‘Shadow Brokers,’ Facial Recognition, Dog Days of Summer

Coming up on today’s show:

• This week, a group calling themselves the “Shadow Brokers” claim they have hacked into the mothership of internet security: The National Security Agency. Steven Levy, a senior staff writer for Wired, and Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, have the details on the hack. 

• It’s the dog days of summer, and many people around the nation have been grappling with heat waves. The problem is particularly acute for those who live in cities, thanks to the so-called “urban heat island effect.” How does extreme heat impact health, and who is most at risk? Reporter Sarah Gonzalez, who has been working on WNYC’s Harlem Heat Project, weighs in.

• More than 70 percent of Texas prisons don’t have air conditioning. While advocates are working to find temporary solutions, two heat-related lawsuits are making their way through the Texas courts. Wallis Nader, a staff attorney with Texas Civil Rights Project, explains. 

• The London Metropolitan Police Service is turning to a special group of individuals that have been identified as “super recognizers,” or people who have excellent facial recognition abilities. Richard Russell, a psychology professor at Gettysburg College, was one of the researchers to publish a 2009 study identifying this population, and presented the idea that facial recognition ability is a spectrum, rather than something one does or does not possess.

• A new report reveals that women are the fastest growing segment of America’s incarcerated population. In 1970, there were fewer than 8,000 women in American jails, but by 2014, that number skyrocketed to more than 110,000. We look at why this number is growing with Renia “Angel” Farmer, a former inmate, speaker and facilitator at the advocacy group Let’s Start.

• We conclude our exploration of the oceans with a look at the human-produced noise that interferes with marine life that relies on echolocation and other techniques to communicate with Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project and the Land and Wildlife Program for the Natural Resources Defense Council.