Category «Transportation»

Google Maps is launching tools to help cities analyze infrastructure and traffic

The Verge: “Google is opening up its Google Maps Platform data so that cities, developers, and other business decision makers can more easily access information about things like infrastructure and traffic, the company announced on Wednesday. Google is integrating new datasets for Google Maps Platform directly into BigQuery, the tech giant’s fully managed data analytics …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines, Transportation

U.S. Government demands new internal passport for citizens

BoingBoing: “Starting May 7, 2025, I’ll need a REAL ID to fly from Houston to New Orleans. Apparently, my current driver’s license — you know, the one issued by my state government — isn’t “real” enough anymore. Remember when we used to mock totalitarian regimes for requiring “internal passports?” Now we get to mock ourselves! …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, E-Records, Government Documents, Privacy, Transportation

Walking Shouldn’t Be So Dangerous in the US

Scientific American – “…According to data analyzed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers in the latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, about 20 pedestrians are killed each day in the U.S. by someone driving a car. That was 7,522 pedestrians in 2022. Those researchers note that other countries’ pedestrian fatality rates are going …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law, Transportation

Rail Transit & Population Density

Comparing and ranking 250 cities around the world – “Good public transit connects people to places. Ideally, this is done efficiently and sustainably, with transit routes and stations serving and connecting the most amount of people possible. But in reality, there’s a lot of variation within and between cities in how effectively this is done. …

Subjects: Economy, Transportation

EFF Transition Memo to Trump Administration 2025

Contents  1. Introduction 2. Surveillance Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Section 702 Facial Recognition Technology Border Search and Immigration Surveillance Surveillance Tech at the Border and the Virtual Wall Reproductive Justice and Digital Surveillance 2. Encryption and Cybersecurity End-to-End Encryption Client-Side Scanning and Other Recent U.S. Attempts At Encryption Backdoors Government Cybersecurity 4. Consumer Privacy Consumer …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Copyright, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Digital Rights, Health Care, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Medicine, Patent and Trademark, Privacy, Transportation

How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy

The New York Times – no paywall: “It was driven with a frenetic focus by Mr. Musk, who channeled his libertarian impulses and resentment of regulatory oversight of his vast business holdings into a singular position of influence. Without ceding control of his companies, the richest man in the world has embedded his engineers and …

Subjects: Courts, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, E-Government, E-Mail, E-Records, Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media, Transportation

 A Digital Extension of Historical Bias: Arab Americans and the New Frontier of Algorithmic Discrimination

Via LLRX – A Digital Extension of Historical Bias: Arab Americans and the New Frontier of Algorithmic Discrimination – The integration of artificial intelligence into U.S. national security operations has automated and amplified discriminatory practices established in the post-9/11 era, creating unprecedented barriers for Arab Americans. This paper by Natalie Abdou examines how AI systems …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy, Transportation

Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data

“Managed by the Geospatial Management Office, HIFLD curates and provides access to geospatial data on U.S. critical infrastructure. Users can view data and download CSV, KML, and Shapefiles for visualization and application development.” HIFLD houses 400+ data layers. Many have robust summaries and metadata that document the source, update cadence, most recent update, and field …

Subjects: Climate Change, Energy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Housing, Legal Research, Transportation

Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School

The Environmental & Energy Law Program (EELP) provides innovative, rigorous legal analysis to: Administrative Law Clean Air Clean Cars Clean Water Corporate Climate Risk Environmental Justice Methane Emissions Power Sector Trackers – Regulatory Tracker – Tracking the regulatory steps to advance clean energy deployment and environmental protection, and provides an up-to-date and concise summary of …

Subjects: Climate Change, Energy, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Legal Research, Transportation

Fast fires

Reuters Graphics: “Fires are growing faster in the western United States. The fastest of them – termed “fast fires” – often erupt near towns and account for most structural wildfire damage according to researchers who analyzed over 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020. Fast fires grow about 4,000 acres or more on their fastest day, …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Environmental Law, Financial System, Health Care, Housing, Transportation