Fwd: 'We kill people based on metadata'

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: The New York Review of Books <newsletters@nybooks.com>
Date: Tue, May 13, 2014 at 10:15 PM
Subject: 'We kill people based on metadata'
To: Pascal Alter <pascal.alter@gmail.com>

This week on nybooks.com: Why the bill to rein in NSA spying doesn't go far enough, when experimental theater works (and when it doesn't), what a sci-fi film starring Scarlett Johansson reveals about human loneliness, a designer whose evening dresses were engineering feats, a 16th-century book of miracles, and the events that led to Pearl Harbor. Plus a selection of recent pieces on the crisis in Ukraine.   'We Kill People Based on Metadata' David Cole Supporters of the NSA inevitably defend its collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting "metadata." But as Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, admitted in a recent debate, "We kill people based on metadata."   advertisement   Bad Theater, Good Books Tim Parks Last night I walked out of a play. It was too painful. Too boring. But it is not this performance that I want to talk about, but the absolute difference between bailing out of a book, a movie, and a theatrical performance.   Ways of Being Alien Geoffrey O'Brien Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin is a film with the courage of its silences and ellipses. Most easily categorized as a species of science fiction, it deftly evades verbal explanation and explicit continuity.   advertisement   Engineering Elegance Martin Filler Deemed the supreme couturier of their generation by Cristóbal Balenciaga and Christian Dior, Charles James ended up in poverty and squalor. A new exhibition surveys the career of the innovative, irascible designer, who felt that clothing is an art form.   The Crisis in Ukraine A selection of recent pieces on the conflict in Ukraine by Anatol Lieven, Tim Judah, Vladimir Sorokin, Amy Knight, and Timothy Snyder   The Smooth Path to Pearl Harbor Rana Mitter In lucid prose, the historian Eri Hotta meticulously examines a wide range of primary documents in Japanese to answer the question: Why did Japan find itself on the brink of war in December 1941?   'The Book of Miracles' Marina Warner One astonishing, delicious, supersaturated picture follows another. There are monstrous births, plagues, fire and brimstone, stars falling from heaven, double suns, multiple rainbows, meteor showers, rains of blood, snow in summer.   May 16–June 1: Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist focuses on the director's electrifying early period (Lincoln Center)   May 17: Poets Eugene Ostashevsky, Holly Pester and Sophie Seita read their work (Serpentine Gallery)   "The most serious literary publication in the world." – Le Monde Subscribe today.   The New York Review of Books 435 Hudson Street, Suite 300, New York, NY 10014 Forward to a friend | (...)