Category «Civil Liberties»

Confidence in the Supreme Court is declining – but there is no easy way to oversee justices and their politics

Recent evidence showing that Virginia Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent at least 29 text messages to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urging him to help overturn the 2020 election has reignited a long-simmering debate about judicial ethics and the nation’s highest court. Professor Eve Ringsmuth writes, “As a Supreme Court scholar, I think it is important to recognize that there is no formal code of conduct guiding the work of the Supreme Court, which contributes to a lack of clarity regarding the ethical boundaries for justices.”

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Ethics, Leadership, Legal Research, United States Law

Surveillance is pervasive: Yes, you are being watched, even if no one is looking for you

Peter Krapp, Professor of Film & Media Studies, University of California, Irvine shares facts that we need to acknowledge. The United States has the largest number of surveillance cameras per person in the world. Cameras are omnipresent on city streets and in hotels, restaurants, malls and offices. They’re also used to screen passengers for the Transportation Security Administration. And then there are smart doorbells and other home security cameras. Importantly, Krapp highlights not only do we live in a surveillance nation, but those who surveil us do so with virtually no constraints or oversight.

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Subjects: Big Data, Civil Liberties, Legal Research, Privacy, Technology Trends, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 23, 2022

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Report: 47% of orgs experienced a voice phishing attack last year; Rising Cyberthreats Increase Cyber Insurance Premiums While Reducing Availability; FTC explains ‘reasonable’ cybersecurity; and Facebook has started to encrypt links to counter privacy-improving URL Stripping.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Free Speech, Government Resources, Healthcare, Legal Research, Legislative, Privacy, United States Law

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 9, 2022

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Why more regulation of connected car technology is probably just up the road; Police sweep Google searches to find suspects. The tactic is facing its first legal challenge; Attackers are using deepfakes to snag remote IT jobs; and Free smartphone stalkerware detection tool gets dedicated hub.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Gadgets/Gizmos, Health, Human Rights, Legal Research, Privacy, Search Engines, Technology Trends

Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter could make its misinformation problems worse

As a researcher of social media platforms, Anjana Susarla, the Omura-Saxena Professorship in Responsible AI at the Broad College of Business, finds that Musk’s ownership of Twitter and his stated reasons for buying the company raise important issues. Those issues stem from the nature of the social media platform and what sets it apart from others.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Free Speech, Legal Research, Securities Law, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 30, 2022

Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Amazon Workers Can Now Keep Cell Phones at Work; Best Reverse Image Search Tool: Google, Bing, Pixsy, Tineye; Google adds more ways to remove yourself from Search results; and Shut Stalkers Out of Your Tech.

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Subjects: Blockchain, Civil Liberties, Communications, Cybersecurity, Economy, Privacy, Reference Resources, Search Engines, Search Strategies

What Supreme Court’s block of vaccine mandate for large businesses will mean for public health: 4 questions answered

The U.S. Supreme Court on January 13, 2022, blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate, which applied to virtually all private companies with 100 of more employees. But it left in place a narrower mandate that requires health care workers at facilities receiving federal funds to get vaccinated. The ruling comes at a time when the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalization rates continues to soar throughout the United States as a result of the omicron variant. Debbie Kaminer, a professor of law at Baruch College, CUNY, explain the ruling’s impact.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Employment Law, Healthcare, Legal Research, Supreme Court, United States Law

Putting a Spotlight on Civics Education: How Law Librarians Are Helping to Bridge the Access to Justice Gap

Diane M. Rodriguez Assistant Director of the San Francisco Law Library in California, and 2021–22 president of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), where one of her many goals is to advocate for access to legal information that supports access to justice. She expertly articulates the work, and the role of law librarians, that comprise this mission.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Human Rights, KM, Law Librarians, Legal Research

How democracy gets eroded – lessons from a Nixon expert

Ken Hughes is a researcher with the Presidential Recordings Program of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Hughes argues that erosion in American democracy depends on the conspiracy theory, destructive and demonstrably false, that the 2020 election was stolen. As the author of several books on Richard Nixon – who, before Trump, was the biggest conspiracy theorist to inhabit the White House that we know of – Hughes sees conspiracy theories less as failures of rationality and more as triumphs of rationalization.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Constitutional Law, Government Resources, Legal Research
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