Portside

This is the first part of a multi-part series in The Outlook. One morning as I scanned the news-horror in the Middle East, Russia and America facing off in the Ukraine, I thought of Edward Snowden and wondered how he was holding up in Moscow. I began to imagine a conversation between him and Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war). And then interestingly, in my imagination a third person made her way into the room-the writer Arundhati Roy.

• 500 signatories include five Nobel prize winners • Writers demand 'digital bill of rights' to curb abuses

Federal Data Sources Lock-Out; NSA Holds Data Files for a Year; Twitter Diplomacy; Inner-City Kids Sophisticated Understanding of Social Media; Allende's Socialist Internet; Obamacare Glitches Shared on Democracy Now! The Shutdown is Now Clogging Up the Data Economy. Thanks,

NSA vs. internet security; Obama unleashed NSA in 2011; Barrett Brown behind bars; UN defends press; Future of AM radio

Newly disclosed budget documents for America’s intelligence agencies show how aggressively the United States is now conducting offensive cyberoperations against other nations, even as the Obama administration protests attacks on American computer networks by China, Iran and Russia.

‘Restore the Fourth’ is aimed at restoring the fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment – the part of the Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures. Participants will display an online banner which reads, “This 4th of July, we stand by the 4th Amendment and against the U.S. government’s surveillance of internet users.”

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, demanded an explanation from Washington, saying that if confirmed, US behaviour "was reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war".