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Ever wonder how government documents, once locked away on tiny sheets of microfiche, become searchable and accessible online? Now you can see it happen in real time.

Here’s what’s happening

Pocket shuts down July 8, 2025

• You will no longer be able to download Pocket or purchase a new Pocket Premium subscription from May 22, 2025.
• Premium monthly and annual subscriptions will be cancelled automatically. Annual subscribers will receive automatic refunds from July 8, 2025.
• Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which their data will be permanently deleted.
• API users will no longer be able to transact data (read or write) over Pocket’s API from October 8, 2025 and will need to export their data before this date.
• For more information, including refund details for Premium annual subscribers and how to export saves, go to our Pocket support article.

Fakespot will begin shutting down on July 1, 2025

• You will no longer be able to use the Fakespot extensions, mobile apps, or website from July 1, 2025.
• The Fakespot feature within Firefox known as Review Checker will shut down on June 10, 2025.

Records show well-timed trades by executive branch employees and congressional aides. Even if they had no insider information, ethics experts say such trading undermines faith in government and the markets.

In March, officials at the US State Department revealed that they would use artificial intelligence to revoke the visas of “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.” The new program, known as “Catch and Revoke,” will scan social media accounts and is part of a broader uptick in the US government’s use of AI-powered surveillance, with the goal of combating antisemitism, terrorism, and illegal immigration. And the word “uptick” may be a significant understatement. According to the Brennan Center of Justice, the Trump administration is planning to gather social media identifiers of more than 33 million people, “including those applying for permanent residence or adjustment of their immigration status.”

Social media monitoring is not new, nor are US immigration policies necessarily an outlier when compared to other democracies. However, the US changes, which are in keeping with a global trend of increasing state surveillance of noncitizens, have implications for the free expression and due process rights of the population as a whole.

Social media surveillance differs legally and technically from other forms of surveillance. Because it is based on publicly available information, law enforcement agencies generally do not need to follow the robust legal safeguards that are associated with wiretaps and other covert types of monitoring. Autocratic leaders have used monitoring tools to silence political opponents and repress minority populations. In democracies, courts have found that security and law enforcement agencies have sometimes overstepped their authority and even abused antiterrorism policies to target protected speech. As monitoring has increasingly been outsourced to the private sector, a new industry of data brokers can collect, analyze, and share with law enforcement agencies people’s personal data without their knowledge, undermining privacy and due process. Ubiquitous monitoring of speech, even public speech, has a chilling effect on free expression.Further, the automated tools officials use during investigations can produce costly errors, such as misinterpreting speech or context to arrest the wrong individual.

Laws and technologies first launched to combat the threat of terrorism and foreign invasion have now been repurposed to curtail migration. All governments have a responsibility to secure their borders from potential threats and enforce immigration policy in line with the rule of law. Without appropriate oversight, however, the growing use of AI surveillance technologies could exacerbate errors and injustices. Recent moves by the Trump administration to sidestep due process for undocumented immigrants and even legal residents have generated legal scrutiny around the rights of noncitizens in a democracy. Across the Atlantic, European governments have taken this further by expanding powers to revoke the citizenship of naturalized citizens.

Police in France have uncovered a vast child abuse network operating through encrypted chats on Telegram, leading to the arrest of 55 men across 42 departments.

After Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win, an anthropologist set out across the U.S. to understand the nation’s deepening divides. In the new book Something Between Us, he grapples with these rifts and how to repair them.