DOJ Oversight and Review Division 25-01. Redacted For Public Release. A Review of the Department of Justice’s Issuance of Compulsory Process to Obtain Records of Members of Congress, Congressional Staffers, and Members of the News Media: “In the spring and summer of 2017, CNN.com (CNN), The New York Times, and The Washington Post published articles… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Civil Liberties
Gisèle Pelicot, person of the year 2024
The New European [unpaywalled] – Our 2024 Person of the Year has changed the rules, reversed the language and given women permission to reject shame …But then Gisèle Pelicot did the unthinkable. She demanded that the court show the tapes to her rapists and journalists while she faced her attackers. She stared the rules in the… Continue Reading
What is your digital footprint and how can you protect it?
Proton VPN Blog: “Whenever you do something online, you leave a trail of information behind that can be used to uniquely identify and track you. This is your digital footprint(new window). In this article, we’ll look at: What is a digital footprint? Digital footprint examples Why does your digital footprint matter? How to check your… Continue Reading
BirdVoxDetect: Large-Scale Detection and Classification of Flight Calls for Bird Migration Monitoring
V. Lostanlen et al., “BirdVoxDetect: Large-Scale Detection and Classification of Flight Calls for Bird Migration Monitoring,” in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, vol. 32, pp. 4134-4145, 2024, doi: 10.1109/TASLP.2024.3444486. “Sound event classification has the potential to advance our understanding of bird migration. Although it is long known that migratory species have a… Continue Reading
American Autocracy Threat Tracker
State Democracy Defenders Action: “President-elect Donald Trump has said he will be a “dictator on day one.” Our American Autocracy Threat Tracker comprehensively catalogs all of Trump’s and his allies’ Project 2025 and other specific plans and promises. We also catalog potential bipartisan solutions to address the threat both now and should it come to… Continue Reading
Rebel Yell
Tablet – Part I: Donald Trump broke the back of the GOP establishment by driving blue-collar and lower-middle-class politics in a Southern direction. His gentry Republican critics have only themselves to blame. Donald Trump’s first and in many ways most enduring political accomplishment is not the humiliation of the Democratic Party he has toppled in… Continue Reading
Beyond Fairness in Computer Vision: A Holistic Approach to Mitigating Harms and Fostering Community-Rooted Computer Vision Research
Timnit Gebru and Remi Denton (2024), “Beyond Fairness in Computer Vision: A Holistic Approach to Mitigating Harms and Fostering Community-Rooted Computer Vision Research”, Foundations and Trends® in Computer Graphics and Vision: Vol. 16, No. 3, pp 215–321. DOI: 10.1561/0600000102. “The field of computer vision is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise, with its use in surveillance… Continue Reading
Guide to Abortion Privacy – Digital Defense Fund
Keep Your Abortion Private & Secure – This page is organized into different security-related threats. You can jump to the ones that most concern you. Along with each scenario is a list of digital security tips to neutralize the threats. These are possible concerns you might have: Seeing advertisements related to pregnancy/abortion Tech companies like… Continue Reading
Location data firm helps police find out when suspects visited their doctor
Ars Technica: “A location-tracking company that sells its services to police departments is apparently using addresses and coordinates of doctors’ and lawyers’ offices and other types of locations to help cops compile lists of places visited by suspects, according to a 404 Media report published today. Fog Data Science, which says it “harness[es] the power… Continue Reading
The Ocean Investigations Guide
Via Ian Urbina: “Investigative reporting about activities at sea is a unique specialty requiring distinct tools and tactics. How can I find open-source footage evidence of human rights abuses or illegal fishing on ships? Is it possible to connect ships to the specific seafood buyers? Is there a way to track ships even when they… Continue Reading
Searchable archive of DOJ Civil Rights Division reports and findings letters
Tyler McBrien. DOJ Police Department Pattern or Practice Reports and Findings Letters. A searchable archive of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division reports from investigations into patterns and practices of excessive force, biased policing, and other unconstitutional practices by law enforcement. Continue Reading
Deportation Defense Manual
“The purpose of this manual is to provide information, resources and a guide to create a plan of action to protect targeted communities against hyper enforcement perpetuated by ICE (“la Migra”). It is important to remember when we act together, we have the power to protect one another even when immigration laws and agents do… Continue Reading
