Category «Legal Research»

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are

Wired: “ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn’t built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy rules.The face-recognition app Mobile Fortify, now used by United States immigration agents in towns and cities across the US, is not …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Free Speech, Legal Research, Privacy

CIA ends publication of its popular World Factbook reference tool

AP: Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: “The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Government, E-Records, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Follow the Changes: 9 Ways Web Archives are Used in Digital Investigations

Internet Archive Blogs: “Digital journalists increasingly turn to web archives like the Wayback Machine to follow how things on the Internet break, change or disappear – from deleted posts to quietly edited pages. The web has become not only a source of information but also the subject of media investigations, prompting journalists, researchers and activists …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Data Checkup A health check for federal data collections

The dataindex.us team is excited to launch the Data Checkup – a comprehensive framework for assessing the health of federal data collections, highlighting key dimensions of risk and presenting a clear status of data well-being. When we started dataindex.us, one of our earliest tools was a URL tracker: a simple way to monitor whether a …

Subjects: Censorship, E-Government, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Trump administration plans to reclassify 50,000 senior career federal workers

The New York Times Gift Article– “The Trump administration finalized a new policy on Thursday that would strip job protections from up to 50,000 federal workers, a move that would make it easier for President Trump to remove or discipline them, in his latest effort to dismantle the federal work force. Until now, the roughly …

Subjects: Censorship, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Wayback Machine debuts a new plug-in designed to fix the internet’s broken links problem

TechCrunch: “The Internet Archive is a nonprofit that — as you might expect — is devoted to archiving the internet and preserving digital context for future generations. This week, the platform announced a new tool designed to expand on that mission by helping the world’s WordPress users keep their articles in peak digital health. The …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Millions of books died so Claude could live

The Verge: “When ChatGPT launched, in November of 2022, it started a race that almost immediately consumed the tech industry. OpenAI didn’t invent the concept of AI, but most of the state-of-the-art technology was confined to research labs at companies and institutions around the world. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. And better than anyone expected. …

Subjects: AI, Copyright, Education, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Search Engines

Trump’s Call to ‘Nationalize’ Elections Adds to State Officials’ Alarm

The New York Times Gift Article – “President Trump’s declaration that he wants to “nationalize” voting in the United States arrives at a perilous moment for the relationship between the federal government and top election officials across the country. While the executive branch has no explicit authority over elections, generations of secretaries of state have …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Courts, E-Records, Free Speech, Government Documents, Legal Research

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023

Cato Institute: “Recent increases in immigration have rekindled concerns about their effects on government budgets. This paper updates a model of these effects first developed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to shed light on how immigrants, both legal and illegal, and their children affect government budgets. This analysis is the …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research

Professors Are Being Watched: ‘We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance’

The New York Times: “Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain. College professors once taught free from political interference, with mostly their students and colleagues privy to their lectures and book assignments. Now, they are being watched by state officials, …

Subjects: Education, Legal Research, Legislation

New database reveals how Americans use water

Virginia Tech: “Water powers our lives. It feeds our crops, keeps factories running, generates electricity, and fills our taps. But until now, no one had a clear, national picture of how much water we’re using — and for what. Landon Marston, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and his doctoral student Yunus Naseri are …

Subjects: Climate Change, Education, Environmental Law, Legal Research, Search Engines