Inside Daily Brief: “Congressional Democrats have sent a letter to Google encouraging the search engine to improve its results for users seeking abortions. The letter follows a study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate which found that 11% of abortion searches in states with “trigger laws” – states which will automatically ban abortion if the… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Legislation
Compiling Congressional Districts
Via Center for Data Innovation – Grossmann, M., Lucas, C., McCrain, J, & Ostrander, I. (2022). CongressData. East Lansing, MI: Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) – “Researchers at Michigan State University have created a dataset tracking the history of U.S. congressional districts. The dataset consists of congressional districts from 1789 to 2021… Continue Reading
Warren, Wyden, Murray, Whitehouse, Sanders Introduce Legislation to Ban Data Brokers from Selling Americans’ Location and Health Data
Bill Text (PDF) | One-Pager (PDF) – “United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced the Health and Location Data Protection Act, legislation that bans data brokers from selling some of the most sensitive data available about everyday Americans: their health and location data. The legislation is cosponsored by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chair of the… Continue Reading
What the TSA could teach Congress about gun control
Recode – “TSA PreCheck uses enhanced background checks to make everyone safer. With the country continually in mourning over gun violence — we keep seeing mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting — it’s time to find ways to prevent it, lest we remain the “only nation where this regularly happens.” Those solutions needn’t be… Continue Reading
Your connected car could be putting your privacy at risk
Popular Science – “As the U.S. enters a new era of lawmaking, connected cars could become the new front of legal battles. Most modern cars know their locations better than their owners do. As suites of connected-car apps become mainstream for both emergency functionality (such as General Motors’ OnStar) or for owner conveniences such as remote… Continue Reading
Mandatory Student Spyware Is Creating a Perfect Storm of Human Rights Abuses
EFF: “Spyware apps were foisted on students at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Today, long after most students have returned to in-person learning, those apps are still proliferating, and enabling an ever-expanding range of human rights abuses. In a recent Center for Democracy and Technology report, 81 percent of teachers said their schools use some form… Continue Reading
Don’t Forget the First Half of the Second Amendment
The Atlantic – The amendment doesn’t prohibit gun regulations; it demands them. By Thomas P. Crocker “…[the first half of the] Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.” The Supreme Court barely contemplated the text’s meaning in Heller v. District of Columbia, asking no more than… Continue Reading
Hospitals are required to post prices for common procedures. Few do
NBCNews: “Few hospitals are posting the prices of their common procedures online, despite a federal law that went into effect more than a year ago. The Hospital Price Transparency Law is intended to make the hidden costs of services such as X-rays, medical tests or colonoscopies clear to patients before they enter the hospital. But… Continue Reading
Deaths by Firearm, Compared Against Injury-Related Deaths
Flowing Data – “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention track cause of death over time, under several classifications and groupings. Among 1- to 19-year-olds, regulations decreased motor vehicle deaths, but deaths by firearms increased and became the leading mechanism in 2018.” Firearms Are the Leading Injury Mechanism Among 1- to 19-year-olds in the United… Continue Reading
California’s unprecedented reparations report details 150 years of anti-Black harm
NBCNews: “A new report from California’s first-in-the-country statewide reparations task force details how slavery touched nearly every aspect of Black life in America, producing “innumerable harms” that are still felt today. California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans INTERIM REPORT [June 2022], offers a comprehensive look at the impacts of… Continue Reading
The State Laws That Are Most Effective at Stopping Mass Shootings
Bloomberg – With casualties mounting after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a health scholar’s research has found that enacting a few state policies can reduce gun violence by a third. “To be very honest, we have enough information right now to pass meaningful policy,” says Michael Siegel, a professor at the Tufts University School of… Continue Reading
The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives
Scientific American – “By enacting simple laws that make guns safer and harder to get, we can prevent killings like the ones in Uvalde and Buffalo…The science is abundantly clear: More guns do not stop crime. Guns kill more children each year than auto accidents. More children die by gunfire in a year than on-duty… Continue Reading
