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The chapters in Snowden's Box alternate between Bruder and Maharidge, as each of them recounts their part in the journey of the most consequential US postal shipment of the 21st century. At times, it reads like a comedy of errors (Bruder notes that several of her parcels had been stolen off her doormat and marvels that the Snowden box sat unattended for several days while she was out of town), and at others, like a painstakingly researched opsec thriller, with phones in freezers and meetings in members clubs like Soho House (joining takes months and personal references, so spooks who get shifted around all the time struggle to get memberships).

I've read virtually all of the books about the Snowden leaks, but this one stands apart. The two most striking things about this slim volume are, first, the crucial role that personal trust plays in the narrative. Snowden trusts Poitras because of her long history of excellent and principled work. Poitras trusts Maharidge because of their long friendship, and Maharidge trusts Bruder for the same reason. This web of personal relationships are the secret fuel of our day-to-day, moment-to-moment existence — and it's this web that surveillance destroys, by begetting a "low-trust society" in which no one is free to be their authentic selves, and so no one trusts anyone.

The other remarkable revelation here is the slapdash nature of the whole enterprise — both the state surveillance side and the whistleblowing side. Snowden's own memoir hints at this, detailing the grift and skullduggery of beltway bandits and how that let him smuggle all those secrets out of a secure facility.

But Snowden's Box goes further: how did the postal service's own continuous surveillance fail to lead them to Maharidge? Why did Snowden use "B. Manning" for his return address? (He's not saying, but Bruder thinks it might have been graveyard humor, Snowden signing his own death-warrant).

The tick-tock of how the secrets got out, how the journalists who received them communicated, how they argued about whether and how to cover the story, and what happened to the supporting cast of characters is a fascinating tale in its own right, a key piece of the history of one of the transformative moments in the history of technology and democracy. Poitras had asked her friends to keep this material to themselves for several years, and it was only her permission that made the book possible.

The Snowden leaks are, at the end of the day, about trust: whether we can trust our government, whether it trusts us, and whether we can trust each other. Technology can't create trust, but it can surely allow trusted parties to keep secrets among themselves — and technology, foolishly used, can annihilate trust utterly.

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance [Jessica Bruder and Dale Maharidge/Verso]

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Sarah Gailey is one of science fiction's great new talents and their 2019 debut novel Magic for Liars was incredibly strong; now they're back with Upright Women Wanted, a feminist, genderqueer science fiction western novel about gun-toting roving librarians who are secretly the heart of an antifascist resistance.
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[[Chelsea Manning's support team sends us this update on Chelsea Manning and her courageous fight against Grand Juries, which has seen her imprisoned for months, effectively in solitary, a situation that the UN Rapporteur on Torture has deemed to be a form of torture. Our hearts are with Chelsea. -Cory]]

We wanted to let everyone know about the new website that just went up at ReleaseChelsea.com, where people can learn more about Chelsea Manning's current situation.
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In 1979, construction concluded on the Awhatukee House of the Future, a $1.2m model home in the new Phoenix suburb of Ahwatukee Village, co-built with input from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Associated Architects and equipped with 10 networked Motorola processors that retailed for $30,000.
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Burbank librarian Sarah McKinley Oakes (previously) also nannies for a six year old whose parents are French Stewart — from Third Rock from the Sun — and the actor Vanessa Claire Smith. Smith and Oakes have a friendly, normal relationship, but when it comes to French Stewart, things are awesomely weird.
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Baycon is a large, regional science fiction convention that's been serving the Bay Area for 38 years; I attended several times when I lived in San Francisco and this year I was tickled to be invited to attend as Author Guest of Honor. The event is May 22-25 (Memorial Day Weekend) at the San Mateo Airport San Francisco Marriott (at Hwy 92 & 101 in San Mateo, CA). The convention is one of the best regional cons I've ever attended, with an outstanding mix of fannish activities (boffer swords! flint-knapping! multiple warring Klingon clades!), literary panels, and panels on tech, politics and other subjects salient to the Bay Area. I'm so pleased to be invited and I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

In 2019 the Pennsylvania Attorney General published a 900-page grand jury report on sexual predators in the Catholic Church and the coverups the church and its official had undertaken; at the time, the church promised to end the coverup and engage in truth and reconciliation with the parishoners who'd been preyed upon by clergy.
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When Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai used fraud and skullduggery to kill net neutrality, he promised that clearing away the allegedly burdensome regulation of delivering the data your customers request would finally spur investment in America's worst-of-bread, ancient network infrastructure.
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Network administration prof and infrastructure security architect Jan Schaumann has compiled a list of 88 "ops lessons we all learn the hard way" (e.g.: "Any sufficiently successful product launch is indistinguishable from a DDoS; any sufficiently advanced user indistinguishable from an attacker.")
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Last spring, a Baltimore underwent a grinding, long-term government shutdown after the city's systems were hijacked by ransomware. This was exacerbated by massive administrative incompetence: the city had not allocated funds for improved security, training or cyberinsurance, despite having had its emergency services network taken over by ransomware the previous hear, and five city CIOs had departed in the previous four years either through firings or forced resignations.
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Human speech averages 150 words/minute, but human thoughts run more like 400 words per minute. Steve Rousseau decided to try "podfasting" (listening to podcasts at faster-than-normal speed) at progressively higher speeds to see whether he could consume more of the internet-mattress-subsidized high-quality audio bubble as he could before that bubble burst.
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12 years ago, I covered the launch of artist Jason Polan's project to sketch every single person in New York City (he'd previously sketched every work of art in the MOMA).
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Osamu Sato is a talented polymath artist from Japan, known for his psychedelic video game scores and his pioneering work on computer graphics.
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Machinist-sculptor Chris Bathgate (previously) has unveiled his latest: a vase ringed with razor-sharp knives ("an object that mischievously demands that it be appreciated for more than its precarious utility").
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Last week, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency handed down stiff penalties for John Stumpf (previously) who was CEO of Wells Fargo during its scandal-haunted decade, during which time it stole from rich people, poor people, veterans, active-service military personnel, homeowners, small businesses, etc, as well as 2,000,000 ordinary customers who had fraudulent accounts opened in their names in order to bleed them of transaction fees, sometimes at the expense of their good credit and even their financial solvency. Under the deal, Stumpf will have to pay $17.5m in fines and cannot ever work in finance again (don't worry, he's still a multi-multi-multi millionaire).
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For my latest podcast, I read my Guardian Cities column, "The case for … cities that aren't dystopian surveillance states," which was the last piece ever commissioned for the section.
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