Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 16

Centrist Democrats Launch Smear Campaign Against Young Transgender Woman, All to Keep an Old, Straight, White Man in Power

Over the weekend, Chelsea Manning announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate by posting a video outlining the broad themes of her campaign. Manning, a whistleblower who served seven years in a U.S. military brig for exposing systemic U.S. war crimes, was held under prison conditions so brutal that the United Nations formally denounced them as “inhumane.”

While her whistleblowing made her a hero around the world, Manning has also now become an icon of LGBT equality and transgender rights with...

The Same Democrats Who Denounce Donald Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers

Leading congressional Democrats have spent the last year relentlessly accusing Donald Trump of being controlled by or treasonously loyal to a hostile foreign power. Over the last several months, they have added to those disloyalty charges a new set of alleged crimes: abusing the powers of the executive branch — including the Justice Department and FBI — to vindictively punish political opponents while corruptly protecting the serious crimes of his allies, including his own family members and...

Governos do Brasil e da França querem censurar a internet sob pretexto de coibir notícias falsas

Na tarde desta terça (9), o perfil oficial da Federação Nacional dos Policiais Federais no Twitter publicou um anúncio extraordinário. O tom burocraticamente indiferente ocultava a importância da notícia. O tuíte, em essência, propunha dar à Polícia Federal e ao governo federal, ao qual se subordina, o poder de regular, controlar e até mesmo censurar conteúdo político na internet que seja considerado “falso”, e “punir” aqueles que o disseminarem. Esse novo poder atingiria postagens em mídias...

First France, Now Brazil Unveils Plan to Empower the Government to Censor the Internet in the Name of Stopping “Fake News”

Yesterday afternoon, the official Twitter account of Brazil’s Federal Police (its FBI equivalent) posted an extraordinary announcement. The bureaucratically nonchalant tone it used belied its significance. The tweet, at its core, purports to vest in the federal police and the federal government that oversees it the power to regulate, control, and outright censor political content on the internet that is assessed to be “false,” and to “punish” those who disseminate it. The new power would cove...

Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments

In September of last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would...

Leandro Demori Joins The Intercept Brasil as Executive Editor

Since The Intercept Brasil launched in August, 2016, the country has been rocked by one political crisis after the next, and the national election of 2018 ensures that this climate will only intensify. Both the demands, and opportunities, for an independent news organization are greater than ever, and so we are happy to announce a critical addition to our team who will lead our efforts to meet those challenges in the coming year.

Leandro Demori is joining our team as The Intercept Brasil’s Ex...

Comment Sections Are Essential for News Sites. We’re Making Changes to Improve Ours.

From the start of online news and political blogs, vibrant comment sections have been a central means of distinguishing new media from its older, more traditional predecessor. They have been critical for building online communities, ensuring that journalists participate in a two-way dialogue with readers rather than monologues, that media outlets are compelled to answer to their readership (who often provide valuable challenges and correctives to stories that serve as healthy checks), and hav...

The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages and Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, and countless pundits, commentators, and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happen...

The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happen...

Four Viral Claims Spread by Journalists on Twitter in the Last Week Alone That Are False

There is ample talk, particularly of late, about the threats posed by social media to democracy and political discourse. Yet one of the primary ways that democracy is degraded by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is, for obvious reasons, typically ignored in such discussions: the way they are used by American journalists to endorse factually false claims that quickly spread and become viral, entrenched into narratives, and thus, can never be adequately corrected.

The design of Twitter, w...