Monthly archives: September, 2019

Study finds Big Data eliminates confidentiality in court judgements

swissinfo: “Swiss researchers have found that algorithms that mine large swaths of data can eliminate anonymity in federal court rulings. This could have major ramifications for transparency and privacy protection. This is the result of a study by the University of Zurich’s Institute of Law, published in the legal journal “Jusletter” and shared by Swiss …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

Can AI Hold Patents?

Law.com – Can AI Hold Patents? Quick Takes on the USPTO’s Questions About Artificial Intelligence – “Academics have been debating for a while whether machines can be inventors for the purposes of patent law. Earlier this month, University of Surrey IP professor Ryan Abbott and others upped the ante, forming the Artificial Inventor Project and …

Subjects: AI, Government Documents, Intellectual Property, Knowledge Management

Source Hacking: Media Manipulation in Practice

Data & Society – “Online media manipulators often use specific techniques to hide the source of the false and problematic information they circulate. Joan Donovan and Brian Friedberg label this strategy “source hacking.” Typically used during breaking news events, source hacking targets journalists and other influential public figures to pick up falsehoods and unknowingly amplify …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Social Media

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Bot

“Brian Friedberg is an investigative ethnographer whose work focuses on the impacts that alternative media, anonymous communities and popular cultures have on political communication and organization. Brian works with Dr. Joan Donovan, who heads one of the world’s leading teams focused on understanding and combating online disinformation and extremism, based at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Paper – The Coming Divorce Decline

SocArXiv Papers – The Coming Divorce Decline. Philip Cohen Last edited September 01, 2019. Supplemental Materials osf.io/yb4hr/ “This article analyzes U.S. divorce trends over the past decade and considers their implications for future divorce rates. Modeling women’s odds of divorce from 2008 to 2017 using marital events data from the American Community Survey, I find …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Today’s Firefox Blocks Third-Party Tracking Cookies and Cryptomining by Default

Mozilla Blog: “Today, Firefox on desktop and Android will — by default — empower and protect all our users by blocking third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers. This milestone marks a major step in our multi-year effort to bring stronger, usable privacy protections to everyone using Firefox. Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection gives users more control – …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Internet, Privacy

The Practitioner’s Guide to Global Investigations, Third Edition

“GIR publishes the third edition of its practical guide for external and in-house counsel, compliance officers and accounting practitioners. Chapters are authored by leading practitioners from around the world and made available to GIR’s readers free to view and download. Indexed and with comprehensive cross-referencing, this two-volume hardback features tables of cases and legislation and …

Subjects: Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Disinformation and the 2020 Election: How Social Media Industry Should Prepare

NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights – The role of social media in a democracy. “In our fourth report on online disinformation, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights explores risks to democracy and free speech posed by the expected spread of disinformation during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The report …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Social Media

We analyzed 53 years of mass shooting data. Attacks aren’t just increasing, they’re getting deadlier

LA Times Opinion: If you look at mass shootings over time, two things are alarmingly clear: The attacks are becoming far more frequent, and they are getting deadlier. “We’ve studied every public mass shooting since 1966 for a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Social Media

Could footnotes be the key to winning the disinformation wars?

Washington Post – Armed with footnotes, we can save democracy  – “We are at a distinctive point in the relationship between information and democracy: As the volume of information dissemination has grown, so too have attempts by individuals and groups to weaponize disinformation for commercial and political purposes. This has contributed to fragmentation, political polarization, …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research