Washington Post

When a user sends someone a message through Apple’s iMessage feature, Apple encrypts that message between Apple devices so that only the sender and recipient can read its contents. But a report from news site the Intercept is a good reminder that not all data related to iMessage has that same level of protection -- and that information can still be turned over to law enforcement authorities. That may be surprising to everyday users who view Apple as a privacy champion after it's legal battle with the Justice Department this year over a court order that would force the company to break its own security measures. But to experts, it's just a fact of how communication systems work. For instance, as security expert and noted iPhone hacker Will Strafach notes, Apple needs to know things such as whom you're chatting with via iMessage so that it can deliver your messages.

According to a document obtained by the Intercept, Apple logs information about whom you're contacting in iMessage while the app figures out if the person you are texting is also using an iOS device. If they are using iOS, the message gets encrypted and routed through iMessage, which is signaled by blue chat bubbles. If the recipient is not using an Apple device, the message gets routed as a standard text without that extra layer of encryption, and messages appear in green bubbles in the iMessage app. According to the document, which the Intercept says originated "from within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Electronic Surveillance Support Team," these logs don’t necessarily show that you messaged someone. Instead, they show when you opened up a chat window and selected the contact or entered a phone number.

Tracing the path from deadly hand-dug mines in Congo to consumers’ phones and laptops.

Cobalt is a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles made by companies such as Apple, Samsung and major automakers. The world’s soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground with little oversight and few safety measures, according to workers, government officials and evidence found by The Washington Post during visits to remote mines. Deaths and injuries are common. And the mining activity exposes local communities to levels of toxic metals that appear to be linked to ailments that include breathing problems and birth defects, health officials say.

[Commentary] Because social media is so young, political science hasn’t fully explored the political implications of how citizens use it to get news. Research has found that consuming news makes people more likely to vote. In theory, democracy should benefit from the presence of more information sources. But we don’t know yet exactly how social media influences its consumers. Here are three things to think about as you read your social feed.

1. More and more people rely on social media for news and information.
2. Despite its growing popularity, social media’s influence on political participation remains unclear.
3. Gathering political information via social media brings an increased risk of digesting information from questionable sources.

[Kevin Curry is the director of integrated media at Linfield College]

September 27 was National Voter Registration Day. To the extent that you were aware of this, it was probably because you, like me, were greeted with a prompt to ensure you were registered when you went to Facebook to see what some-guy-you-went-to-high-school-with's baby looks like. Or maybe you visited Google, where the daily doodle was focused on the subject.

If people clicked that, they were taken to a search page for "how to register to vote." Or, in Spanish, "registrarse para votar." After that push, Google saw a huge spike in searches for the Spanish-language phrase. Hispanic Americans typically vote at much lower rates than other groups. Census Bureau data suggests that Hispanics turn out for presidential elections at about the rate non-Hispanic white Americans turn out for midterms. There are a variety of reasons for this, but it has been a focus of Hispanic organizations for some time to boost those numbers. It has also been a priority for Democrats, particularly this year. Hispanics tend to vote more heavily Democratic than Republican, and activists see an opportunity this year given Donald Trump's disparaging comments about Mexican immigrants.

At the top of his rally in the critical Wisconsin county of Waukesha, Donald Trump accused Google of both impeding and bolstering his candidacy. "A new post-debate poll, the Google poll, has us leading Hillary Clinton by two points nationwide," he said, "and that's despite the fact that Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton. How about that." As it turns out, this is classic Trump: Running full steam ahead with any sketchy evidence that seems like it might be helpful to him. Here's each thing he was referring to, so you can judge for yourself.

2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPAA. Since it took effect, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health-care providers have been very careful about releasing information. Sometimes frustratingly so. I’ve had providers refuse to send my information to me by e-mail, because that form of communication is considered less secure than the now-ancient practice of faxing. A new Government Accountability Office report shows that concern is warranted, now more than ever.

In 2015, 113 million electronic health records were breached, a major leap over the 12.5 million the year before. In 2009, the number was less than 135,000. The number of reported hacks and breaches affecting records of at least 500 individuals rose from none in 2009 to 56 last year, almost double from 2014. But electronic health records come with a cost. As cyberthieves become bolder, more creative and more successful, the risks to our personal information increases. That includes everything from Social Security numbers to medical conditions.

[Commentary] In recent months, over a dozen district courts have handed down divided opinions on the legality of a single search warrant that was used to search the computers of many visitors to a child pornography website. The warrant raises interesting legal issues, although I think the significant issues are mostly not the ones that have received the most media attention. Many of these cases are headed to various courts of appeal, so I thought I would present an overview of the investigation and discuss some of the legal issues raised by the warrant.
[Orin Kerr is the Fred C. Stevenson Research Professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 2001. ]

I’m writing because I have a request: Please stop calling us “the media.” Yes, in some sense, we are the media. But not in the blunt way you use the phrase. It’s so imprecise and generic that it has lost any meaning. It’s — how would you put this? — lazy and unfair. As I understand your use of this term, “the media” is essentially shorthand for anything you read, saw or heard today that you disagreed with or didn’t like. At any given moment, “the media” is biased against your candidate, your issue, your very way of life. But, you know, the media isn’t really doing that. Some article, some news report, some guy spouting off on a CNN panel or at CrankyCrackpot.com might be. But none of those things singularly are really the media. Fact is, there really is no such thing as “the media.” It’s an invention, a tool, an all-purpose smear by people who can’t be bothered to make distinctions.

As more and more political discourse has moved to the Internet, the techniques of political "astroturfing" have multiplied. Here are what some of the motivated actors are attempting now:

The bots: There are the bots, for starters — we tend to hear about those a lot. While an analysis by the Atlantic’s Andrew McGill found that there are relatively few Twitter bots among the direct followers of Donald Trump and Clinton, that certainly hasn’t been the case elsewhere. Especially seen in the Brexit vote.
The coordinated posters: That could also be said of what we’ll term the “coordinated posters” — real users who are secretly instructed to share similar political messages on behalf of a campaign or other organization. This isn’t fakery, per se — but it’s also not 100 percent certified organic.
The dark-money memes: viral videos, memes and other apparently amateur political ephemera, which behave like political ads but require very little disclosure.

[Commentary] Federal government lawyers are struggling to grasp the increasingly technical cases that come before them. Both federal prosecutors and the attorneys who represent executive agencies in court are bungling lawsuits across the country because they don’t understand what they’re talking about. Too few lawyers have the skill set or the specialized knowledge to make sense of code, networks and the people who use them, and too few law schools are telling them what they need to know.

[Garrett Graff is a former editor of Politico Magazine]