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Uprising’s guest expert Robert Jensen. He’s an author and professor of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The FBI has raided the home of a federal contractor suspected to be a whistle blower. The person in question apparently provided documents to Intercept reporters Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux about the government’s watch list program. The raid took place in Northern Virginia, where federal prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation. The unnamed whistleblower, who has been likened to Edward Snowden, was briefly alluded to in Laura Poitras’ new film about Snowden entitled Citizenfour. Documents leaked to the Intercept laid out classified criteria that the US government uses to place Americans and others on the list and subject them to extra scrutiny at airports. Yahoo News, which broke the story, reports that the Justice Department may be reluctant to pursue charges. Click here for a Yahoo News article about the story.

In another story of government surveillance, the New York Times has reported that the US Postal Service has been cooperating with requests for tracking the mail of ordinary Americans. In fact, 50,000 requests from law enforcement agencies and USPS’ own inspection department, were approved last year alone. The Times obtained an audit of the Postal Service through a Freedom of Information Act request and found that, “the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax.” Click here for a Time.com article about the story.

A report this week based on the testimonies of young Nigerian girls who escaped their captors, paints a grim picture of what they experienced. The militant organization Boko Haram, which took credit for the kidnappings that captured global attention, apparently raped many of the girls, and forced them to convert to Islam. Some of the girls are as young as 15 and hundreds remain in captivity. In recent weeks the Nigerian government announced a possible peace deal with Boko Haram but some government officials themselves have been linked to the organization. Click here for a Guardian newspaper article about the story.