The fear is back! Just in time for a long queasy October, the Washington Post did a ride-along with the CEO of mobile security firm Integricell, who was mapping the locations of fake cell phone towers surveilling D.C.; What they found, the Post reports, was like "a primer on the geography of Washington power."

Les Goldsmith is the CEO of ESD, a defense and law enforcement technology firm based in Las Vegas. They make one of the oldest, most expensive high-security cell phones on the market. And lately, Goldsmith and his CryptoPhone customers have been noticing some pretty ominous, fake cell phone towers across America.

Advanced conspiracy theoretician and herbal tincture entrepreneur Alex Jones has had two of his reporters and one cameraman live on the ground in Ferguson, Missouri since last week. The results—predictably insane, punctuated by long intervals of horrible sanity—defy easy categorization. "Difficult" is a start.

In an attempt to enforce last night's Governor Nixon-imposed curfew, the Missouri Highway Patrol fired tear gas into a crowd of protestors last night, then told reporters that they had only fired smoke bombs, backtracked, admitted that it was tear gas, and ultimately arrested seven protestors. Also, a guy was shot.

Before Barrett Brown, before the high-profile arrests, Anonymous was genuinely a sort of shadowy hacktivist collective. With OpFerguson, the group's protest against the brutal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, they've really pared back down to what they should do best: faceless disobedience.

Innovation did not die with Steve Jobs. Apple has quietly installed data discovery software, including a file-relay tool that can bypass backup encryption, in around 600 million iPhones, iPads, and other devices running their latest iOS. You are correct to surmise that this has been a boon to law enforcement.