Category «Civil Liberties»

Why Congress should look at Twitter and Facebook

MIT Technology Review: “If America’s politicians really care about the damage online platforms can do, they should look at online conspiracy theories—and how they’re made worse by the design of social media sites…Platforms have too much power to sway public opinion and influence behavior—and that directly affects our capacity to engage in deliberative debate and …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy, Social Media

Age Discrimination across the Business Cycle

Age Discrimination across the Business Cycle. Gordon B. Dahl Matthew M. Knepper. NBER Working Paper No. 27581. Issued in July 2020: “A key prediction of discrimination models is that competition in the labor market serves as a moderating force on employer discrimination. In the presence of market frictions, however, recessions create excess labor supply and …

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

Report highlights shell company loophole that could be abused by foreigners who want to interfere in U.S. elections

Issue One: “Shell companies that give money to super PACs could be conduits for foreign money in the 2020 election, warns a new report published today by Issue One. Under current law, super PACs are permitted to collect contributions of unlimited amounts, but must disclose their donors. In some cases, their campaign finance disclosures list …

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

How to watch John Lewis’s funeral and Barack Obama’s reported eulogy live online

FastCompany – “The private burial service for civil rights icon John Lewis takes place today in Atlanta. Lewis passed away earlier this month at the age of 80 from pancreatic cancer. Lewis was one of the most prominent civil rights icons from the 1960s onwards, and since then he has served in public office in …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation

China Is the First Surveillance Superpower

The Atlantic – Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe. “…Xi’s pronouncements on AI have a sinister edge. Artificial intelligence has applications in nearly every human domain, from the instant translation of spoken language to early viral-outbreak detection. But Xi also …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores

Reuters Investigation: “Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the country, a Reuters investigation found. In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Economy, Financial System, Legal Research, Privacy

ABA Report on Women of Color Lawyers Lands During National Reckoning with Race, Perspective

“The summer of 2020 was not on the minds of researchers when, three years ago, they embarked on studying the experiences of women of color who had practiced in law firms for 15 years or more as part of a multipronged project on long-term careers by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the ABA Commission …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

San Francisco Police Accessed Business District Camera Network to Spy on Protestors

EFF: “The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) conducted mass surveillance of protesters at the end of May and in early June using a downtown business district’s camera network, according to new records obtained by EFF. The records show that SFPD received real-time live access to hundreds of cameras as well as a “data dump” of …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

White House Tells EPIC to Delete COVID-19 Records, EPIC Declines

“In an unusual development, the White House directed EPIC this week to delete a set of records that EPIC recently obtained from the Office of Science & Technology Policy—a request which EPIC declined. On Tuesday, EPIC published hundreds of records about the White House’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and proposals to use location data …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting

Brookings – The following is the preamble to “Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Duty Voting,” a report from the Working Group on Universal Voting convened by The Brookings Institution and The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School. Download the full PDF report here. “Imagine an American democracy …

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

Why Hundreds of Mathematicians Are Boycotting Predictive Policing

Popular Mechanics – “Several prominent academic mathematicians want to sever ties with police departments across the U.S., according to a letter submitted to Notices of the American Mathematical Society on June 15. The letter arrived weeks after widespread protests against police brutality, and has inspired over 1,500 other researchers to join the boycott. These mathematicians …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Knowledge Management, Legal Research