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Washington Post – By Barton Gellman and Greg Miller: “U.S. spy agencies have built an intelligence-gathering colossus since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but remain unable to provide critical information to the president on a range of national security threats, according to the government’s top-secret budget. The $52.6 billion “black budget” for fiscal 2013, obtained by The Washington Post …
Remarks by the President at the “Let Freedom Ring” Ceremony Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, August 28, 2013. “We shouldn’t fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963, the economy has changed. The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold …
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper by Vladimir Hlasny and Paolo Verme: “By all accounts, income inequality in Egypt is low and had been declining during the decade that preceded the 2011 revolution. As the Egyptian revolution was partly motivated by claims of social injustice and inequalities, this seems at odds with a low level …
ACLU: “[On August 26, 2013], we filed the opening brief in our lawsuit challenging the NSA’s ongoing collection of the call records of virtually everyone in the United States, including the ACLU’s. We’re asking the court for a preliminary injunction ordering the government to stop collecting our data and to bar any use of the …
U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act (as required by Section 1001(3) of Public Law 107-56), August 2013. “Between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013, the period covered by this report, the OIG processed 515 new civil rights or …
Ewen MacAskill in New York, The Guardian, Thursday 22 August 2013: “The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency’s activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian. The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred …
“GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location and Tone – GDELT is a new CAMEO-coded data set containing more than 200-million geolocated events with global coverage for 1979 to the present. The primary author is Kalev Leetaru at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The data are based on a variety of international news …
From Cairo to Wall Street to the West Bank, plotting a world of upheaval, by Dana Stuster – “This is what data from a world in turmoil looks like. The Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) tracks news reports and codes them for 58 fields, from where an incident took place to what sort of event it …
Via the Guardian’s Lisa O’Carroll: “The Guardian has struck a partnership with the New York Times which will give the US paper access to some of the sensitive cache of documents leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. The arrangement was made when the Guardian was faced with demands from the UK government …
Final version 10 July 2013 –International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance: “As technologies that facilitate State surveillance of communications advance, States are failing to ensure that laws and regulations related to communications surveillance adhere to international human rights and adequately protect the rights to privacy and freedom of expression. This …
“In response to an EPIC FOIA request, the Department of Homeland Security has produced documents revealing that the agency has failed to establish privacy safeguards for “BOSS” (the Biometric Optical Surveillance System), an elaborate system for facial recognition and individual identification. The documents obtained by EPIC indicate that none of the agency’s contracts or statements …
King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal; Many Americans See Racial Disparities, August 22, 2013 “Five decades after Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C., a new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that fewer than half (45%) of all Americans say the country has made substantial progress toward racial equality …
