Category «Congress»

OPM Pay & Leave Furlough Guidance

The Washington Post – Everything you need to know about a government shutdown Office of Personnel Management (OPM) human resources guidance for agencies and employees on furloughs. There are two types of furloughs: An administrative furlough is a planned event by an agency which is designed to absorb reductions necessitated by downsizing, reduced funding, lack …

Subjects: Congress, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

An Elephant’s Personhood on Trial

The Atlantic: “A legal case involving a famous solitary elephant poses a fundamental question about animals’ rights…Until recently, the idea of elephant personhood would have struck legal observers as a joke. Just a few decades ago, most states still treated animal cruelty as a misdemeanor, like public intoxication or driving without insurance. But an increasing …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Legal Research, Legislation

House Democrats scoop up lawyers to power Trump investigations

CNN Politics: “A recent committee job posting reviewed by CNN asked for legislative counsels with a variety of expertise: “criminal law, immigration law, constitutional law, intellectual property law, commercial and administrative law (including antitrust and bankruptcy), or oversight work.”The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee needs lawyers, too, posting jobs for “executive branch investigative counsel.” …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues December 2018

Before the end of 2018, please take some time to catch-up with the cyber related updates provided by Pete Weiss every week on LLRX. Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational …

Subjects: Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Mail, Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy, Social Media

Can a Statute Have More Than One Meaning?

Doerfler, Ryan, Can a Statute Have More Than One Meaning? (December 12, 2018). New York University Law Review, Vol. 94, 2019. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3300262 “What statutory language means can vary from statute to statute, or even provision to provision. But what about from case to case? The conventional wisdom is that the same language …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research

The Fresno Bee and the War on Local News

GQ: “Local newspapers like The Fresno Bee have long been an endangered institution in America, and that was before California Rep. Devin Nunes began waging a public campaign against his hometown paper. Zach Baron spent time with the reporters fighting to keep news alive in an age when the forces they cover are working equally …

Subjects: Congress, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management

Merry Christmas – DOJ issues reg banning Bump Stocks

CNN – “The Trump administration rolled out a new federal regulation Tuesday officially banning bump-fire stocks: “Those who possess the devices, which make it easier to fire rounds from a semi-automatic weapon by harnessing the gun’s recoil to “bump” the trigger faster, will have 90 days to turn in or otherwise destroy them from the …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research

Essay – It’s Time for a Bill of Data Rights

“This essay argues that “data ownership” is a flawed, counterproductive way of thinking about data. It not only does not fix existing problems; it creates new ones. Instead, we need a framework that gives people rights to stipulate how their data is used without requiring them to take ownership of it themselves. The Data Care Act, a bill introduced …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy, Social Media

Why the US Needs a National AI Strategy and What It Should Look Like

Joshua New, senior policy analyst at the Center for Data Innovation – “The United States is the global leader in developing and using artificial intelligence (AI), but it may not be for long. Succeeding in AI requires more than just having leading companies make investments. It requires a healthy ecosystem of AI companies, robust AI …

Subjects: AI, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Defense, Knowledge Management

Computational Propaganda Project Report on Russia’s Internet Research Agency

The Computational Propaganda Project – Algorithms, Automation and Digital Politics. Philip N. Howard, Bharath Ganesh, Dimitra Liotsiou, John Kelly & Camille François, “The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018.” Working Paper 2018.2. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk. 46 pp. “Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines, Social Media

The Disinformation Report – Russia’s social media propaganda war

New Knowledge: “For years, Russia has leveraged social media to wage a propaganda war with operations that initially targeted their own citizens and sphere of influence. In 2014, they broadened those operations to include the United States and ran a multi-year campaign to manipulate and influence Americans, exploiting social and political divisions. The scale was …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research, Social Media