The Intercept: “The United Kingdom’s top surveillance agency has acted unlawfully by keeping details about the scope of its Internet spying operations secret, a British court ruled in an unprecedented judgment issued on Friday. Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, was found to have breached human rights laws by concealing information about how it accesses surveillance… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2015
UN Human Rights Chief calls for fundamental rethink to prevent atrocities
(5 February 2015) – The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Thursday called for better leadership and a fundamental global rethink of education as a means of combatting the causes of the conflicts and atrocities occurring across the world. In a major speech delivered at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in… Continue Reading
Over 310,000 free photos, vectors and art illustrations
“Finding free images of high quality is a tedious task – due to copyright issues, attribution requirements, or simply the lack of quality. This inspired us to create Pixabay – a repository for stunning public domain pictures. Your source for free vectors, free drawings and free photos. You can use any Pixabay image without attribution… Continue Reading
Young adults more likely to say vaccinating kids should be a parental choice
Monica Anderson – “As the number of measles cases linked to the California outbreak climbs to over 100, health officials are urging parents to properly immunize their children, citing unvaccinated individuals as a main contributor to the disease’s spread. Some have linked the outbreak to the anti-vaccination movement – a group whose members claim vaccinations are… Continue Reading
Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society
Pew Research Center – January 29, 2015 – Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society – By Cary Funk and Lee Rainie “Scientific innovations are deeply embedded in national life — in the economy, in core policy choices about how people care for themselves and use the resources around them, and in the topmost… Continue Reading
Track National Unemployment, Job Gains and Job Losses
WSJ, By Andrew Van Dam and Renee Lightner – Jobs Come, Jobs Go: National Unemployment – Track the national unemployment rate month by month since 1948, the earliest year with official data, seasonally adjusted. Continue Reading
A Macro View of Shadow Banking: Levered Betas and Wholesale Funding in the Context of Secular Stagnation
A Macro View of Shadow Banking: Levered Betas and Wholesale Funding in the Context of Secular Stagnation, Zoltan Pozsar [Draft as of 1/31/2015] “The literature to date on shadow banking has focused on the wholesale funding and private money creation aspects of shadow banking. This paper draws attention to those aspects of shadow banking that… Continue Reading
Federal Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee
“As part of the Federal Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee’s mission to “to foster dialog between the Administration and the requester community, solicit public comments, and develop consensus recommendations for improving FOIA administration and proactive disclosures,” the FOIA Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee has begun to compile a list of previously released reports on agencies’… Continue Reading
Bloomberg – Twitter Reaches Deal to Show Tweets in Google Search Results
Sarah Frier – “Twitter Inc. has struck a deal with Google Inc. to make its 140-character updates more searchable online. In the first half of this year, tweets will start to be visible in Google’s search results as soon as they’re posted, thanks to a deal giving the Web company access to Twitter’s firehose, the… Continue Reading
Understanding the Federal Government’s IT Insecurity Crisis
A February 5, 2015 Report From the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers – “U.S. taxpayers have paid $59 billion for data protection since Fiscal Year 2010, including $10.3 billion in the most recent year under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). This week, the Obama Administration proposed a $14 billion cybersecurity budget… Continue Reading
EFF – In a First, Government Acknowledges the Limits of Section 215
“Following EFF’s victory in a four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the government released an opinion, written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in 2010, that concluded that Section 215—the provision of the Patriot Act the NSA relies on to collect millions of Americans’ phone records—does have a limit: census date The Commerce Department… Continue Reading
Poverty in the United States: 2013
CRS Report – Poverty in the United States: 2013. Thomas Gabe, Specialist in Social Policy, January 29, 2015. “In 2013, 45.3 million people were counted as poor in the United States under the official poverty measure—a number statistically unchanged from the 46.5 million people estimated as poor in 2012. The poverty rate, or percent of… Continue Reading
