A look back at The Intercept’s must-read technology stories from 2019.
Amazon’s Home Surveillance Chief Declared War on “Dirtbag Criminals” as Company Got Closer to Police
By Sam Biddle
Inside the Video Surveillance Program IBM Built for Philippine Strongman Rodrigo Duterte
By George Joseph
Everybody Does It: The Messy Truth About Infiltrating Computer Supply Chains
By Micah Lee, Henrik Moltke
The Trump Administration Is Using the Full Power of the U.S. Surveillance State Against Whistleblowers
By Micah Lee
Mission Creep: How the NSA’s Game-Changing Targeting System Built for Iraq and Afghanistan Ended Up on the Mexico Border
By Henrik Moltke
Team of American Hackers and Emirati Spies Discussed Attacking The Intercept
By Sam Biddle, Matthew Cole
Peter Thiel’s Palantir Was Used to Bust Relatives of Migrant Children, New Documents Show
By Sam Biddle, Ryan Devereaux
How U.S. Tech Giants Are Helping to Build China’s Surveillance State
By Ryan Gallagher
Before Being Hacked, Border Surveillance Firm Lobbied to Downplay Security and Privacy Concerns About Its Technology
By Cora Currier
David Duke and His Twitter Nazis Got Mad at Me. Twitter Took Their Side.
By Jon Schwarz
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
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The State of the Death Penalty, Bad Policing, and Backsliding on Roe: The Intercept’s 2019 Justice Coverage
Progressive Organizing and the Presidential Primary: The Intercept’s 2019 Politics Coverage
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