Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
The Brennan Center – “To prevent corruption, the Constitution prohibits the president and other officials from receiving untoward benefits. Congress, however, must take action to enable enforcement. A number of President Donald Trump’s actions in his second term potentially violate the Constitution’s Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses. These clauses bar the president and other federal …
The New York Times Gift Article: “Experts say the new policy, which ditches software that automatically captured text messages, opens ample room for both willful and unwitting noncompliance with federal records laws. The Department of Homeland Security has stopped using software that automatically captured text messages and saved trails of communication between officials, according to …
Follow up to Epstein survivors sue Bank of America and Bank of New York Mellon – The Hill: “Documents provided by a whistleblower show Ghislaine Maxwell has asked President Trump to commute her sentence as prison employees suggest she has received “concierge-style treatment” at a new facility where she is being given custom meals and access …
Follow up to previous posting Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete – Public Citizen: “The corporate and billionaire donors to Donald Trump’s gaudy ballroom project are beset by conflicts of interest, according to a new Public Citizen report – Banquet of Greed: Trump Ballroom Donors Feast on Federal Funds and Favors. …
Follow up to previous postings – How Trump’s crackdown on law firms is undermining legal defenses for the vulnerable and What if the Big Law Firms Hadn’t Caved to Trump?, see also Above the Law: “Back in August, the New York Times reported that Kirkland and Paul Weiss (along with Skadden) — firms who had …
TechDirt: “Last year almost a dozen major U.S. ISPs were the victim of a massive, historic intrusion by Chinese hackers who managed to spy on public U.S. officials for more than a year. The “Salt Typhoon” hack was so severe, the intruders spent much of the last year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery. AT&T and …
404 Media: “The FBI is attempting to unmask the owner behind archive.today, a popular archiving site that is also regularly used to bypass paywalls on the internet and to avoid sending traffic to the original publishers of web content, according to a subpoena posted by the website. The FBI subpoena says it is part of …
Announcing the launch of our Semantic Search API in CourtListener – a major leap forward in how you search legal data. We’ve been working diligently to bring semantic search to our case law database for quite some time. Back in March, we shared a status update with extensive details on the machine learning techniques and …
EFF: “Amazon Ring’s upcoming face recognition tool has the potential to violate the privacy rights of millions of people and could result in Amazon breaking state biometric privacy laws. Ring plans to introduce a feature to its home surveillance cameras called “Familiar Faces,” to identify specific people who come into view of the camera. When …
The Authoritarian Stack: How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America – And Why Europe Is Next [This article is largely a visualization with accompanying text – very well done]. “The Contract That Changed Everything – In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of …
Opinion, The Editorial Board, The New York Times, October 31, 2025. Gift Article – Countries that slide from democracy toward autocracy tend to follow similar patterns. To measure what is happening in the United States, the Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have …
FAS – “Below you’ll find a roundup of the spookiest federal data losses across USDA, SAMHSA, EPA, FEMA, and OMB. This carousel is not for the faint of heart, but I also wrote some context –and it’s not all doom and gloom. Read more here in the Federation of American Scientists blog: https://lnkd.in/eF-yD9Qf – Visit the …
