The continued development of gadgets across multiple platforms has allowed for quick communication, creative presentation and multitasking. Today's digital environment has left Americans consuming three times more information than they did in the 1960s, and having access to technology is now a necessity for everyone — but at what costs to human interaction and concentration?

"Your Brain on Computers," a series of articles published in the New York Times, examines how data overload affects the brain functions and analyses what kind of toll it takes on people's lives.

Matt Richtel, the main journalist on the beat, accompanied a group of scientists into the wilderness of Utah for a few days to discover how the brain changed when they didn't have access to communication devices. He also has been following scientists' discoveries into how "too much information" should be defined.

FROM NPR

Members of the New Orleans police department told Probublica, PBS Frontline and the New Orleans Times-Picayune that orders permitting officers to shoot looters circulated in the days following Hurricane Katrina. To back up the disclosures, a member of the force gave reporters a videotape in which a captain was relaying these permissions to officers.

Eleven looters were shot during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, though whether this happened as a result of self-defense or the orders is unclear.  But officials are now saying that the authorization created an atmosphere of confusion as to how much force they were allowed to use. Those accused of carrying out the orders deny all charges.

A documentary about the story airs at 8 tonight on Frontline.

By Sabrina Shankman and Tom Jennings of Frontline, Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi of The New Orleans Times-Picayune and A.C. Thompson of ProPublica.

FROM PROPUBLICA AND THE NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE

The Obama administration has trumpeted a new automated approach to fighting computer hackers--a plan piloted by the State Department--as the model way to overhaul the federal government’s archaic cyber security system.

 But is it?

According to a report issued by the State Department’s inspector general, the program fails to address some important risks. The report, posted online in April, warned that the department’s lack of security awareness could cause breaches that compromise sensitive data.

The inspector general found that new automated security tools failed to monitor department firewalls and databases, problems that could allow access to hackers and spies. A poorly configured database also could compromise private U.S. passport information that the department stores. A firewall, which protects an institution’s network against unauthorized Internet traffic, is an essential component of network security.

The report’s release has sparked a debate among cyber-security specialists. Some disagree with the inspector general, arguing that State merely prioritized the most critical risks on a to-do list so lengthy that no government agency could ever secure itself against every threat on it. Others say that the department, despite significant upgrades to its cyber security, is taking on an unnecessary amount of risk. 

“I would consider [firewalls] to be an extremely core key area and one that is among the easier things to automate,” said Robert Deitz, the chief executive of Government Technology Solutions, Inc., a government contractor that worked on the new security project for State.

The department is one of a few federal agencies piloting a new cyber security program known as automated continuous monitoring. NASA is on its way to adopting the new system, and other agencies may soon follow. 

The plan would fundamentally overhaul how agencies manage computer security risk in an increasingly hostile digital world. The reforms are meant to put information security in the hands of automated tools that expedite the reporting of possible threats.

The Obama administration supports the new automated plan.  In April, the Office of Management and Budget issued a directive that all agencies develop automated programs with the aim to improve overall cyber security across the federal government.

As it stands now, federal agencies are already required to compile a threat assessment report under the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002.  Advocates of the new system note that the current paper-based reporting method requires agencies to compile a security assessment every three years while the new way issues reports every three days.

Some of the advocates interviewed by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund are critical of the inspector general’s report. They say State moved quickly to fix the most important security vulnerabilities.

“So I have a choice: Should I try to do everything in three years – or should I do the biggest thing first and do it in one year?” said Alan Paller, the director of research at the SANS Institute, an organization that provides cyber security certification training.

“It’s like complaining about somebody who discovered a cure for cancer because it’s not also a cure for the common cold,” said Fred Schneider, a computer science professor at Cornell University and a member of the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Warren Udy is director of Information Assurance and Cyber Security at the Department of Energy.  He backs up the inspector general’s report, saying that good cyber security plan shouldn’t ignore pieces of the puzzle.

“In order to do good risk management you need to observe the entire security posture,” he said. “You wouldn’t just concentrate on the front door of a house of the physical security world, you’re also going to consider the tree next to the house that’s allows someone to crawl through the window.”

The Government Accountability Office is set to release a report in January on the State Department's risk management software.

The Justice at Stake Campaign, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the National Institute on Money and State Politics examined a decade of high-court contests to see how justices are influenced by special interests during elections.

The report includes special-interest "super spenders." For 29 elections in the nation's 10 most costly election states, the top five spenders in each election invested an average of $473,000. The remaining 116,000 donated an average of $850 each. These results are double what they were 10 years ago, with an increasing number of funds going toward TV ads.

With these donations comes political pressure that sways candidates to promise particular results in the court room, causing the conductors of the study to question whether the country lacks an impartial justice system.

In a letter introducing the report, Sandra Day O'Connor, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice, warns that Americans view elected judges as partial to the views of their campaign benefactors.

"We all have a stake in ensuring that courts remain fair, impartial, and independent," she writes. "If we fail to remember this, partisan infighting and hardball politics will erode the essential function of our judicial system as a safe place where every citizen stands equal before the law.”

FROM JUSTICE AT STAKE CAMPAIGN