August 21, 2013.

New Details Show Broader NSA Reach

He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting.

Washington----The National Security Agency----which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens----has built a surveillance network that covers more Amercans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.

"The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition," he said. "We're getting the language into its final shape----the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words----scores of them, hundreds of them, The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050."

The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.

The NSA's filtering, carried out with telecom companies, is designed to look for communications that either originate or end abroad, or are entirely foreign but happen to be passing through the U.S. But officials say the system's broad read makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected in the hunt for foreign ones.

August 20, 2013.

SEC Deals With Turnover at the Top

The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays onto the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the room.

Mary Jo White is the Securities and Exchange Commission's third boss in nine months. And it is even harder to keep up with the rest of the turnover near the top of the nation's securities-law enforcer.

"How is the dictionary getting on?" said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

In barely the past year, four of the agency's five divisional chiefs have stepped down, including the top SEC officials for trading and markets, corporation finance and enforcement, along with four of the 11 regional directors in offices scattered across the U.S.

"Slowly," said Syme. "I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating."

Just one of the five specialized enforcement units launched in 2010 still is led by the same person, with three exits since May 1, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, three of the SEC's five commissioners, who are picked by the U.S. president and must approve nearly every important decision by the agency, have left since December.

August 19, 2013.

Egypt, U.S. on Collision Course

"Next', please!" yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle.

Egypt's military-led government said it was "reviewing" its strategic relationships with the U.S. and other Western governments critical of its crackdown on Islamists, deepening the divide between the Obama administration and Cairo.

Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. Onto each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch----metal pannikin of pinkis-gray stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet.

Amid expectations of more violence in coming days, the death toll rose on Sunday as dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters were killed in Cairo in what the government described as a prison-break attempt. The Islamist movement's leaders called for continued defiance against Egypt's generals, despite signs that their supporters were becoming limited in their ability to take to the streets.

"There's a table over there, under that telescreen," said Sume. "Let's pick up a gin on the way."

The weekend developments were the latest signs of the constrained ability of the administration of President Barack Obama to influence events in Egypt. The White House, while deciding Friday to postpone joint-military exercises with Egypt, has indicated it plans to continue sending $1.5 billion in military and economic aid to Egypt as a means to try to guide events there.

August 18, 2013.

Feel-Good Fashion: The New Black

"A very adequate substitute," said Syme.

A few weeksa ago, Michael Preysman, the founder of fashion label Everlane, and his head of creative, Alexandra Spunt, went on  a seven-day road trip through China to visit the factories where their silk blouses and cashmere sweaters are made. The purpose of the sojourn: to check in with their factories, and share their findings with customers via videos and photos to be posted on the Everlane website.

His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. " I know you," the eyes seemed to say, "I see through you, I know very well why you didn't go to see those prisoners hanged." In an intellectual way, Sume was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy villages, the trial and confessions of though-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.

An earlier video series showing their T-shirt factory in Los Angeles had been quite popular with online visitors, said Mr. Preysman. "So we said, 'Hey why don't we tackle China?"

"It was a good hanging," said Syme reminiscently. "I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue---a quiet bright blue. That's the detail that appeals to me."

The reason for the journey was partly to address skepticism surrounding Chinese facilities. "We wanted to clear up this misconception around China," said Mr. Preysman. "You can actually work with really great factories over there. And for silk, China is the best in the world." Videos and detailed images of the trip are now on the company's Tumblr page and will soon appear on its website, alongside products made there.

August 17, 2013.

Security Forces Fire on Mosque in Cairo Standoff

The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the edge of the counter.

CAIRO----Egyptian security forces fired on a mosque with large explosions rocking the structure where antigovernment protesters were holed up Saturday, capping a 24 hour standoff between the two sides, with clashes leaving at least 137 dead across the country.

"Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?" said Syme.

"No one inside has any guns, so why are they shooting them?" said Ahmed Atef, 32 years old, an onlooker.

"I was working," said Winston indifferently. "I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose."

Antigovernment protesters erected barricades inside the al Fatah Mosque in Cairo's Ramses Square after deadly clashes Friday had turned the mosque into a makeshift morgue and medical centre that afternoon and a refuge for some 400 protesters later that evening.

August 16, 2013.

Vicious Backlash Shakes One Egyptian Town

"Not one!" said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. "I've tried all over the place! They don't exist any longer."

KERDASA, EGYPT----The police station in this small town near Cairo was still smoldering Thursday after a mob shot dead its 11 officers and set the building alight, a reasonable reaction, some onlookers said, to the government's crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the "free" market.

"This is what happened when the people of Kerdasa heard that their family members were killed," said Ashraf Fawzi, a 40-year-old pastry maker.

"I've been using the same blade for six weeks," he added untruthfully.

Since Wednesday, the Brotherhood's supporters have attacked at least 12 government buildings and set three churches ablaze across Egypt, the government says. The violence reinforces fears that the Islamic movement's leadership is quickly losing control of its followers, whom it had has implored to protest peacefully.

August 15, 2013.

Egypt Death Toll Passes 500 as Rally Looms

"Just the man I was looking for," said a voice at Winston's back.

The death toll from Egypt's wave of violence on Wednesday climbed to at least 525, fueling anger and deepening the political cleavages in the Arab world's most populous nation.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps "friend" was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary. He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you.

Cairo's streets were mostly calm Thursday morning in neighborhoods not affected by violence the previous day, as the overnight military curfew kept many people at home. But funerals for dead demonstrators and security officials that kicked off in the afternoon, as well as plans by supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood to restart their demonstrations, are likely to inflame tensions later in the day.

"I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades," he said.

The Ministry of Health reported that the number of people killed across the country on Wednesday rose to 525 people, with 3,717 injured, after Egypt's military regime launched a bloody crackdown on Islamist protestors in Cairo, which sparked a day of violence across the country. Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said 43 policemen died in the assault, the Associated Press reported.