By Sophia Rosenbaum and Reuven Fenton. Even a fake Edward Snowden can’t spend a day in NYC before getting carted away by authorities.

A 100-pound bronze bust of the infamous whistleblower was erected early Monday morning on top of Fort Greene Park’s Prison Ship Martyrs monument, which pays homage to Revolutionary War soldiers.

Two anonymous artists took it upon themselves to modernize the monument by sneaking into the park at 4 a.m. and adhering Snowden’s plaster head to the top of a pillar.

“We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies,” the artists wrote in a statement to ANIMAL New York.

“It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSA’s 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance programs to light,” they added. “All too often, figures who strive to uphold these ideals have been cast as criminals rather than in bronze.” (Read more from “100-Pound Snowden Bust Appears in NYC Park” HERE)

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John Oliver Meets with Edward Snowden: ‘They Are Still Collecting Everybody’s Information, Including Your D**k Pics’

By Eric Carriere. On this week’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the loveable Brit met with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The entire clip wasn’t aimed at engaging in a massively intellectual conversation about data sharing and government surveillance, but rather, finding a way to make the issue palatable to the average American. How did Oliver achieve this you might ask? In layman terms, he simplified the issue of mass surveillance down to a case of the government being able to view your d**k pictures.

“Over the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard about strange-sounding programs, such as XKeyscore, Muscular, Prism, and Mystic, which are, coincidentally, also the names of some of Florida’s least popular strip clubs,” Oliver joked. “Welcome to XKeyscore — our dancers are fully unredacted and Tuesdays are wing nights.”

Oliver was focusing on the government’s debate over reauthorizing the Patriot Act on June 1 and section 215 of the act that provides the government with the ability to take “any tangible things, including books, records, papers, documents, and other items” from businesses. (Read more from this story HERE)

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By Newser Editors. David Carr, author of the New York Times’ “Media Equation” column, collapsed and died at his office last night just hours after moderating a “TimesTalks” conversation with Edward Snowden, director Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald on Citizenfour, a documentary about Snowden’s NSA leaks. Carr, 58, lived in Montclair, NJ, with his wife and their daughter (he has two more children), and wrote The Night of the Gun, a 2008 memoir about how he went from cocaine addict to single father raising twin daughters to, ultimately, sober media columnist. Prior to joining the Times in 2002, he helmed alternative weeklies in Minneapolis and Washington, DC, and was a contributing writer for the Atlantic and New York magazine, the AP reports.

Last year, Carr started teaching a Boston University class on how journalism can sustain itself in the digital age, an issue about which he had written extensively. “I think a lot of journalism education that is going on is broadly not preparing kids for the world that they are stepping into,” he told the Boston Globe. (Read more about New York Times author passing away HERE)

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Author David Carr Dies at 58

By Bruce Weber and Ashley Southall. David Carr, who wriggled away from the demon of drug addiction to become a journalistic celebrity, a name-brand media columnist at The New York Times and a best-selling author who reported on his own near demise and recovery, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 58.

Mr. Carr collapsed in the Times newsroom, where he was found shortly before 9 p.m. He was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause had not been determined.

Mr. Carr also survived cancer and struggled with alcoholism, but none of that undercut his energy. He made frequent television appearances on talk shows and news programs, often spoke to journalism classes, and in 2011 was the leading figure in a documentary about The Times.

On the evening he died, he had moderated a panel discussion of “Citizenfour,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information indicating that the United States government was conducting global surveillance on a far larger scale than was publicly known. (Read more from this story HERE)

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UPDATE: Autopsy Suggests David Carr Died From “A Particularly Aggressive Strain of Lung Cancer”

By Thomas Tracy. New York Times columnist David Carr died of complications from a particularly aggressive strain of lung cancer, the city’s medical examiner ruled Saturday.

The renowned 58-year-old scribe, who wrote the influential Media Equation column, was suffering from small cell lung cancer when he collapsed in the newsroom shortly before 9 p.m. on Thursday.

He was rushed to Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital, where he died, the Times reported. (Read more from this story HERE)

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