Category «Freedom of Information»

The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration: A Preliminary Assessment

Center for Economic Policy Research: The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration: A Preliminary Assessment, 2nd Edition 315 pages. See John Coates [Harvard Law School] chapter, The Rule of Law, begins on page 33 and includes an addendum on rule of law developments from April to September, starting at page 46. …At the President’s direction, …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Congress, Courts, Economy, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation

The 2024-25 Presidential Transition: Lessons Learned and Recommendations

Center for Presidential Transition Report: “Every presidential transition in modern history has been unique and 2024 was no exception. Although the transition of power from the outgoing Biden administration to the incoming Trump administration was peaceful, it was characterized by significant departures from established norms and set a precedent for future transitions to stray from …

Subjects: Congress, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

Official White House Site Adds Purported Media Bias Tracker

Washington Post [and The Hill] – “A new White House webpage presents a “Hall of Shame” for news reports the president disagrees with, coming after the president has voiced personal attacks on female reporters at ABC, CBS, the New York Times and Bloomberg. The White House launched a page on its website Friday devoted to …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Government, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Tennessee public libraries close for Trump-inspired book purge

Popular Information: “One hundred and eighty-one public libraries in Tennessee are reviewing their children’s collections after Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R) ordered them to remove books with LGBTQ themes or characters. Hargett suggested that libraries that made such books available to children were violating federal and state law. Some libraries have closed for days …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Legal Research, Libraries

Epstein Files Search

Follow up to post – We created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate – See also the new Epstein Files Search – powered by Justice for All Victims: Search Tags for Files, Images, People, Organizations, Countries. See also via Journalist Studio – Zeteo Scoured 26,000 Epstein Docs. Here’s What We Found. You …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Congress, E-Mail, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Welcome to the Epstein Document Network Explorer

This is a network analysis tool for exploring relationships between people, places, and events captured in the Epstein emails released by the House Oversight Committee. LLMs were used to extract these relationships from the raw document text, and as such, it is likely that there are some errors and omissions. Click on a relationship in …

Subjects: AI, Congress, E-Mail, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

How Cops Are Using Flock Safety’s ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists

EFF: “It’s no secret that 2025 has given Americans plenty to protest about. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol agents—were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car.  Through an …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy, Social Media

How billionaires took over American politics

Washington Post via MSN – “The concentration of wealth among the richest Americans is unlike anything in history — and so is billionaires’ influence in politics. In an era defined by major political divisions and massive wealth accumulation for the richest Americans, billionaires are spending unprecedented amounts on U.S. politics. Dozens have stepped up their …

Subjects: Congress, Energy, Environmental Law, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

The Librarians – documentary film on censorship

Via Kottke –  The Librarians – As part of the fascist war on “woke”, tens of thousands of books have been pulled from the shelves of libraries around the country over the past few years. On the front line are the nation’s librarians, “first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment rights”. The Librarians …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries, Privacy

Harvard Law School Library releases first complete set of digitized Nuremberg Trials records

Harvard Law Today: “Beginning today, the Harvard Law School Library is making available online the first complete, fully searchable, digitized collection of official evidentiary documents and trial transcripts in English from all 13 Nuremberg Trials, at https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/.  On the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the first trial on November 20, 1945, researchers, scholars, and …

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

Your Smartphone, Their Rules: How App Stores Enable Corporate-Government Censorship

ACLU: “Who controls what you can do on your mobile phone? What happens when your device can only run what the government decides is OK? We are dangerously close to this kind of totalitarian control, thanks to a combination of government overreach and technocratic infrastructure choices. Most Americans have a smartphone, and the average American …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Digital Rights, E-Records, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

This App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners Across the Country

404 Media / no paywall: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently invited staff to demos of an app that lets officers instantly scan a license plate, adding it to a database of billions of records that shows where else that vehicle has been spotted around the country, according to internal agency material viewed by 404 …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy