Day archives: November 18th, 2025

This App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners Across the Country

404 Media / no paywall: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently invited staff to demos of an app that lets officers instantly scan a license plate, adding it to a database of billions of records that shows where else that vehicle has been spotted around the country, according to internal agency material viewed by 404 …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy

IRS Accessed Massive Database of Americans Flights Without a Warrant

Follow up to previous post – Airlines Sell 5 Billion Plane Ticket Records to the Government For Warrantless Searching – See Also 404 Media / no paywall: “The IRS accessed a database of hundreds of millions of travel records, which show when and where a specific person flew and the credit card they used, without …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Records, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

Way Back Machine and delayed indexing of pages

Updated on November 20, 2025 – “The Wayback Machine, openlibrary.org, and some other archive.org functions are offline because some network gear has failed. We apologize and are working on it. More as it happens.” Via Mark Graham, Director, Wayback Machine, Internet Archive, in response to a question by a leading government documents Librarian respective to …

Subjects: E-Records, Education, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Search Engines

The most effective online fact-checkers? Your peers

Research shows that being called out by peers, not algorithms or experts, makes online authors think twice about spreading misinformation. “When the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) invited users to flag false or misleading posts, critics initially scoffed. How could the same public that spreads misinformation be trusted to correct it? But a recent …

Subjects: AI, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Social Media

How Do Americans View Childhood Vaccines, Vaccine Research and Policy?

Pew Research – Nearly two-thirds have high confidence in vaccine effectiveness, and about half trust their safety testing and schedule; Republican support for school vaccine requirements continues to slide. A majority of Americans (63%) are highly confident that childhood vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness. And majorities say these vaccines protect both vaccinated children …

Subjects: Education, Health Care, Knowledge Management, Medicine

Epstein Files Bill Is On Its Way To Trump’s Desk

CBS News – Epstein files bill will head to Trump’s desk after approval by House and Senate – What to know about the Epstein files bill: The Senate approved a House-passed bill that would require the Justice Department to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, effectively sending it to President Trump’s desk …

Subjects: Censorship, Congress, E-Mail, E-Records, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries

Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries, October 13, 2025. Contributing authors: Cas Laskowski, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law, Daniel F. Cracchiolo Law Library, Richard Buckingham, Suffolk University Law School, Moakley Law Library, Taryn Marks, Stanford Law School, Robert Crown Law Library Teresa Miguel-Stearns, University of Arizona, James E. Rogers …

Subjects: AI, Courts, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Marketing

Trump administration announces dismantling of parts of the Education Dept

Washington Post via MSN: The Education Department said Tuesday that it will move several of its offices to other federal departments, a unilateral effort aimed at dismantling an agency created by Congress to ensure equal access to educational opportunity but long derided by conservatives as ineffective. The department has signed interagency agreements to outsource six …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, Education, Free Speech, Government Documents, Legal Research

The Ongoing History of Protest Music

Ongoing History of Protest Music – “Since there has always been social injustice in the world, there have always been people protesting many social ills. In many instances, people express oppression through chants and songs. Notable examples include Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” (based on the Friedrich Schiller poem “Ode to Freedom”), which supported universal brotherhood …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Free Speech