Portside

Ethnic Press Across the Country Share a Single Editorial on Immigration; the Microsoft Empire is Fading Fast; the Expansion of Mass Surveillance Limited Only by Technology; More Media Consolidation will not Cure the Problems of Media Consolidation; Cubans Finally Get Some Access to the Internet, but It's Not Cheap; Americans are Using Their Smartphones in Unexpected Places

We live in a country that embodies three different dystopian archetypes at once: America is partly a panopticon surveillance-and-security state, as in Orwell, partly an anesthetic and amoral consumer wonderland, as in Huxley, and partly a grand rhetorical delusion or “spectacle,” as in Dick or “The Matrix” or certain currents of French philosophy.

This month, not only with words but also with actions, Edward Snowden is transcending the moral limits of authority and insisting that we can fully defend the Bill of Rights, emphatically including the Fourth Amendment. What a contrast with New York Times columnists David Brooks, Thomas Friedman and Bill Keller, who have responded to Snowden’s revelations by siding with the violators of civil liberties at the top of the U.S. government.

"The telecommunications providers have been forced to set up an electronic interface for the authorities so that IP addresses can be retrieved.. These trends also exist in Europe."