Category «Freedom of Information»

The Fight for the American Public Library

Bloomberg/City Lab: ” Library boards, school boards and legislatures are becoming battlegrounds in a push to censor books. Communities are fighting back. National Library Week in the US comes amid a period of turmoil for libraries, as efforts to censor books intensify. Visual storyteller Ariel Aberg-Riger explores the threats libraries face, their historical context and …

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

The Socio-Economic Argument for the Human Right to Internet Access

The Socio-Economic Argument for the Human Right to Internet Access, Politics Philosophy & Economics (2023). DOI: 10.1177/1470594X231167597 PHSY.org: “People around the globe are so dependent on the internet to exercise socioeconomic human rights such as education, health care, work, and housing that online access must now be considered a basic human right, a new study …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Education, Financial System, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Internet

It’s Their Content, You’re Just Licensing it

The New York Times: “Amid recent debates over several publishers’ removal of potentially offensive material from the work of popular 20th-century authors — including Roald Dahl, R.L. Stine and Agatha Christie — is a less discussed but no less thorny question about the method of the revisions. For some e-book owners, the changes appeared as …

Subjects: Censorship, Digital Rights, Education, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire

Pro Publica: “In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Financial System, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

Libraries Need More Freedom to Distribute Digital Books

The Atlantic: “Last week, a district court judge in New York ruled on Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, a case that is likely to shape how we read books on smartphones, tablets, and computers in the future. Although the case hinged on technical details of copyright law, the source of the conflict is …

Subjects: Censorship, Courts, Education, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Libraries

LocalView

LocalView is a database co-created by Soubhik Barari and Tyler Simko to advance the study of local government in the United States. “We introduce LocalView: a comprehensive dataset of over 100,000 real-time U.S. local government public meeting videos from 1,000+ localities (and counting). If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that attention, …

Subjects: Economy, Education, Energy, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The Atlantic: “The Librarians Are Not Okay”

The Librarians Are Not Okay – “…The graduate degree for librarians is not, typically, a master of arts, but a master of science—in library and information sciences. Librarians may adore books, but they are trained in the technical and data-driven work of running libraries. Unlike a privately owned bookstore, where the stock might reflect the …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Freedom of Information, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

Key Agencies Missing from Central Freedom of Information Act Portal

Congress Required Common FOIA Website in 2016, We’re Still Waiting. National Security Archive Sunshine Week Audit Names and Shames Delinquent Agencies. Justice Department and Office of Management and Budget Must Act Decisively to Ensure Portal’s Success National Security Archive: “The public still cannot submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the CIA or other …

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

NIH Plan to Enhance Public Access to the Results of NIH-Supported Research

“Open science is a priority at NIH and across the U.S. Federal Government. Earlier this year, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) declared 2023 to be the Year of Open Science. This OSTP announcement included details on actions being taken across the Federal Government to advance national open science policy, provide …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care

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

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

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