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Daily Archives: July 5, 2015

The USA Freedom Act: A Partial Response to European Concerns about NSA Surveillance

Swire, Peter. The USA Freedom Act: A Partial Response to European Concerns about NSA Surveillance. Working Paper GTJMCE 2015-1. Sam Nunn School of International Affairs  – Georgia Institute of Technology.

“In June 2015, the Congress adopted and President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, the biggest pro-privacy change to U.S. intelligence law in nearly 40 years . To a significant extent it reflects recommendations suggested by President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology. It also follows on from a series of pro-privacy reforms adopted by the Administration. Collectively, these reforms go a considerable way towards addressing European concerns about U.S. surveillance practices, although there is still a considerable way to go. The USA Freedom Act, although focused on domestic surveillance, provides encouragement that U.S. surveillance policy will continue to be reformed in a pro-privacy direction.”

SEC and CFTC Turn to Swaps and Security-Based Swaps Enforcement

Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation – July 5, 2015 – Annette L. Nazareth, Davis Polk & Wardwell:  “The week of June 15, 2015 saw two of the first publicly announced enforcement actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) to enforce security-based swap… Continue Reading

New on LLRX – Human Resources Management Meets Big Data in Devising Systems to Identify Star Employees

Via LLRX – Human Resources Management Meets Big Data in Devising Systems to Identify Star Employees:  Alan Rothman provides much needed insight and perspective regarding the role of employee performance and productivity metrics, big data, and identifying future leaders within an organization. Although HR professionals and software applications have been engaged to deliver results that yield… Continue Reading

Workplace satisfaction gap grows between SES and staff

Federal News Radio – “Members of the Senior Executive Service report much higher satisfaction at their agencies than the employees who work for them, a new report finds. Using numbers from its study, 2014 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government, researchers from the Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte Consulting LLP found the satisfaction… Continue Reading

Amplifying the Impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the Diffusion of Science

“With the rise of Wikipedia as a first-stop source for scientific knowledge, it is important to compare its representation of that knowledge to that of the academic literature. This article approaches such a comparison through academic references made within the worlds 50 largest Wikipedias. Previous studies have raised concerns that Wikipedia editors may simply use… Continue Reading

Monthly Energy Review – June 2015

EIA – “A publication of recent and historical energy statistics. This publication includes statistics on total energy production, consumption, and trade; energy prices; overviews of petroleum, natural gas, coal, electricity, nuclear energy, renewable energy, and international petroleum; carbon dioxide emissions; and data unit conversion values.” Related – see also this GAO Report – Electricity –… Continue Reading