WikiLeaks Emails, Congressional Candidate Interview: Glenn Grothman, The Making Of An American Girl , Sheboygan Police Move To Make Transmissions Encrypted

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• WikiLeaks Continues Releasing Emails From Clinton Aide

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  The anti-secrecy organization founded by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, is in its second week of releasing messages from the hacked email account of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman John Podesta. A reporter who has been covering the leaks tells us more about the released emails and what they could mean for the Clinton Campaign.

• Congressional Candidate Interview: Glenn Grothman

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  Glenn Grothman (R-Glenbeulah) joins the show to talk about his re-election campaign for the 6th Congressional District, as part of an ongoing series of candidate interviews.

• American Girl Addy Walker's Place In History And Representation

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  In 1986, American Girl hit the toy scene, pairing dolls from different historical eras with books detailing their place in time. But for African-American children wishing to purchase an American Girl doll, for years they only had one option: Addy Walker, whose story follows her as a slave who escapes to freedom. We’ll speak with Aisha Harris of Slate who explains why this is significant and how the company is diversifying its dolls.

• Addy Walker: A Story Of Sensitive Histories, Representation

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  This year, American Girl, known for its historically themed children’s books and mail order dolls made an announcement – it would add a new doll to its historic line. The doll, named Melody Ellison, would be a 9-year-old African-American girl growing up in Detroit during the Civil Rights movement.

  Melody isn’t the only African-American doll in the American Girl collection, but her introduction in February has sparked a look back at the first and only other African-American doll in the collection – Addy Walker.

  Addy, introduced in 1993, is an escaped slave growing up at the end of the Civil War. Her story and experience as a slave was carefully crafted to be suitable for children, said Aisha Harris, a culture writer for Slate magazine and host of its podcast, Represent.

  “It does a really good job of exposing kids to slavery, perhaps for the first time … and I think it does it in a way that really works well for kids that age,” Harris said if Addy.

  While some might celebrate Addy for being a character that brings tragic parts of American history into the consciousness of children in an age-appropriate way, Harris said there has been disapproval of making the first African-American doll in the collection a runaway slave.

  Critics have written that unlike other American Girl dolls who were characterized by “free-spiritedness, a defiant personality and the courage to defy expectations,” as one writer wrote, Addy’s America was so challenging her personality was overshadowed by the adversity of her situation.

  “Felicity was a plucky colonial Williamsburg girl, (and) Samantha was an orphan and living with her wealthy grandmother in the early 1900s,” Harris said. “Compare their stories to Addy’s … (which) deals with a very, very sensitive topic.”

  Harris said as a young girl she grappled with the combination of understanding the facts of Addy’s life and playing with a doll.

  “It was rough because I enjoyed playing with her … but it was also the first time I noticed that my ancestry (and) my history was different from my white peers,” Harris said. “And it was different in a way that felt uncomfortable. At the same time, I think (Addy) is so important and meant so much to so many little girls.”

  Harris said incorporating Addy into the American Girl collection was a crucial step in representation for children’s toys, especially for “people that are not white and living in this country,” and welcomed the most recent historic doll’s arrival to the American Girl company.

  “I’m really happy now that there’s more than just (Addy) and that we have someone like Melody,” Harris said. “And hopefully it won’t be that long of a distance until we get the next Black American Girl.”

• Sheboygan Police Move To Make Radio Transmissions Encrypted

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  The Sheboygan Police could make their department radio transmissions encrypted, meaning that the public would no longer be able to listen in to these conversations. We’ll speak with Phillip Bock about why the SPD is making this move and what it could mean for public transparency.

• Sheboygan Police To Encrypt Radio Transmissions, Preventing Public From Listening In On Scanners

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  The Sheboygan Police Department recently announced plans to encrypt all of its radio transmissions. The move would prevent the public from listening to police scanners to monitor law enforcement activity.

  Sheboygan Police Chief Christopher Domagalski has said the primary reason for the switch is to help protect his officers out in the field, said Phillip Bock, a reporter for the USA Today Network-Wisconsin based in Sheboygan .

  Bock said the police chief is concerned that the availability of dispatch chatter on smartphone apps could pose a safety risk to officers responding to a crime scene.

  “He pointed to a recent armed robbery we had here (in Sheboygan) and said that if the gunman had an app installed in his smartphone where he could listen to radio traffic of police responding to that scene, he could have prepared or listened to tactical decisions being made on how police were approaching that building and respond accordingly,” Bock said.

  While reporting on the story, Bock was not able to find any incidents in which criminals were using the technology to gain an advantage over police.

  Domagalski cited other reasons for encrypting all radio transmissions, including to help protect the privacy of ongoing investigations.

  “He said that there’s a lot of important information that they keep confident over the radio and stuff like identities or license plates and that sort of thing often get passed over the air without encryption. People could listen in and it could be a privacy issue,” Bock said, recalling what the police chief told him during interviews for his story.

  Domagalski said the public can rely on other tools to get the same information, including monitoring the department’s social media feeds or crime-map data on the department website. Bock said Sheboygan police are also looking at possibly adding a new section to its website that would list ongoing response calls, although those would be delayed.

  In an era where public mistrust of police is growing, the decision hasn’t been popular with many in the community. Bock said other departments in the county have encrypted selectively when information is deemed sensitive. But this appears to be the first that a chief is calling for total encryption.

  In addition to transparency concerns, Bock said he’s heard from community members who rely on police scanners for real-time updates on road conditions and emergency alerts. He said they’re concerned about no longer having access to immediate updates.

  According to Bock, Sheboygan police plan to make the switch sometime in November as departments countywide will phase out an analog system for digital.