The Week: Most Recent from Peter Weber

What does Edward Snowden want?

By Peter Weber — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:20:00 -0400

When Edward Snowden announced to The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, and through Greenwald, the world, that he was the National Security Agency leaker behind a trove of top secret U.S. documents, he justified pilfering the documents as a way to inform American citizens about what he sees as an invasive, broad, possibly unconstitutional overreach by the U.S. spy agency.

That message fits with Greenwald's own strongly held (and frequently voiced) views about the erosion of American civil liberties. And it fit the first few articles based on Snowden's leaks. The NSA's massive collecting of U.S. phone...

New Snowden leak: NSA, Britain's GCHQ, eavesdropped on foreign leaders

By Peter Weber — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:19:00 -0400

President Obama and the other leaders of the Group of Eight nations gather in Northern Ireland on Monday for a two-day summit. And thanks to the latest revelations from U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, the already delicate conversations between those leaders will probably be more awkward than usual.

Among other things, this leak suggests that, as in sporting events, there's a home-field advantage when it comes to hosting international summits.

On Sunday, Britain's The Guardian said that at a 2009 G20 summit of world leaders in London, Britain's counterpart to the NSA, the...

Has the death of federal gun legislation been greatly exaggerated?

By Peter Weber — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:27:00 -0400

Six months have passed since a lone gunman walked in to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and shot 20 small children and six adults. The big push for legislation to curb gun violence that followed Newtown peaked in April, in a Senate showdown where supporters of the bill were unable to get 60 votes to break a Republican-led filibuster.

The Week's Jon Terbush noted earlier this week that this defeat took the wind out of the sails of the gun-control movement — and now, he says, "the prospect of gun control legislation getting a second wind seems unlikely."

Senate Democrats,...

How Edward Snowden stole his cache of NSA secrets

By Peter Weber — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 07:25:00 -0400

A week after Edward Snowden's leaks about National Security Agency surveillance and data-gathering were first reported, and four days after he revealed himself as the leaker, the news media is figuring out how the 29-year-old IT systems administrator managed his potentially huge data heist.

If you're concerned about national security, the new revelations will probably dismay you; if you appreciate leaking of government secrets, Snowden's technique is likely encouraging: Theft by thumb drive.

The NSA and other spy and military agencies have long known the dangers of the innocent-seeming portable...

WATCH: The Daily Show tells Hillary Clinton how to win Twitter

By Peter Weber — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 05:42:00 -0400

The main theme of Thursday night's Daily Show was gay rights — summer host John Oliver is obviously a supporter, as are most Daily Show viewers, demographically and based on audience reaction. Oliver takes a rhetorical cudgel to the Boy Scouts, Pat Robertson, Russia's Vladimir Putin, the Vatican (the buildings, not the religion), and, especially, France. (Watch below.)

Showing some flamboyantly dressed demonstrators taking to the streets over France's recent legalization of same-sex marriage, Oliver wonders: "How is it that France's anti-gay protests look so much gayer than our pro-gay...

HGTV has a star-spangled tablecloth problem

By Peter Weber — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:12:00 -0400

Home & Garden Television is busy preparing viewers for the Fourth of July. And one of its ideas is downright unpatriotic, says Todd Starnes at Fox News. In a segment called "Classic Fourth of July Table Setting Ideas," HGTV offered this proposition:

This didn't sit well with many HGTV viewers, who took to the network's Facebook page to denounce the idea as "offensive, un-American and an insult to the American military," Starnes says. One example:

Using an American flag as a tablecloth dishonors all Americans who love Old Glory — especially those who gave their lives defending it....

Why Edward Snowden is spilling U.S. secrets to China

By Peter Weber — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:00:00 -0400

Edward Snowden says he became so concerned about the National Security Agency's widespread collection of U.S. citizens' data, he decided to leak top secret U.S. documents to sympathetic journalists. So on May 20, recounts The Guardian, the NSA IT contractor boarded a plane for Hong Kong with a suitcase, a Rubik's Cube, one book, and four laptops "that enabled him to gain access to some of the U.S. government's most highly-classified secrets."

On the night of June 9, The Guardian posted a video of Snowden in his Hong Kong hotel room, introducing himself to the world as the NSA leaker and explaining...

WATCH: Chris Christie and Jimmy Fallon slow-jam the N.J. special election

By Peter Weber — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:21:00 -0400

Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) has gotten a lot of grief — including a lovingly brutal takedown from Jon Stewart — for deciding to hold an expensive, politically expedient special election to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D), three weeks before Christie himself faces voters in his re-election bid.

Few people think the popular governor faces much risk of losing to his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Barbara Buono, but New Jersey is a blue state, and why not try to nip any potential scandal in the bud? So on Wednesday night, the media-savvy Christie took a page from President...

WATCH: John Oliver slams the media for its Edward Snowden obsession

By Peter Weber — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:14:00 -0400

Just as it seems America is "at the precipice of scandal overload," John Oliver laments on Wednesday night's Daily Show, the State Department has to fall prey to another one — or, rather, what could turn into one, if a whistleblower's claims about prostitution cover-ups turn out to be true. Oliver wonders how he'll break the news to Jon Stewart that while his show is fine, the country may be broken.

In the meantime, the front-and-center controversy in America is the NSA's leaked surveillance secrets, and their self-professed leaker, Edward Snowden. This poses a dilemma for Washington politicians...

5 ways NSA leaker Edward Snowden's story isn't holding up

By Peter Weber — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:55:00 -0400

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old IT specialist who leaked a trove of top secret National Security Agency documents, insisted in his coming-out video that he doesn't want to be the story. If that was really his wish, it hasn't come true. Fierce debate has erupted over whether he's a hero or traitor, dangerous or productively disruptive, and the media has even developed a certain (mildly disturbing) fascination with an acrobat who could be Snowden's apparently abandoned girlfriend.

Nobody's disputing that the documents he leaked — and there are apparently dozens more in activist-journalist...

6 reasons you should, and shouldn't, freak out about the NSA data-mining

By Peter Weber — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 07:45:00 -0400

Amid all the strong, clashing opinions over the leaked National Security Agency surveillance secrets, there's one thing everybody says they agree on: It's great we can finally have a long-overdue conversation about how we should balance national security with civil liberties.

As The Week's Keith Wagstaff and others have noted, though, it's hard to have that conversation. For one thing, many of the most knowledgeable people on the national security end aren't allowed to discuss what they know — and the rest of us, as Wagstaff says, "don't even know what we don't know about the NSA." Also...

WATCH: John Oliver dissects the GOP's civil war over the NSA leaks

By Peter Weber — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:40:00 -0400

On Tuesday, Daily Show summer host John Oliver continued his "Good news! You're not paranoid" coverage of the NSA data-mining revelations. After succinctly recapping the controversy, Oliver tees up the theme of the night: Republicans are being torn apart over the NSA leaks.

Exhibit A is actually a sop to Jon Stewart fans: He pokes fun at Fox News' Bill O'Reilly over O'Reilly's example of how the NSA might abuse its powers — it involves prostitution and time machines. The meat of the analysis, though, is about the battle between the GOP legislators backing the NSA's newly revealed surveillance...

Why Obama will finally allow all women and girls to buy Plan B

By Peter Weber — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 06:50:00 -0400

"The Obama administration has gone to Plan C on Plan B," says Julie Rovner at NPR. On Monday night, the Justice Department said it is prepared to drop its effort to fight a federal judge's order to allow the emergency contraceptive Plan B to be sold over-the-counter, with no age restrictions.

This could spell the end to a long fight over the so-called morning-after pill. Women's health advocates have been petitioning to have Plan B — a high-dose birth-control pill that prevents conception if taken within 72 hours of sex — available without prescription to all ages, and the FDA agreed...

WATCH: John Oliver starts his Daily Show run with a hit on the NSA

By Peter Weber — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:14:00 -0400

John Oliver kicks off his summer run hosting The Daily Show by acknowledging what many fans of the show are probably thinking: It's weird to see him sitting at Jon Stewart's desk. He reads a welcome note from Stewart promising him that no big news ever breaks in the summer — cueing up the topic of his monologue: The new series of big leaks on the National Security Agency's surveillance reach.

Or, as he calls the segment: "Good news! You're not paranoid."

Almost immediately, Oliver shows that "Jon Stewart left The Daily Show in good hands," says Tim Molloy at The Wrap. It took Oliver ...

WATCH: A BBC talk show host calls Alex Jones an idiot

By Peter Weber — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 03:31:00 -0400

The Bilderberg Group, a secretive confab of politicians, economists, academics, and business leaders, met in Watford, England, over the weekend, and the BBC's Sunday Politics show was on it. For the uninitiated, the segment started out with a short primer on Bilderberg and its fascination for conspiracy theorists.

The fireworks started when host Andrew Neil introduced his guests for the panel discussion: Alex Jones, the conspiracy-minded alternative-media mogul, and Times of London journalist David Aaronovitch, who has written a book debunking conspiracy theories. It was about as calm a discussion...

Is the NSA PRISM leak much less than it seems?

By Peter Weber — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:10:00 -0400

In the past few days, the super-secretive National Security Agency has been buffeted by a series of rare, damaging leaks, apparently all from one mid-level IT contractor, Edward Snowden. The most damaging revelation (so far) may be that the NSA apparently routinely collects and stores phone records of millions of Americans. But the splashiest arrived in twin articles, in The Washington Post and The Guardian, about the NSA's PRISM program.

Both newspapers reported that PRISM gave the NSA "direct access" to the servers of nine internet giants, including Google, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. Those...