PCMag: “The US House has reportedly banned staffers from using Microsoft Copilot on any government-owned devices. According to Axios, House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor sent a memo to congressional officers telling them that the AI chatbot is prohibited from use of government-owned devices, “due to the threat of leaking House data to non-House approved cloud… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Congress
2024 Edelman Trust Barometer
“The 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals a new paradox at the heart of society. Rapid innovation offers the promise of a new era of prosperity, but instead risks exacerbating trust issues, leading to further societal instability and political polarization. In a year where half the global population can vote in new leaders, the acceptance of… Continue Reading
America splintering into more than a dozen news bubbles
Axios: “Shards of glass: Inside media’s 12 splintering realities – You can’t understand November’s election — or America itself — without reckoning with how our media attention has shattered into a bunch of misshapen pieces. Think of it as the shards of glass phenomenon. Not long ago, we all saw news and information through a… Continue Reading
TikTokSpreads Misinformation 20 Percent of the Time and Is Banned in China
NewsGuard Reality Check: “The debate in Washington about what to do about TikTok is not about hypothetical harms. NewsGuard research over the years has shone a harsh light on TikTok as a misinformation superspreader. In one report, NewsGuard analysts mimicked how TikTok users interact with the video platform by analyzing 540 TikTok results based on… Continue Reading
A new archive of modern American political history
Semafor Media – The Cook Political Report, which has tracked the gritty day-to-day of politics for four decades, will put its entire archive online tomorrow, offering a remarkable and nonpartisan window into modern American political history. Charlie Cook launched the publication in 1984 as a simply-printed tipsheet covering political campaigns, and it grew into a… Continue Reading
Fact-opinion differentiation
Misinformation Review – paper by Matthew Mettler & Jeffery J. Mondak: “Statements of fact can be proved or disproved with objective evidence, whereas statements of opinion depend on personal values and preferences. Distinguishing between these types of statements contributes to information competence. Conversely, failure at fact-opinion differentiation potentially brings resistance to corrections of misinformation and… Continue Reading
House Committee Approves Bill Restricting Sales of Sensitive Data to Foreign Adversaries
EPIC: “March 7, 2024 the House Energy & Commerce Committee approved H.R. 7520, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, sponsored by Representative Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). The bill prohibits data brokers from selling, transferring, or providing access to Americans’ sensitive data to certain foreign adversaries… Continue Reading
The tyranny of America’s Supreme Court
FT.com [unpaywalled]: “The great thing about modern sports is that you can check decisions on replay. No amount of parsing could reconcile the court’s two decisions with a single set of rules. The common ground between the two is that they suit Trump’s purposes. The first was a form of judicial slow walk. Last December… Continue Reading
Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry?
Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986 – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process… Continue Reading
Wyden’s Gets FTC To Protect Data Of 1.6 B People Tracked By Now-Bankrupt Data Broker
TechDirt: “There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits… Continue Reading
Fetal personhood laws, explained
Vox: “The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern… Continue Reading
Supreme Court Inadvertently Reveals Confounding Late Change in Trump Ballot Ruling
Slate: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the… Continue Reading
