Category «Civil Liberties»

Freedom in the World 2023

Freedom House – Marking 50 Years in the Struggle for Democracy – Key Findings Global freedom declined for the 17th consecutive year.  Moscow’s war of aggression led to devastating human rights atrocities in Ukraine. New coups and other attempts to undermine representative government destabilized Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Peru, and Brazil. Previous years’ coups and ongoing …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Free Speech, Government Documents, Internet, Poverty

Inside the Suspicion Machine

Wired: “Obscure government algorithms are making life-changing decisions about millions of people around the world. Here, for the first time, we reveal how one of these systems works…Machine learning algorithms like Rotterdam’s are being used to make more and more decisions about people’s lives, including what schools their children attend, who gets interviewed for jobs, …

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

The privacy loophole in your doorbell

Politico: “…As networked home surveillance cameras become more popular, Larkin’s case, which has not previously been reported, illustrates a growing collision between the law and people’s own expectation of privacy for the devices they own — a loophole that concerns privacy advocates and Democratic lawmakers, but which the legal system hasn’t fully grappled with. Questions …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

Democracy Report 2023

DEMOCRACY REPORT 2023 #Defiance in the Face of #Autocratization. “Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) produces the largest global dataset on #democracy with over 31 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2022. Involving almost 4,000 scholars and other country experts, V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. V-Dem enables new ways to study …

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

State Child Privacy Law Update, February 28, 2023

WilmerHale: State Child Privacy Law Update, February 28, 2023: “In addition to the numerous comprehensive privacy laws that have been proposed in at least 20 states thus far in 2023, legislative trends demonstrate an emerging focus on regulations that address specific types of information, including the personal information of children. To date, 19 such proposals …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy, Social Media

Weapons of control, shields of impunity: Internet shutdowns in 2022

accessnow: “From Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe, authorities are imposing internet shutdowns at staggering rates. In 2022 alone, governments and other actors disrupted the internet at least 187 times across 35 countries — breaking our #KeepItOn record for the number of countries to hit the kill switch in a single year. Not only are shutdowns resurging after …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

EPIC, Coalition Call for ICE to Cancel Contract with LexisNexis for Invasive Surveillance Databases

EPIC: “In a letter signed by more than 80 immigrant rights, racial justice, government accountability, human rights, and privacy organizations, EPIC and coalition members called upon ICE not to renew a $22 million contract for a suite of surveillance services. LexisNexis gives ICE agents access to the Accurint database compiled from thousands of sources and …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Commerce, E-Records, Financial System, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines

Worsening climate shocks risk distracting from efforts to reduce carbon emissions, creating ‘doom loop’

“The world is entering a more difficult stage of the climate and ecological crisis where its symptoms are drawing attention away from efforts to tackle its root causes, according to a new report published by the IPPR and Chatham House think tanks. Huge resources are being deployed to respond to the growing number of climate …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Energy

Annual Transparency Index Links Corruption with Increased Violence Globally

“The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), released yesterday by Transparency International, concludes that 95% of countries have made little to no progress fighting corruption since 2017.  This 21st edition of the index ranks 180 countries and territories by experts’ perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very …

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

Nine years of ranking the most influential companies driving tropical deforestation

“2023: A watershed year for action on deforestation – For nine years, Global Canopy’s Forest 500 has tracked the policies and performance of the 350 most influential companies and 150 financial institutions linked to deforestation in their supply chains and investments. We are three years past the 2020 deadline that many organisations set themselves to …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Environmental Law, Financial System

Strengthening and Democratizing the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem

Strengthening and Democratizing the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Innovation Ecosystem: An Implementation Plan for a National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource. National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force, January 2023. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing our country and our world. From how citizens navigate their daily lives to how researchers drive discoveries in the lab to how …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Congress, Education, Food and Nutrition, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Poverty