Shell Games

Age of transparency: A massive leak of 11.5 million documents spanning 1977-2015 from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is revealing how hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, including many politicians and their family members, have used anonymous shell corporations to hide their money and nefarious dealings. Among those named: the current leaders of Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, the Ukraine, the father of the British Prime Minister, and several close associates of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. More than 100 media outlets are working on digging through the trove.

Russian dissident blogger Alexei Navalny tweets, “Based on these documents the entire top of the Russian authorities should be in prison.”

Calls for a snap election in Iceland in response to the revelations could lead to the election of the Pirate Party, which has been leading in the polls there for months. (Here’s Pirate Party co-founder Birgitta Jonsdottir being interviewed  by yours truly last June at Personal Democracy Forum.) More than two percent of the country’s population are signed up for a protest outside the Icelandic Parliament tomorrow.

Here are all the documents that have been released so far, on Document Cloud.

Tech and politics: Buried inside this pre-mortem on the Bernie Sanders campaign, written by Patrick Healy and Yamiche Alcindor for the New York Times, is this damning statement by former Senator Bob Kerrey, arguing that Sanders mishandled the issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails. “The email story is not about emails,” Kerrey said. “It is about wanting to avoid the reach of citizens using FOIA to find out what their government is doing, and then not telling the truth about why she did.” (Kerrey has endorsed Clinton, by the way.)

The White House has finally gotten a technology upgrade, thanks in part to the efforts of David Recordon, formerly of Facebook, Michael Shear reports for the New York Times. He notes, not quite noticing the irony or the revolving door, “The Wi-Fi in the Roosevelt Room is finally strong enough to live-stream an event on Facebook.”

Trump watch: Here are some new facts about Donald Trump’s campaign that you can learn from reading Gabriel Sherman’s detailed account in New York magazine: Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, “first earned Trump’s trust as his golf caddie” and has no prior political experience; the campaign has no pollsters, media coaches, speechwriters or focus groups; Trump apparently has dirt on Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, that he hasn’t used; he hired his campaign manager-cum-bouncer Corey Lewandowski on the recommendation of David Bossie of Citizens United; his daughter Ivanka Trump is responsible for his semi-supportive statements about Planned Parenthood; and his email list, built from people who have registered to attend his rallies, is estimated by Lewandowski to be “in the millions at this point.”

Crypto-wars, continued: The FBI is telling local law enforcement agencies it will help them unlock iPhones, BuzzFeed’s Salvador Hernandez reports.

What sharing economy? Airbnb says it is purging its San Francisco site of hosts with multiple listings, Carolyn Said reports for SFGate.com, following a similar move in New York City.

Brave new world: The jury verdict against Gawker in the Hulk Hogan case is a sign that the culture is finally turning against the internet’s relentless destruction of personal privacy, Jim Rutenberg writes for the New York Times.

Will Oremus explains why Alexa, Cortana, Siri, and the rest of the crop of digital assistants are creepily humanizing.