Loss of Privacy

The Pentagon has been accused of spying on a whistleblower website that specialises in leaking top secret documents. The US Army has already labeled the website as a security threat. Now Wikileaks – which won Amnesty Internationals news media award last year – has issued a statement claiming its editors are being investigated: WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation, – the claim published on Tweeter said.

WikiLeaks has built their reputation of breaking extremely important stories, so it’s hard to put a conspiracy theory label on this story. Given the fact that the CIA is involved, we should be watching this story closely. We’ll have to wait to find out on April 5th what’s going on.

You can follow what’s happening on WikiLeaks’ twitter account or their website. If you feel so inclined, you can donate to WikiLeaks here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

More information at Wired, Gawker, and Harper’s Magazine.

Taryn Simon has taken some great photos of many places you have never heard of in America. She specializes in taking photographs of highly restrictive areas around the world.

Her latest book, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, took four years to assemble as the photographer gained access to research facilities and government offices hidden from the public. “I felt like I was discovering a new landscape in America, a new terrain, morally and politically,” she said.

The New York Animal Import Center in Newburgh, New York, detains all imported birds for a mandatory 30-day quarantine before testing them for bird flu and other diseases.

“I decided to photograph this facility because as a citizen, I was concerned about (avian flu), and what things were being done to protect our country,” said Simon. Simon scheduled her visit to the Avian Quarantine Facility between trips to other limited-access research facilities to avoid cross-contamination.