Monthly archives: November, 2025

Texas schools are using AI to screen library books under new state law

Austin-American Statesman – “…Nestled in a red-leaning suburb south of Houston, Pearland is one of several school districts turning to artificial intelligence to keep up with the law, Senate Bill 13, which requires boards to sign off on all library purchases. The legislation comes after a 2023 law first required schools to purge “sexually explicit” …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

AI is Breaking the Browser’s Back

Spyglass: “A funny thing happened on the way to AI web browsers taking over the world: they’re now getting blocked left and right from doing the things that would make them useful. This is, to say the least, a problem. I first noticed it when OpenAI rolled out their ‘ChatGPT Atlas’ browser a couple weeks …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Microsoft, Search Engines

The Nonprofit Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work

The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Nonprofit Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work. “The web archive Common Crawl has been quietly funneling paywalled articles to AI companies—and lying to publishers about it.” “The Common Crawl Foundation is little known outside of Silicon Valley. For more than a decade, the nonprofit has been scraping billions of webpages …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, E-Commerce, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

In Remembrance of Dearly Departed Federal Datasets

FAS – “Below you’ll find a roundup of the spookiest federal data losses across USDA, SAMHSA, EPA, FEMA, and OMB. This carousel is not for the faint of heart, but I also wrote some context –and it’s not all doom and gloom. Read more here in the Federation of American Scientists blog: https://lnkd.in/eF-yD9Qf – Visit the …

Subjects: Censorship, Climate Change, E-Government, E-Records, Environmental Law, Food and Nutrition, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Medicine

How to Opt-Out of Airlines Selling Your Travel Data to the Government

404 Media: “Most people probably have no idea that when you book a flight through major travel websites, a data broker owned by U.S. airlines then sells details about your flight, including your name, credit card used, and where you’re flying to the government. The data broker has compiled billions of ticketing records the government …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Digital Rights, E-Commerce, E-Government, E-Records, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Transportation

There’s a Right To Record ICE Raids–and There’s No Blanket Immunity for Raiders

Cato Institute – “One of the striking features of the present administration is the regularity with which its leaders, from President Donald Trump on down, confidently describe the state of the law in ways entirely contrary to what had been seen as settled, on topics that range from flag burning to Congress’s TikTok ban to …

Subjects: Courts, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines, Social Media

arXiv Changes Rules After Getting Spammed With AI-Generated ‘Research’ Papers

404 Media – “arXiv, a preprint publication for academic research that has become particularly important for AI research, has announced it will no longer accept computer science review articles and position papers. Why? A tide of AI slop has flooded the computer science category with low-effort papers that are “little more than annotated bibliographies, with …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Cybercrime, Digital Rights, Education, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Medicine, Search Engines

Walgreens Launches Enhanced Respiratory Index to Track Flu and COVID-19 Hotspots

The interactive online tool provides localized data on respiratory virus activity across the country. BUSINESS WIRE – Walgreens has launched the 2025-2026 Respiratory Index, an interactive online tool that tracks flu and COVID-19 activity nationwide using prescription, testing and over the counter (OTC) product purchase data from Walgreens locations nationwide. This unique tool builds on …

Subjects: Health Care, Medicine, Search Engines

Think ICE Is Bad Now? Today the Border Patrol Is Taking It Over

How Gregory Bovino Proudly Became Trump’s #1 Immigration Stormtrooper – “A big part of this newsletter, amid the onrushing tide of news and never-ending flurry of scandal, is to mark when something major changes in our national fabric. Last night, something did — and you probably haven’t even heard about it yet. In a sweeping …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

Rogue Goodreads Librarian Edits Site to Expose ‘Censorship in Favor of Trump Fascism’

404 media [no paywall] – “On Friday morning, Goodreads users who wanted to read reviews of the werewolf romance Mate by Ali Hazelwood were confronted by the cover of the new Eric Trump book Under Siege. One of the site’s volunteer moderators had gone rogue and changed Mate’s cover, added the subtitle “Goodreads Censorship in …

Subjects: E-Commerce, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Marketing