the U.S. government’s use of “increasingly cheap and accessible” surveillance technology. “It’s just so evident—the impending disaster,” an expert on the intersection of privacy and tech explains to Farrow. “You may believe yourself not to be in one of the vulnerable categories, but you won’t know if you’ve ended up on a list for some reason or your loved ones have. Every single person should be worried.” Read the story »
In the News
Photograph by Dakota Santiago / NYT / Redux
The Northeast Is Becoming Fire Country
Maps of recent fires in the East Coast region resemble California in August, with hundreds of red dots. The current drought is adding to the threat; as a professional forester in New Jersey explains, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such perfect conditions for fire,” M. R. O’Connor reports on the past and future of blazes in a densely populated region that’s grown unaccustomed to reckoning with fires. Read the story »
More Top Stories
Daily Cartoon
More Fun & Games
P.S. Donald Trump has named Mehmet Oz as his pick for administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2016, ahead of the election, Trump visited Dr. Oz’s television show for what Michael Specter called a “Potemkin consultation,” in which the surgeon performed a weirdly perfunctory evaluation of Trump’s health. “They clearly deserve each other,” Specter noted of the pair, “but I am not quite sure the rest of us do.” 🩹
