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Daily Archives: June 5, 2017

Brandon Garrett and UVA Law Library Expand Online Database to 3,000 Documents

UVA news release by Eric Williamson: “A recently expanded database offering the world’s largest collection of legal documents related to corporate crime is launching today at the University of Virginia School of Law. The database, called the Corporate Prosecution Registry, allows researchers to view more than 3,000 decision documents, many of them previously hard to find or once shielded from the public eye, while also allowing them to better search specific subject matter and look at overall trends. UVA Law professor Brandon Garrett, an expert in white-collar crime who authored the book “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise with Corporations,” built on his previous online database of corporate criminal dispositions, created in association with the book. “Prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, policymakers and researchers who have long used our database can now rapidly pull detailed information about the specific types of corporate cases that they are interested in,” Garrett said. “Whether it is foreign bribery cases or antitrust or securities fraud or pharma cases, domestic companies or foreign, public companies or private, the information about these cases is available.”  More than 2,500 of the documents are corporate plea agreements, Garrett said, while most of the remainder are deferred or non-prosecution agreements. Those deals allow corporations to avoid conviction if they follow a plan of financial restitution and corrective action, often more lenient than would be mandated through the court system. At times, corporations have avoided fines completely…”

AdWeek – Facebook: Here’s How to Stop Users From Seeing the Things You Follow

Brandy Shaul – “Follow this guide to stop users from seeing the pages, people and lists you follow on Facebook. Did you know Facebook allows you to stop users from being able to see the people, pages and lists you follow on the platform? Here’s how to change this privacy setting from within Facebook’s mobile application…” Continue Reading

Google’s Environmental Report

Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure, Google: “The following data [72 page report/PDF] summarize key highlights of our environmental initiatives discussed in our environmental report published in December 2016. They provide a snapshot of our performance and together demonstrate how we’re strengthening our business by reducing the environmental impact of our operations and… Continue Reading

NSA contractor charged in leak of classified document on Russian hacking and US election

Washington Post – “A 25-year-old government contractor has been charged with mishandling classified information, after authorities say she gave a top-secret National Security Agency document to a news organization [See article by The Intercept]. Reality Leigh Winner was accused of gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information — the first criminal charge filed in a leak… Continue Reading

Google is Mapping the invisible: Street View cars add air pollution sensors

Google Environment: “There are 1.3 million miles of natural gas distribution pipelines in the U.S. These pipelines exist pretty much everywhere that people do, and when they leak, the escaping methane — the main ingredient in natural gas — is a potent greenhouse gas, with 84 times the short-term warming effect of carbon dioxide. These… Continue Reading