Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment →

This could become a problem:

 

In order to sign up for Facebook, users must click a box saying they agree to the Facebook Data Use Policy, ... there was no need to ask study “participants” for consent, as they’d already given it by agreeing to Facebook’s terms of service in the first place.

I'm no fan of "slippery slope" arguments in general, but if standard Terms of Service mean companies can begin to conduct psychological experiments outside of "do users like this interface or that one more?", we're getting into dicey territory. Something to watch...

Why Imminence? The Assassinations Ban and that OLC Al-Aulaqi Memo →

Some interesting speculation for the legal wonks:

 

But it occurs to me that there’s another dog that doesn’t bark in David Barron’s memo: The assassination ban in Executive Order 12333, which does not seem to be discussed at all in the unredacted parts of the memo. In this post, I want to take my speculation a step further, because I think the assassination ban offers a key—perhaps the key—to understanding the role of imminence in the administration’s legal views. That is, if my theory about whence imminence comes is correct, the assassination ban explains why the finding limits targeted killings to situations of continuing and imminent threat. And it likely explains a bunch of other things too–things that remain redacted in Barron’s memo.

Ruling on Argentina Gives Investors an Upper Hand →

I prefer not to get too wonkish here, but this ruling could put a kink in US-based finance's history:

In so doing, the court most likely damaged the status of New York as the world’s financial capital. It made it far less likely that genuinely troubled countries will be able to restructure their debts. And it increased the power of investors — often but not solely hedge funds that buy distressed bonds at deep discounts to face value — to prevent needed restructurings.

Fear Is Driving Young Men Across the U.S. Border →

The moral complexity we rarely read about, in deportation:

The day of his first kidnapping, Wander’s life cleaved in two. Before it, he was a middle-class kid living in a humid, mountain-flanked Honduran city.
...
Wander is part of a new surge of immigrants crossing into the United States: young Central Americans fleeing swelling violence in countries where the state is too weak or too corrupt to protect them. In fiscal year 2009, just over 6,000immigrants under the age of 18 were taken into custody by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, which provides services for unaccompanied immigrant youth after their apprehension. In 2014, the government is planning for 60,000.