Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
It’s official: America’s spy agencies are not allowed to collect the communications data of Americans without a warrant. With a two-thirds majority, the US Senate amended the law on Tuesday to prohibit this specifically. Since Edward Snowden’s revelations two years ago, efforts had been underway in Congress to either make the spying program official or to rein it in. While … >>
You can probably imagine which story has been dominating the news in the United States for the past week. That’s right: the one about the problems with the new health-insurance program popularly known as Obamacare. The story that’s been dominating the news in Germany is also being reported in America, though not always as front-page news. That story, however, is … >>
A few weeks ago, Edward Snowden, a former contractor for America’s National Security Agency (NSA), revealed through The Guardian and Der Spiegel that the US government has been keeping secret records on ordinary Americans and spying on its allies. Since then, I’ve been asked two questions over and over: 1. What’s your opinion of what Edward Snowden did? and 2. … >>
The best way to learn a foreign language is to practice it with somebody. It was a pen pal in Bremen who helped me to learn German as it’s actually used and who told me about everyday life in his country. In what may have been an early version of this column, I did the same for him. In the … >>