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Daily Archives: June 8, 2008

An Argument for Documenting Casualties: Violence Against Iraqi Civilians 2006

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An Argument for Documenting Casualties Violence Against Iraqi Civilians 2006, Katharine Hall, Dale Stahl

  • “Protecting the civilian population is one of the central tenets of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. Until very recently, however, the U.S. military has not had a formal system for documenting the level of violence directed against Iraqi civilians. Therefore, other groups (such as nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations, and Iraqi ministries) have filled the vacuum in reporting, relying on media accounts, surveys, death certificates, and other open-source information to generate datasets of varying transparency and quality. The resulting statistics have generated widespread debate over sources, methods, and political biases. This study examines available open-source data on Iraqi civilian fatalities and assesses problems associated with previous collection and analysis efforts. The authors present a more robust RAND Corporation Iraqi civilian violence dataset from which they derive new observations about trends in targeting and weapons in 2006. RAND’s dataset reveals that the majority of attacks in the year 2006 against civilians were directed against individuals without any identifiable affiliation, and that most attacks were carried out using firearms (rather than via improvised explosive devices or suicide attacks). These findings lead to a proposed framework for future civilian fatality data-collection efforts in Iraq and beyond.”

    • Government Data and the Invisible Hand

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    Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, Government Data and the Invisible Hand (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008 – draft version, via SSRN. Abstract: “If the next Presidential administration really wants to embrace the potential of Internet-enabled government transparency, it should follow a counter-intuitive but ultimately… Continue Reading

    Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security

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    White House: National Security Presidential Directive 59 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24, June 5, 2008 “This directive establishes a framework to ensure that Federal executive departments and agencies (agencies) use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals in… Continue Reading

    NY AG Cuomo Announces Landmark Reform Agreements With Nation’s Three Principal Credit Rating Agencies

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    News release: “Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo [June 5, 2008] announced that he has reached landmark agreements with the nation’s three principal credit rating agencies that will fundamentally reform the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (“RMBS”) market. The agreements with Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”) Moody’s Investors Service, Inc. (“Moody’s”), and Fitch, Inc. (“Fitch”) will dramatically increase the… Continue Reading

    Prison Inmates at Midyear 2007 and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2007

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    Bureau of Justice Statistics news release: “The growth in the number of prisoners under state or federal jurisdiction slowed during the first six months of 2007, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported today. The number of prisoners rose 1.6 percent, which was lower than the 2.0 percent growth during the same period… Continue Reading

    Patterns of Mobility: Laws of Human Motion

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    Understanding Individual Human Mobility Patterns [Published Version], MC Gonzalez, CA Hidalgo, A-L Barabasi. Nature (2008) 453: 779-782. “Despite their importance for urban planning, traffic forecasting and the spread of biological and mobile viruses, our understanding of the basic laws governing human motion remains limited owing to the lack of tools to monitor the time-resolved location… Continue Reading

    BLS: Employment Situation Summary, May 2008

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    News release: “The unemployment rate rose from 5.0 to 5.5 percent in May, and nonfarm payroll employment continued to trend down (-49,000), the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. In May, employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, and temporary help services, while health care continued to… Continue Reading