SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Last Wednesday, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents, numbering in the thousands, that exposed a catalog of the CIA’s cyberspying capabilities. Intelligence officers scrambled to evaluate and suppress the damage during the chaotic aftermath. Investigators attributed the breach to a group of inside agents and contractors, but initially ruled out the involvement of a hostile foreign power. Among the disclosures was evidence that the CIA had developed hacking tools that could infiltrate any Internet-connected product, including Apple and Android devices. However, with Kellyanne Conway’s explosive admission that the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump was orchestrated using innocuous household appliances, officials now suspect that the WikiLeaks revelations were spurious diversions to distract Americans from the real threat: microwave ovens.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin inched closer to Soviet-era censorship by signing into law restrictive new controls for the country’s Internet. Political activists, Internet champions and free speech advocates attacked the decision, saying the government would be able to tighten the reins on any views it deemed dissenting. But Putin’s biggest criticism came from the United States. National Security Agency (NSA) officials called the law “immature, myopic and completely counterproductive to real intelligence gathering.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Last Wednesday, The Washington Post obtained documents indicating that the National Security Agency (NSA) gathers nearly five billion records each day that track the locations of users around the world, including some Americans. The data was provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. His revelations continue to expose a domestic surveillance operation far more widespread than the public was initially led to believe. But the NSA wants you to know that these data-mining expeditions serve a greater, more benevolent good. So as a special holiday treat, the NSA, free of charge, will send Santa Claus the Christmas lists of every child whose records were intercepted by government systems through an automated process that "promotes immediacy, assured delivery and overcomes challenges with illegible letters, improper postage or incorrect addressing that often occur when silly liberal children are allowed to correspond with the North Pole directly."

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Despite reassuring rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle in Congress, which has grown from a fissure to a continental divide, the government shutdown now entering its second week has halted more than so-called nonessential services. Intelligence officials have expressed concerns about national security with 70 percent of NSA employees furloughed. "The damage will be insidious," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Each day that goes by, the jeopardy increases." The situation, however, appears to have taken a turn for the ironic with telecommunications and Internet service providers reporting dramatic increases in subscribers making phone calls, sending emails and posting on social networks.