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Category Archives: Government Documents

UN Cybercrime Draft Convention Dangerously Expands State Surveillance Powers

EFF –This is the third post in a series highlighting flaws in the proposed UN Cybercrime Convention. Check out Part I, our detailed analysis on the criminalization of security research activities, and Part II, an analysis of the human rights safeguards. “As we near the final negotiating session for the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty, countries… Continue Reading

Tell Congress: Don’t Let Anyone Own The Law

EFF: “Court after court has recognized that no one can own the text of the law. But the Pro Codes Act is a deceptive power grab that will help giant industry associations ration access to huge swaths of U.S. laws. Tell Congress not to fall for it. A large portion of the regulations we all… Continue Reading

The FOIA.gov Search Tool Updated

“FOIA.gov, the government’s central resource for information about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) now includes additional functionality to help users locate commonly requested law enforcement and related records. The FOIA.gov Search Tool was updated to add a “Law Enforcement records” pre-defined user journey that helps the public more quickly locate commonly requested information. This user journey… Continue Reading

Voice-cloning technology brings key Supreme Court moment to ‘life’

AP: “Seventy years ago on Friday, no one outside of the U.S. Supreme Court building heard it when Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision on school desegregation. Now, through the use of an innovative voice-cloning technology, it is becoming possible for people to “hear” Warren read the decision… Continue Reading

Ransomware Attack Takes Down Computer System for America’s Largest Trial Court

AP: “A ransomware attack has shut down the computer system of the largest trial court in the country, officials with the Superior Court of Los Angeles County said. The cybersecurity attack began early Friday and is not believed to be related to the faulty CrowdStrike software update that has disrupted airlines, hospitals and governments around… Continue Reading

US financial regulators, banks, industry groups remain cautious on Supreme Court’s “Chevron” deference ruling

Thomson Reuters: “The Supreme Court’s recent decision that overturns the decades-old “Chevron deference” doctrine will likely have an enormous impact on the financial industry, and only time will tell how it fully plays out US financial institutions, the regulators who oversee them, and the industry groups that advocate for them have largely maintained a curious… Continue Reading

Descrybe.AI On A Mission To Democratize Legal Research

Artificial Lawyer: “In this week’s AL TV Product Walk Through we take a tour of descrybe.ai a free genAI-powered legal research tool built by Richard DiBona and Kara Peterson, a husband and wife team who share an interest in technology, the law, and the democratization of information. By April 2024 they already had over 3 million… Continue Reading

Making sense of rumors about the Trump assassination attempt

2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. Key Takeaways After the assassination attempt on presidential candidate Donald Trump, people converged online to make sense of available… Continue Reading

Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism

U.S. Department of State -“Concerned states, special envoys, national coordinators, and representatives tasked by their governments to counter antisemitism, in cooperation with international bodies, offer the following best practices, which have proven to be effective guidelines in formulating public policy. These legally non-binding guidelines, adopted in Buenos Aires, Argentina, include policies to monitor and combat… Continue Reading

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Visits Had Dozens of Potential Threats, Secret Service Docs Show

Bloomberg: Jason Leopold July 17, 2024 [also read via Twitter Thread] “Long before the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday, I spent years looking into the way the Secret Service responded to threats against its protectees. In 2022, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the agency for records of… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models, and Law

Surden, Harry, ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models, and Law (March 31, 2024). Fordham Law Review, Vol. 92, 2024, Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4779694  – “This Article explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT/GPT-4, detailing the advances and challenges in applying AI to law. It first explains how these AI technologies work… Continue Reading

The Donald Trump Interview Transcript

Bloomberg – Full text, fact-checked – unpaywalled – “Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed former US President Donald Trump at his golf club, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on June 25, two days before the first 2024 presidential debate and about two weeks before a failed assassination attempt. In a discussion focused on business and the global economy,… Continue Reading