Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
“The Dignity Index scores distinct phrases along an eight-point scale from contempt to dignity. Lower scores (1-4) reflect divisive language while higher scores (5-8) reflect language grounded in dignity. In its pilot season, a trained group of students supported by the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute and the Hinckley Institute of Politics …
The Atlantic [read free] “By now, December’s congressional hearing about anti-Semitism at universities, during which the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT all claimed that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their university’s policies only “depending on the context,” is already a well-worn meme. Surely there is nothing left to …
“U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., revealed today that an anti-abortion political group used mobile phone location data to send targeted misinformation to people who visited any of 600 reproductive health clinics in 48 states. In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, Wyden urged the government to act quickly to …
“Our nation incarcerates more than 1.2 million people in state and federal prisons, and two out of three of these incarcerated people are also workers. In most instances, the jobs these nearly 800,000 incarcerated workers have look similar to those of millions of people working on the outside. But there are two crucial differences: Incarcerated …
Bahnson, Jane and Shreve, Wickliffe, Legal Treatises and the Evolution of Civil Rights Case Law (November 7, 2023). Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2023-68, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4626237 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4626237 – “During the 2022 term, the Supreme Court cited treatises to change legal precedent in two important civil rights cases. We …
Google: “Spyware is typically used to monitor and collect data from high-risk users like journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents and opposition party politicians. These capabilities have grown the demand for spyware technology, making way for a lucrative industry used to sell governments and nefarious actors the ability to exploit vulnerabilities in consumer devices. Though the …
“As many as 50 hostages whom Hamas abducted during its Oct. 7 attack could be dead, Israel said privately. The figure, presented during recent talks in Cairo, according to Egyptian officials, has been key in negotiating the release of hostages—alive and dead (🔐 read for free). Israel has publicly acknowledged 29 deaths. If the private …
The New York Times [read free]: “…As America’s libraries have become noisy and sometimes dangerous new battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars, librarians like Ms. Neujahr and their allies have moved from the stacks to the front lines. People who normally preside over hushed sanctuaries are now battling groups that demand the mass removal of …
EPIC: “In December 2023, Google announced an update to its location data policy to provide users with more control over their sensitive location information. While this seems like a promising step in the right direction, we should be mindful of Google’s long history of failing to uphold its privacy obligations and vigilant in monitoring Google’s …
ProPublica: “…Axon, the nation’s largest provider of police cameras and of cloud storage for the video they capture, has a database of footage that has grown from around 6 terabytes in 2016 to more than 100 petabytes today. That’s enough to hold more than 5,000 years of high definition video, or 25 million copies of …
Mother Jones: “On Tuesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation broadening the state’s definition of rape, eliminating the penile penetration requirement. The bill, “Rape Is Rape,” expands the law to include nonconsensual anal, oral, and vaginal sexual contact. Starting in September, New York will be like many other states: The penal code will not limit rape to …
ADL Report – “Right-wing extremist terror incidents in the U.S. have been increasing since the mid-2000s, but the past six years have seen their sharpest rise yet. There were just seven right-wing terror incidents in the period 2005-2007, but by 2017-2019 there were 27, which increased to 40 in 2020-2022. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center …
