How the Google trial judge exposed the CIA's secret torture sites

The search giant faces the biggest threat to its dominance this September, and its fate will be decided by a woman who beat the White House...

We’re now just 81 days from the most consequential decision for premium publishing since the Gutenberg Bible was published 569 years ago.

More than half the planet’s population will feel the impact of a ruling that will emerge from the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

It will decide what web the world sees, how it’s delivered, who will own what, and how the $13 trillion global digital economy will be monetised and earned in the future.

That’s quite a caseload, and those like me, who are following the countdown, remain baffled why the world’s mainstream media seems so unaware, or ambivalent.

Presiding over it all will be district judge Leonie Brinkema and today’s newsletter is about her.

It will be Google in the dock come September, but last time it was the CIA, as her tough questioning and fearlessness exposed secret torture sites and cover ups at the heart of Langley and The White House…

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Before we dive in, let me welcome new subs from The New York Times (you get a lot of coverage in here today), The Guardian, Daily Mail, Gannett, The UK’s Financial Times and Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Australia’s ABC, SBS, and The Australian, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Swiss giants Ringier, Brazilian publisher Editora Globo, and the world’s leading Spanish-language media company Univision, among others. Great to have you 👋

This is an important post, so let’s get started.