Secrecy

The Suicide Squad Game’s Leaked Spoilers May Have Been Made Up

Rocksteady's upcoming DC game had some of its surprises blown up this week, and now the resulting hate towards the studio may have been undeserved.

WikiLeaks’ Website Is Falling Apart

As Julian Assange faces extradition, his once prominent platform for government document reveals and data dumps has seen better days.

9 Books Featuring Queer Disaster Magicians

A set of fabulously magical main characters who are absolute gay disasters.

Microsoft Goes for Truly Open Office Concept: Ditching NDAs and Non-Compete Clauses

The tech giant also announced new diversity and pay transparency initiatives. But don't give them too much credit. New state laws mandated some of the changes.

Attention Hellfire Club, It’s the Stranger Things Season 4 Spoiler Zone

Volume one of the Netflix series' two-part fourth season is now streaming. Let's discuss!

Spoilers of the Week: January 31-February 4

Forget or miss something that happened this week? We've got you covered.

In Bizarre Decision, the FEC Says Foreign Donors Can Now Throw Money at U.S. Ballot Initiatives

The decision opens the door for foreign donors to openly influence U.S. policy on a granular scale.

Judge Rules Edward Snowden Can’t Profit From His Book Because It Wasn’t Cleared by NSA and CIA

Edward Snowden will not be allowed to profit from sales of his book Permanent Record, after a federal judge in Virginia ruled Tuesday that Snowden should have sought approval from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). It’s not clear if Snowden, who was previously a CIA employee and contractor for the…

Release Of U.S. Historical Documents Delayed Due To Iran Nuke Talks

The State Department has blocked the release of declassified documents about the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, due to the ongoing negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program. But some historians think this is a dumb decision, that could actually backfire. The documents at the source of…

Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, secrecy orders may be imposed by an executive branch agency when the disclosure of a patent application is deemed detrimental to national security. This year saw 5,520 invention secrecy orders, the most since 1994.

The NSA Has Been Ordered To Disclose How Much Water It Uses

First came Edward Snowden, and now this: a Utah state panel has ordered the release of documents regarding water usage at a newly opened NSA data center in the city of Bluffdale. The decision is the latest installment in an ongoing controversy that began last November, when the Salt Lake Tribune revealed that Bluffdale had…

Can Apple Surprise Us Anymore?

That iPhone 5 up there isn’t an iPhone 5. It’s a flawless computer image we had months before we ever saw the real thing, made possible by the fact that we knew exactly what it was going to look like. Exactly. Everyone did. We used to look forward to iPhone day like Christmas morning, or…

Apple Makes New Employees Work on Fake Products Until Apple Can Trust Them

In Adam Lashinsky’s book Inside Apple, he examines how brutally insane and awful it is to work at Apple. Turns out having plainclothes spies and murky job descriptions isn’t enough because Apple sometimes makes its new employees work on fake products until they prove themselves trustworthy. https://gizmodo.com/working-at-apple-is-brutally-insane-and-awful-5877213 ADHERE OR DIE LITTLE ENGINEERS. Anyway, I guess…

Working at Apple Is Brutally Insane and Awful

You might have a stressful job—everyone’s is, sometimes. But does your job involve an office with windows that inexplicably frost, plainclothes agents that spy on you at bars, and instant firing? Welcome to Apple, says Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky. Lashinsky’s upcoming book, “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired — and Secretive — Company Really Works,” details…

The 8 Most Bizarre, Intriguing, and Otherwise Cool Documents the NSA Just Declassified

It was spring cleaning time at the NSA, who dropped a staggering 50,000 pages of declassified documents into the hands of the National Archives. A lot’s on the mundane side—so here are the best looking eight: The documents haven’t been digitized yet, so we had to do some guesswork. • 1607 17-May-1948 SLIDE TUBE This…

Russia Building Its Own Super-Mysterious Robotic Space Plane

Remember the US military’s shadowy, unmanned X-37B? Well Russia won’t just sit there and let us be the only ones flying shadowy robot planes into space—they’re building their own, and it’s even more shadowy. Just how mysterious is this mystery-spacecraft? So mysterious that there isn’t a single image of it, and it has no name.…

US Military Bans All Physical Media on Its Internal Network

The military doesn’t want to be the source of the next WikiLeak shit-storm, and is going to extreme means to ensure this—prohibiting the use of all disks and drives on its secret network, under penalty of court martial. Like the Library of Congress’ blanket ban against WikiLeaks access, this kind of draconian directive should only…

U.S. Celebrates Wikileaks Arrest By Announcing Press Freedom Day

Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is arrested on suspicion of rape; today U.S. State Department drops this gem: “The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011 in Washington, D.C.” Oh my. The undercurrent of the rape charges brought by two women in Sweden has been—by some,…

M. Night Shyamalan is hatching another secret, twisty movie

The Last Airbender director is returning to his mysterious roots: He’s shopping a carefully guarded script around Hollywood, with Bruce Willis, Bradley Cooper, and Gwyneth Paltrow already on board. Remember: He did the same thing with The Happening. After The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan could do no wrong — and to protect his precious twist endings,…

How Apple Keeps iPad Developers on Extreme Lockdown

If you’re a software developer lucky enough to get a look at the iPad before its release, you’d better be ready to submit to some of the toughest security measures this side of Super Max. We’d gotten an inkling about the extreme precautions Apple was taking from none other than Rupert Murdoch, but Business Week…