culture

-Isabella, age 9

-Olivia, age 6

The government is promising that the secret police won’t put innocent people in the secret prisons because the secret courts would never allow it.

–Jerry Seinfeld, live at the Winspear

The tip of the iceberg was the leak of a top-secret order issued in April by a FISA surveillance court which compelled Verizon to provide the phone records and other “telephony metadata” of all its customers on an “ongoing, daily basis” to the NSA.

NYT Editorial Board:

Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

–Logan Greer

—Elijah, age 3

It’s like an arms race. Everything is an emergency… We can’t keep going on like this.

“Don’t swim at night, over a deep sea trench, while being lit from above by boat-based floodlights.”

One of my favorite reads this year.

Nick Bilton’s persistent coverage of (er, against) the FAA has been excellent.