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Category Archives: Legal Research

The National Archives: a small agency with a big responsibility safeguarding American and world history

CBS 60 Minutes: “The National Archives has been in the news lately, not so much for what is in its collection, but for what was missing. After former President Donald Trump and then-Vice President Biden held on to records when they left office that should have been sent to the Archives… we wanted to know… Continue Reading

Visualizing Ship Movements with AIS Data

Beautiful Public Data: “As we run, drive, bike, and fly, humans leave behind telltale tracks of movement on Earth—if you know where to look. Physical tracks, thermal signatures, and chemical traces can reveal where we’ve been. But another type of breadcrumb trail comes from the radio signals emitted by the cars, planes, trains, and boats… Continue Reading

Flooded Again: Visualizing Repeated Flooding Across the U.S.

NRDC: “For communities across the country, flooding is an all-too-frequent experience—and, often, one with devastating consequences.  Over 250,000 properties in the United States have had multiple claims under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). These “repetitive loss properties” are found in every U.S. state as well as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and… Continue Reading

FTC Staff Report Finds Large Social Media and Video Streaming Companies Have Engaged in Vast Surveillance

Report recommends limiting data retention and sharing, restricting targeted advertising, and strengthening protections for teens – “A new Federal Trade Commission staff report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services shows they engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their personal information while… Continue Reading

How Opus Dei Conquered D.C.

Intelligencer via MSN – “A new book shows just how much sway the mysterious right-wing Catholic group has — and might have over Trump’s next term… Details of the Opus Dei network in the American capital are a significant part of a new, deeply researched book by British financial journalist Gareth Gore, Opus: The Cult… Continue Reading

Academic Journal Publishers Antitrust Litigation

Press release: “On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer, on behalf of a proposed class of scientists and scholars who provided manuscripts or peer review, alleging… Continue Reading

Large AI Dataset Has Over 1,000 Child Abuse Images, Researchers Find

Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance: “A massive public dataset used to build popular artificial intelligence image generators contains at least 1,008 instances of child sexual abuse material, a new report from the Stanford Internet Observatory found. LAION-5B, which contains more than 5 billion images and related captions from the internet, may also include thousands of additional… Continue Reading

Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries: Mid-Atlantic Roundtable Report

Laskowski, Casandra and Miguel-Stearns, Teresa M. and Ching, Tina and Florio, Emily and Lohmeier, Kerry and O’Grady, Jean and Postar, Adeen and Williams, Austin and Wolek, Kristin, Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Law Libraries: Mid-Atlantic Roundtable Report  (July 31, 2024). Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 24-25, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4955870 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4955870 – On… Continue Reading

LinkedIn Is Training AI on User Data Before Updating Its Terms of Service

TechCrunch: “LinkedIn may have trained AI models on user data without updating its terms. LinkedIn users in the U.S. — but not the EU, EEA, or Switzerland, likely due to those regions’ data privacy rules — have an opt-out toggle in their settings screen disclosing that LinkedIn scrapes personal data to train “content creation AI… Continue Reading

Social Media and News Fact Sheet

Pew Research Center: “Digital sources have become an important part of Americans’ news diets – with social media playing a crucial role, particularly for younger adults. Overall, just over half of U.S. adults (54%) say they at least sometimes get news from social media, up slightly compared with the last few years. News consumption on… Continue Reading

How A.I., QAnon and Falsehoods Are Reshaping the Presidential Race

The New York Times [unpaywalled]: “This year’s presidential election has been polluted with rumors, conspiracy theories and a wave of artificial intelligence imagery. Former President Donald J. Trump has continued to sow doubts about election integrity as his allies across the country have taken steps to make election denial a fixture of the balloting process.… Continue Reading