CRS Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law. Richard M. Thompson, Law Clerk. December 1, 2011 “Technology has advanced considerably since the framers established the constitutional parameters for searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment. What were ink quills and parchment are now cell phones and the… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: December 2011
EPIC: Senate Open Investigation Into Google Search
EPIC: “Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT), Chairman and Ranking member of the Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, have sent a letter to FTC Chairman John Liebowitz, expressing concern about Google’s business practices and the company’s impact on competition in Internet search and commerce. In September, EPIC wrote to the FTC and described how Google… Continue Reading
Kaiser Health Tracking Poll – December 2011
Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, December 2011: “The October downturn in the share of Americans with a favorable view of the health reform law, a dip driven by an erosion of support among Democrats, has been fully reversed in December, with support among Democrats rebounding and overall national opinion on the law returning to the roughly… Continue Reading
Inspection Report: Waste Disposal and Recovery Act Efforts at the Oak Ridge Reservation
Inspection Report: Waste Disposal and Recovery Act Efforts at the Oak Ridge Reservation, INS-RA-L-12-01 December 2011 “he Department of Energy (Department) expends billions of dollars to clean up contaminated sites and dispose of hazardous waste. The Department’s Oak Ridge Office (ORO) is responsible for processing and disposing of the Transuranic (TRU) waste on the Oak… Continue Reading
U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security
“[December 19, 2011], President Obama issued an executive order directing the implementation of the United States first-ever National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security. The plan was developed with collaboration across the U.S. government, and with the help of NGOs and civil society groups that support women and girls every day. It is a… Continue Reading
GAO – High Risks & Challenges Overview
High Risks & Challenges Overview: “Every two years, GAO provides Congress with an update on its High-Risk Program, which highlights major problems that are at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse mismanagement or in need of broad reform. There are 30 areas on GAO’s High-Risk list. Pages in this section discuss each of these high-risk… Continue Reading
OECD Factbook 2011-2012
OECD Factbook 2011-2012 – Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics “OECDs dynamic and comprehensive statistical annual showing a wide range of key statistics for its member countries and major additional countries. For each indicator presented, there is explanatory text including a definition, explanation of long-term trends, and references; a table showing the indicator over a significant… Continue Reading
OECD unemployment rate rises slightly to 8.3% in October
News release: “The OECD area unemployment rate rose slightly, to 8.3% in October 2011, compared to 8.2% in September. The rate has hovered around this level since January 2011. The Euro area unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point to 10.3% in October 2011, the highest rate recorded since the global financial crisis. The Netherlands… Continue Reading
2011 Immigration-Related Laws and Resolutions in the States (Jan. 1Dec. 7, 2011)
News release: “In 2011, state legislators introduced 1,607 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. This is a significant increase compared with 2010, when 46 states considered more than 1,400 bills and resolutions pertaining to immigrants. Even though more bills were introduced this year, however, 11 percent… Continue Reading
Research: Reading Digits in Natural Images with Unsupervised Feature Learning
Reading Digits in Natural Images with Unsupervised Feature Learning, Yuval Netzer, Tao Wang, Adam Coates, Alessandro Bissacco, Bo Wu1, Andrew Y. Ng “Detecting and reading text from natural images is a hard computer vision task that is central to a variety of emerging applications. Related problems like document character recognition have been widely studied by… Continue Reading
New GAO Reports: Coast Guard, International Climate Change Assessments, Port Security Grant Program
Coast Guard – Security Risk Model Meets DHS Criteria, but More Training Could Enhance Its Use for Managing Programs and Operations, GAO-12-14, Nov 17, 2011 International Climate Change Assessments, Federal Agencies Should Improve Reporting and Oversight of U.S. Funding, GAO-12-43, Nov 17, 2011 Port Security Grant Program – Risk Model, Grant Management, and Effectiveness Measures… Continue Reading
CCH Tax Briefing – 2011 Tax Year-in-Review
2011 Lays Groundwork For Tax Reform, Makes Important Changes Impacting 2012: “2011 had been predicted to be a quiet year in federal tax news as it landed between major tax legislation in 2010 and expected tax reform in 2012 but the year brought many significant tax developments from the Obama Administration, Congress, the… Continue Reading
