Category «Civil Liberties»

A Federal Tool to Check Voter Citizenship Keeps Making Mistakes

ProPublica: “…The source of the bad data was a Department of Homeland Security tool called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE. Once used mostly to check immigrants’ eligibility for public benefits, SAVE has undergone a dramatic expansion over the last year at the behest of President Donald Trump, who has long falsely claimed …

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

The Billionaire Behind Your Substack Donated $39M to Trump

W. A. Lawrence – “Marc Andreessen’s firm bankrolled Substack and donated $39 million to Trump’s orbit. Its former executives now serve in his administration. If you publish political journalism here, you should know whose roof you’re under. That is the sentence every political writer on Substack needs to sit with, because almost none of them …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Records, Financial System, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Marketing

Gallup Will No Longer Track Presidential Approval Ratings

The New York Times: “After nearly 90 years, the Gallup Organization will no longer track presidential approval ratings, which served as a steady way to measure Americans’ views of their elected leaders. The polling firm, which has been tracking presidential approval since Franklin D. Roosevelt, said that the decision was based on a shift in …

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

Media Ratings Site NewsGuard Sues Trump FTC

Deadline: “Claims Unconstitutional Effort “To Censor Speech” – “NewsGuard, the news media rating service, filed suit against the Federal Trade Commission and its chairman Andrew Ferguson on Friday, alleging that the agency was using its regulatory authority to stifle its speech. The service, launched in 2018 by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, employs a team of …

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

No One, Including Our Furry Friends, Will Be Safer in Ring’s Surveillance Nightmare

EFF: “Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad offered a vision of our streets that should leave every person unsettled about the company’s goals for disintegrating our privacy in public. In the ad, disguised as a heartfelt effort to reunite the lost dogs of the country with their innocent owners, the company previewed future surveillance of our …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Records, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy

ICE activity is pushing readers to nonprofit news sites that cover immigrant communities

NeimanLab: “In our recent rankings of web traffic at the top local newspapers and public media outlets, there’s been a consistent trend: Wherever ICE unleashes its controversial deportation tactics, the audience’s attention follows. Operation Midway Blitz sent readers to Chicago’s WBEZ, Operation Charlotte’s Web did the same for Charlotte’s WFAE, and the chaos in Minneapolis …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management

New database offers macro look at Trump administration’s immigration crackdown

Fast Company: “As the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration continues, keeping up with Immigrations and Custom Enforcement can feel like navigating a maze. From stories of agents raiding worksites and taking children in broad daylight to reported plans for new detention centers, the daily onslaught of alarming news makes it difficult to see the full …

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

Here’s how to record ICE and CBP agents as safely as possible

Wired – no paywall: “Filming federal agents in public is legal, but avoiding a dangerous—even deadly—confrontation isn’t guaranteed. Here’s how to record ICE and CBP agents as safely as possible and have an impact… That’s the paradox United States residents face as they decide how to resist—and record—ICE’s incursion into American cities.  “Unfortunately, there is …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are

Wired: “ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn’t built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.The face-recognition app Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Free Speech, Legal Research, Privacy

CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

AP: Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: “The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Trump’s Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections Adds to State Officials’ Alarm

The New York Times Gift Article – “President Trump’s declaration that he wants to “nationalize” voting in the United States arrives at a perilous moment for the relationship between the federal government and top election officials across the country. While the executive branch has no explicit authority over elections, generations of secretaries of state have …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Courts, E-Records, Free Speech, Government Documents, Legal Research

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023

Cato Institute: “Recent increases in immigration have rekindled concerns about their effects on government budgets. This paper updates a model of these effects first developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to shed light on how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets. This analysis is the …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research