Scientists Lior Appelbaum and David Zada in Israel publish new proof that sleep serves to help our brains repair damage.

Yoni Appelbaum's longread in The Atlantic on the case for impeaching Trump draws on heterodox interpretations of the Clinton and Johnson impeachments, as well as the Nixon impeachment, to argue that despite (or even because of) the Senate's near-certain inaction on impeachment, there are real benefits to impeaching Trump, which is looking very likely if accusations of suborning perjury before Congress are true.

This is not normal. Today, President Donald Trump has fired Rex Tillerson, and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as America's top diplomat. — Read the rest

Trevor Paglen and Jacob Appelbaum collaborate to create beautiful, acrylic-encased computers that are also Tor nodes, anonymizing data that passes through them, and install the in art galleries all over the world, so that patrons can communicate and browse anonymously, while learning about anonymity and Tor.

Laura Poitras is the Macarthur-winning, Oscar-winning documentarian who made Citizenfour. Her life has been dogged by government surveillance and harassment, and she has had to become a paranoid OPSEC ninja just to survive.

Lisa Rein writes, "When Jacob Appelbaum called for transparency in Aaron Swartz's FOIA case, he was talking about Kevin Poulsen's ongoing case against the Department of Homeland Security, a case that MIT managed to intervene in."

Reporters and press freedom advocates from around the world have signed on to support Netzpolitik and condemn the German government's outrageous investigation.

A tranche of fresh Snowden leaks published in Der Spiegel by Laura Poitras, Jacob Appelbaum and others detail the NSA's infiltration of other countries' intelligence services, detailing the bizarre, fractal practices of "fourth-party collection" and "fifth-party collection."

Welcome to this year's Gift Guide, a piling-high of our most loved items from 2014 and beyond. Books, comics, games, gadgets and much else besides!

From Laura Poitras to Jacob Appelbaum to Sarah Harrison, Berlin has become a haven for American journalists, activists and whistleblowers who fear America's unlimited appetite for surveillance and put their trust in Germany's memory of the terror of the Stasi.

You probably saw the hilarious critique of The Olive Garden that made the rounds last week; the hedge fund behind that critique is a major shareholder with a long history of shady financial deals that gut profitable businesses, destroy jobs, and line the pockets of short-term "investors."

The dirty tricks used by JTRIG — the toolsmiths of the UK spy agency GCHQ — have been published, with details on how the agency manipulates public opinion, censors Youtube, games pageview statistics, spy on Ebay use, conduct DDoS attacks, and connect two unsuspecting parties with one another by phone.

The NSA says it only banks the communications of "targeted" individuals. Guess what? If you follow a search-engine link to Boing Boing's articles about Tor and Tails, you've been targeted. Cory Doctorow digs into Xkeyscore and the NSA's deep packet inspection rules.

Edward Snowden routinely hangs around at the New York ACLU offices by means of a BEAM telepresence robot, through which he can meet with journalists for "face-to-face" interviews. During a recent interview with Julia Prosinger from Der Tagesspeiggel, Prosinger had her first-ever epileptic seizure, brought on by the flickering screen where he appeared. — Read the rest

In my latest Guardian column, 'Cybersecurity' begins with integrity, not surveillance, I try to make sense of the argument against surveillance. Is mass surveillance bad because it doesn't catch "bad guys" or because it is immoral? There's a parallel to torture — even if you can find places where torture would work to get you some useful information, it would still be immoral. — Read the rest

My independently produced audio edition of Homeland, read by Wil Wheaton, is now available direct from me as a $15 MP3 download. The audiobook not only features Wil's reading, but also Noah Swartz reading his brother Aaron Swartz's afterword and Jacob Appelbaum reading his own afterword, recorded at the Berlin studio of Atari Teenage Riot's Alec Empire. — Read the rest

Border agents detain American citizens for hours and seize laptops and phones without evidence or suspicion, Moreover, reports Trevor Timm, journalists are a frequent target.

According to a leaked NSA document, the spy agency can snoop on personal iPhone communications such as SMS messages, location and cellular data. Though any device could be compromised likewise given the physical access required, the document demonstrates that the NSA a) is actually doing it, and b) is working on (and may also have successfully developed) remote hacks. — Read the rest

A Snowden leak accompanying today's story on the NSA's Tailored Access Operations group (TAO) details the NSA's toolbox of exploits, developed by an NSA group called ANT (Advanced or Access Network Technology).

ANT's catalog runs to 50 pages, and lists electronic break-in tools, wiretaps, and other spook toys. — Read the rest

Freedom of the
Press Foundation has taken
charge of the DeadDrop project, an open-source whistleblower
submission system originally coded by the late transparency advocate
Aaron Swartz. In the coming months, the Foundation will also
provide on-site installation and technical support to news
organizations that wish to run the system, which has been renamed
"SecureDrop." — Read the rest