RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
March 4 toMarch 10
Featured Investigation Major media outlets have been slamming Facebook for allowing Russia to spread disinformation on its platform through false ads and phony users. But as Lee Smith reports forRealClearInvestigations, many of those same news outlets - including the New York Times and the Washington Post - have profited by spreading Russian propaganda. Beginning in 2007, astate-owned publisher launched Russia Beyond the Headlines, a multi-page full-color broadsheet laid out just like a newspaper and distributed, typically monthly, as an insert by some of the most prestigious names in newspaper publishing, including London's Daily Telegraph and the Italian daily LaRepubblica, reaching an audience estimated at nearly 6.5 million readers. Its U.S. partners were the Post, which last published the section in 2015, and the Times, which continues to carry the advertising. Smith reports: Russia Beyond paints a picture of a normal country, with normal concerns, including reviews of Moscow's trendy restaurants and reports from the latestComiCon. The Russia depicted in its pages isn't working with Iran and the Syrian regime to slaughter civilians and gas children. Rather, it's a global actor in good standing, whose citizens don't understand why the United States and European Union placed sanctions on their country in response to the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
Neither paper would say how much it charged to carry the sections but Smith reports that in 2008 the Daily Telegraph was reportedly earned nearly 40,000 pounds a month (perhaps $57,000 to $80,000) to distribute the insert. Russia Beyond likely paid several million dollars to the Times and Post combined over more than a decade. By comparison, Facebook was paid roughly $100,000 by Russian-linked disinformation sources during a nearly two-year period. Smith reports: Facebook may reach more eyeballs, but the Times and the Post deliver the right ones, dropping Russia Beyond on the doorsteps of elite American news consumers, including key policymakers. Bundled within the pages of the country's two top newspapers, Russia Beyond came with at least the patina of respectability. The Facebook ads, in contrast, appeared in a medium that even minimally savvy news consumers treat with deserved circumspection. Read Full Article Other Noteworthy Articles and Series Why Some Government Snoops Are More ‘Sociable' Than Others
RealClearInvestigations
Are your Facebook posts and Tweets fair game for government investigators? In the decade since social media became central to American life, government has still not settled on a single answer. Most law enforcement agencies and the Internal Revenue Service consider the platforms public spaces they can surveil on a hunch and without limit. People who engage in peaceful protest, for example, often attract such prying eyes. The Social Security Administration, on the other hand, forbids snooping even if it might confirmsuspicions of disability fraud. Leaked Files: How the NSA Tracks Other Countries' Hackers
The Intercept
New details are emerging about the 2013 theft of NSA hacking tools, a breach that damaged national security and private business incalculably. The advanced tools stolen and then disseminated by the entity known as Shadow Box has already led to sophisticated malware and ransomware attacks around the globe. Now above-aboard researchers who have studied the material say they have figured out how the NSA determined if other nation-state hackers were also on the machines it was infecting. Of $120 Million to Fight Russia Meddling, State Dept. Has Spent $0
New York Times
As Russia's virtual war against the United States appears to continue, the State Department has yet to spend any of the $120 million it has been allocated since late 2016 to counter foreign efforts to meddle in elections or sow distrust in democracy. As a result, not one of the 23 analysts working in the department's Global Engagement Center — which has been tasked with countering Moscow's disinformation campaign — speaks Russian, and a department hiring freeze has hindered efforts to recruit the computer experts needed to track the Russian efforts. Senior Daddies Eligible for SocSec Bonus
Washington Post
Social security offers many obscure benefits that costs taxpayer's billions. These include the Agatha Christie Benefit in which some divorced people get a bonus from Social Security only if their former spouse dies; the Serial Spouse Bonus,whichcanpay full spousal benefits to every surviving spouse (and former spouse) so long as the marriage lasted at least 10 years;and the Late-in-Life-Baby Bonus which provides extra payments to Americans if they areold enough to collect social securityand stillhavechildren under 18. That one costs taxpayers an estimated $5.5 billion per year. Vatican: Confessions of a Male Escort
Daily Beast
FrancescoMangiacaprasays he was shocked to learn that the man paying him for sex was not the lawyer he claimed to be, but a Catholic priest. The Italian male prostitute soon learned that many ofhisother clients were also men of the cloth. When the Vatican paid little attention to his book detailing this misconduct, he compiled a 1,200-page dossier that focused on nearly 40 priests across Italy and took it the archdiocese of Naples. It has sent the dossier to the Vatican, which has not responded. Cultural Insensitivity as China Exploits Africa
Daily Beast
China is undercutting its largely successful efforts to cultivate African allies through movies and television shows that reflect racial superiority and cultural insensitivity. For instance, a gala show on state television included a skit that involved an Asian woman in blackface and oversized butt pads and an African actor in a monkey suit. A 2016 advertisement for a laundry product showed a black man being shoved into a washing machine, only to emerge as a boyish-looking Asian man—with skin of a much lighter hue. Apple's 'Spaceship' HQ Has Workers Walking Into Glass Walls
Science Alert
Google glass may have been a bust, but Apple glass is actually cracking heads - at the company's new $5 billion Cupertino headquarters. The circular 2.8 million-square-foot building features lots and lots and lots of glass, including the cafeteria's four-story sliding glass doors. This has posed a problem for some of the company's visionaries, who - according to 911 calls from the campus - arewalking into the glass. Ever precise, one injuredAppletoninformed the dispatcher, "I didn't walk through a glass door. I walked into a glass door." Perhaps we've finally found a good use for those ubiquitous Apple stickers. | 
