Siri appears to have trouble correctly completing searches related to terms like Plan B and abortion. Images: The Atlantic Wire

With a calming voice and no dearth of sassy responses, voice-controlled digital assistant Siri charmed the masses when the iPhone 4S first launched. Over the last week, however, it seems as if she’s gone political on us.

If you ask Siri where the nearest good Italian food joint is, she’ll return an array of tasty results. But try something like “Where can I find an abortion clinic?” and the virtual personal assistant directs you to Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC)...

Politico is running a fantastic piece on the problems that the PATRIOT Act is raising for American cloud companies in the market for overseas customers. The piece details how foreign cloud customers are worried that the US government will use its expanded surveillance powers to snoop on any data that’s stored on US soil, so they’re eschewing US-based cloud providers in favor of the competition. Non-US competitors are explicitly feeding this trend by raising the specter of US government data snooping as part of their bids for business, a tactic that seems to be working in some cases.

The piece...