Amazon investors introduce two votes limiting company’s facial recognition technology, contracts reveal that the “trade secret” of ransomware firms is to pay off hackers directly by charging clients extra, and Chicago’s City Council legislative committees fuel a system of patronage and cronyism.

The plot of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold hinges on the bureaucratic details of retirement benefits for spies. Recently uncovered documents from the Central Intelligence Agency archives show that real-world spy stories sometimes do, too.