Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post.

Invasion, the Kickstarter

Nearly ten years ago, I drove into Iraq in a rented SUV to cover the invasion. Three weeks later, I was in Baghdad, watching the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square. In March, on the tenth anniversary of the invasion, an exhibit I am co-organizing will open at the Bronx ... (Read more)

Invasion

Here’s a screenshot of the opening frame of the fundraising video for the war diary exhibit I’m co-curating. Exhibit launches in mid-March, on the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. More posts coming soon.

“Zero Dark Thirty” and the Shadow of Embedded Filmmaking

Much of the pre-release debate about “Zero Dark Thirty” has focused on whether it portrays torture as effective, in the sense of prying information out of al Qaeda suspects. Yes, the movie conveys that view, and I think it’s inaccurate. Many experts, including key senators who oversaw ... (Read more)

Don’t Trust “Zero Dark Thirty”

The Atlantic Online
The acclaimed thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden represents a troubling new frontier of government-embedded filmmaking.
12-13-2012
One of the most dramatic scenes in Zero Dark Thirty, the new film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, takes place in a conference ... (Read more)

Was Petraeus Borked?

Will the scandal surrounding David Petraeus, General John Allen, Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, and a shirtless F.B.I. agent turn into the same sort of eureka moment on privacy that Congress experienced when Judge Robert Bork’s video rentals were revealed during a bruising battle over his Supreme ... (Read more)

Was Petraeus Borked?

The New Yorker Online
When a D.C. video store revealed the Supreme Court nominee’s list of video rentals, it sparked a privacy backlash and a new law. Similarly, the Petraeus affair has put the government’s vast surveillance powers – even of elites – in a critical context.
11/14/2012
In ... (Read more)

McGill University

Montreal, Canada
A lecture on “Perpetrators and Participants: War Photographers of the Digital Age.” Part of a symposium organized by Media@McGill about war photography in the era of cellphone cameras and YouTube. At 1 pm on Nov. 2 at McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, ... (Read more)

Chautauqua Institution

Chautauqua, NY
Lecture on oil, war and peace in the Hall of Philosophy at the Chautauqua Institution at 3:00 pm on August 18, 2012. For more information, please visit www.ciweb.org.

Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?

ProPublica
As the Senate considers a bill to strengthen the nation’s cybersecurity, some questionable numbers keep creeping into the discussion.
08/31/2012
This story was co-authored with Megha Rajagopalan

Gen. Keith Alexander is the director of the National Security Agency and oversees U.S. Cyber ... (Read more)

Cellphone? How Quaint. It’s a Tracker.

The device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. We can love or hate these devices — or love and hate them — but let’s start calling them what they are so we can fully understand what they do. Read my ... (Read more)