News & Commentary

This piece originally appeared at the Guardian's Comment is Free. 

Based on initial media reports, it seems that intimate, private photographs from several celebrities' online accounts have been accessed without their consent and widely shared on the Internet. For now, many details about the breach (or breaches) remain unclear. One working theory, which is supported by anecdotal evidence, suggests that a security vulnerability in Apple's iCloud service may have been exploited to gain access to the celebrities' accounts and download their photos.

This morning, we're heading back to court to challenge the NSA's phone-records program, this time in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

In the last several weeks, the state of Missouri has captured news headlines around the globe: first, with reports coming out of Ferguson of yet another unarmed African-American young man shot and killed by police, and then with accounts of a violent and militarized crackdown on protesters carried out by law enforcement in the aftermath.

The Guardian reported last week that Miami Beach is planning on expanding the use of body cameras beyond the police to include “meter maids,” code enforcement officers, and building and fire inspectors. This use of the technology does not make sense.

Homeless. Unemployed. Kids taken. Locked up. Guilty.

One night last summer, Patricia's mother, Marta, did not come home. She had been in poor mental health, but it was unlike her to simply disappear without a word. Marta Mendoza was born in Mexico but lived in the United States for decades, where she raised six U.S. citizen children. As Patricia and her sisters desperately searched their Los Angeles neighborhood for their mother, Marta was in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody being pressured to sign a "voluntary return," which would result in her immediate expulsion to Mexico without an immigration hearing. If Marta had been permitted to go before a judge, she could have won the right to remain here lawfully on account of her U.S. citizen children. Patricia didn't hear from her mother until Marta called from Mexico, scared and confused about what had happened to her.
Unfortuna

Pregnancy shouldn't be a firing offense, but time and time again, when pregnant women ask their employers for reasonable accommodations, they are shown the door.

Life is full of unexpected ups and downs. Sometimes our greatest joys are followed by our deepest sorrows and through the good times and the bad we turn to our loved ones to guide and comfort us.