The New York Times & ProPublica: “Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists and grifters to organize at scale and to sidestep scrutiny from the authorities, has looked the other way as illegal and extremist activities have flourished openly on the app. The degree to which Telegram has been inundated by such content has not been previously reported. The Times investigation found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists who coordinate activities among almost one million people around the world. At least two dozen channels sold weapons. In at least 22 channels with more than 70,000 followers, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery to more than 20 countries. Hamas, ISIS and other terror groups have thrived on Telegram, often amassing large audiences across dozens of channels. The Times analyzed more than 40 channels associated with Hamas, which showed that average viewership surged up to 10 times after the Oct. 7 attacks, garnering more than 400 million views in October. Telegram is “the most popular place for ill-intentioned, violent actors to congregate,” said Rebecca Weiner, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism at the New York Police Department. “If you’re a bad guy, that’s where you will land.”…
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Category Archives: Legal Research
Billion-Dollar Bank Accused of Secretly Sending Customers’ Personal and Financial Information to Facebook, Google and Microsoft
The Daily Hodl: “The eighth-largest bank in the US by total assets is accused of secretly collecting personal and financial information from its customers and sharing the data with tech giants. A new class-action lawsuit alleges Capital One engaged in an “outrageous, illegal, and widespread practice of disclosing – without consent – the Nonpublic Personal… Continue Reading
YouTubers Are Almost Too Easy to Dupe
The Atlantic [unpaywalled]”Perhaps the most accurate cliché is that if a deal appears too good to be true, then it probably is. To wit: If a “private investor” of unknown origin approaches you through an intermediary, offering you $400,000 a month to make “four weekly videos” for a politically partisan website and YouTube page, you… Continue Reading
Compare State Gun Laws
Every Town – Pick any two states to see how they compare head-to-head on all 50 policies. You can also click on any state or policy for more detail. Continue Reading
Tracking Boating Accidents in the United States
Tracking Boating Accidents in the United States. First published August 12, 2024. Data through. 2023. Introductory documentation The US Coast Guard (USCG) maintains the Boating Accident Report Database (BARD), which serves as a central, national database of recreational boating accidents. The data come from submissions of CG-3865, a form that boat operators must file to… Continue Reading
How the Wayback Machine is trying to solve the web’s growing linkrot problem
The Verge: “We’ve been talking a lot about the future of the web on Decoder and across The Verge lately, and one big problem keeps coming up: huge chunks of the web keep going offline. In a lot of meaningful ways, large portions of the web are dying. Servers go offline, software upgrades break links… Continue Reading
How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America
Opinion – Washington Post – By A.G. Sulzberger/New York Times [free link]: Some foreign leaders have ruthlessly curtailed journalism. U.S. politicians could draw from their playbook. “After several years out of power, the former leader is returned to office on a populist platform. He blames the news media’s coverage of his previous government for costing… Continue Reading
Armed and Underground: Inside the Turbulent, Secret World of an American Militia
ProPublica: “Last February, some 20 men and their wives gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant in Spokane, Washington, for their annual Valentine’s Day celebration. The men weren’t just friends; they did community service work together. They had been featured on local television, in khakis and baseball caps, delivering 1,200 pounds of food to an… Continue Reading
New AI standards group wants to make data scraping opt-in
Ars Technica: “The first wave of major generative AI tools largely were trained on “publicly available” data—basically, anything and everything that could be scraped from the Internet. Now, sources of training data are increasingly restricting access and pushing for licensing agreements. With the hunt for additional data sources intensifying, new licensing startups have emerged to… Continue Reading
Study suggests gun-free zones do not attract mass shootings
PHYS.org: “Gun-free zones have often been blamed for making schools, malls and other public areas more attractive to shooters; however, there have been no quantitative studies examining those claims. Now, in a first of its kind study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, researchers at UC Davis Health and other institutions have shown… Continue Reading
Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against Supreme Court Reform
ProPublica – “Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses. Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose… Continue Reading
The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case
Wired unpaywalled: “The Internet Archive has lost a major legal battle [The case is Hachette Book Group Inc. v. Internet Archive, 2d Cir., No. 23-1260, 9/4/24.]—in a decision that could have a significant impact on the future of internet history. Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against the long-running digital… Continue Reading
