Category «Civil Liberties»

Thou Shalt Not Be Indifferent

Medium: Marian Turski, speech at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27th January 2020. “Dear friends, I am one of the few still alive of those who remained in this place almost until the very last moment before liberation. My so-called evacuation from Auschwitz began on the 18th of January. Over the next …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Knowledge Management

Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers

EFF: “Ring isn’t just a product that allows users to surveil their neighbors. The company also uses it to surveil its customers. An investigation by EFF of the Ring doorbell app for Android found it to be packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). Four main analytics and …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Legal Research, Privacy

U.S. Media Polarization and the 2020 Election: A Nation Divided

Deep partisan divisions exist in the news sources Americans trust, distrust and rely on: “As the U.S. enters a heated 2020 presidential election year, a new Pew Research Center report finds that Republicans and Democrats place their trust in two nearly inverse news media environments.  Overall, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view many heavily relied on …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Congress, Economy, Education, Energy, Environmental Law, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Social Media

Coalition of states sue over rules that could allow 3D-printed gun blueprints to be posted on internet

AP via ABC7NY: “Attorneys general in 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a federal regulation that could allow blueprints for making guns on 3D printers to be posted on the internet. New York Attorney General Tish James, who helped lead the coalition of state attorneys general, argued that posting …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research

Public Disability History

Presenting Disability Histories | Disability Histories for the Present – “Public Disability History is a blog journal and a forum for exchange between the diverse actors involved and invested in issues regarding disability. It’s a website to gather and provide resources for the history of disabilities. Furthermore, it offers a “fast track” publication mode for …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries

You Are Now Remotely Controlled – Privacy is not private

The New York Times Opinion By Shoshana Zuboff author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. …Privacy is not private, because the effectiveness of these and other private or public surveillance and control systems depends upon the pieces of ourselves that we give up — or that are secretly stolen from us. Our digital century was …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, ID Theft, Legislation, Libraries, Privacy, Social Media

Who’s Watching Your Porch?

The New York Times – Ring offers a front-door view of a country where millions of Amazon customers use Amazon cameras to watch Amazon contractors deliver Amazon packages: “…The growth of easy-to-install home-surveillance equipment, and in particular doorbell cameras, has changed American life in ways obvious and subtle. Marketed in part as a solution to …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Commerce, E-Records, Knowledge Management, Privacy

What Americans Know and Do Not Know About the Holocaust

“Most U.S. adults know what the Holocaust was and approximately when it happened, but fewer than half can correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the number of Jews who were murdered or the way Adolf Hitler came to power, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. When asked to describe in their own words what …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Social Media

Who Owns the Law? Why We Must Restore Public Ownership of Legal Publishing

Leslie Street and David R. Hansen. Who Owns the Law? Why We Must Restore Public Ownership of Legal Publishing, 26 J. Intell. Prop. L. 205 (2019) “Who owns the law? In the United States, most law is published by a handful of companies. Among the largest are Thomson Reuters, a Canadian mass-media information firm, and …

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

AI Will Not Reduce Discrimination in Hiring Practices. Does the Public Agree?

r x y, r “…I agree with Dr. Narayanan’s assessment that using AI to predict social outcomes is “fundamentally dubious,” but I don’t believe that AI is doomed to always be worse than humans at assessing job candidates for quality. This is not because we have reason to believe AI will ever be particularly good …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Economy, Knowledge Management

All we owe to animals It is not enough to conserve species and ecosystems

Aeon – We have an ethical duty to care for each individual animal on earth: “…Australia [has been] on fire. The fires have killed at least 25 humans and more than a billion animals. Animals such as koalas are especially at risk, since their normal response to threats – climbing to the tops of trees …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Environmental Law, Food and Nutrition, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Banning facial recognition – it is not enough to ensure privacy

The New York Times Opinion – We’re Banning Facial Recognition. We’re Missing the Point. The whole point of modern surveillance is to treat people differently, and facial recognition technologies are only a small part of that. “…These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, E-Records, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy