Category «Civil Liberties»

LLRX March 2024 Issue

Articles and Columns for March 2024

  • 2024 Link Guide to Generative AI Resources – Marcus P. Zillman’s guide is a selective listing of open Generative AI resources that includes current awareness reports, guides, research tools, resources and applications from the open metaverse and Chat GPT. These references include AI best practices to facilitate implementing AI technology in specific sectors and within critical areas that involve engaging subject matter. expertise to deliver internal and external client and customer services. The sources are the work of AI entrepreneurs and experts, consulting groups, government, academe, the evolving global AI sector, and informative cheat sheets, prompt guides and articles published on LinkedIn.
  • Deepfakes are still new, but 2024 could be the year they have an impact on elections – Professor Eileen Culloty explains how deepfake audio technology is at a level of sophistication that makes detection difficult. Deepfake videos still struggle with certain human features, such as the representation of hands, but the technology is still young, and the 2024 election is in the direct path of its use.
  • AI in Banking and Finance, March 31, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government documents, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Four highlights from this post: How businesses are actually using generative AI; The Age of Uncertainty—and Opportunity: Work in the Age of AI; Financial Stability Board To Focus on Asset Tokenization and AI, Chair Says; and Bankers Will See AI Transform Three-Quarters of Day, Study Says.
  • All Citations Should Include Hyperlinks (If Possible) – Amelia Landenberger explains that as a general principle, citations in scholarly works have two purposes: to prove that the point is supported by evidence, and to allow the reader to find the evidence that the author is citing to. The pain of citations comes from the requirement that these citations be made as brief as possible by painstakingly utilizing a series of standardized abbreviations. The requirement to abbreviate arises mainly from a historical limitation: the scarcity of paper and ink.
  • Review – Law Democratized: A Blueprint For Solving The Justice Crisis – Jerry Lawson rhetorically asks Is anyone in the country better qualified than Renee Knake Jefferson to write about access to justice? Professor of Law at the University of Houston, co-reporter for the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services, and designated by the American Bar Association asa “Legal Rebel,” she has long been a thought leader in the quest to make legal help available to all, regardless of resources. Her new book, Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis, does not disappoint.
  • Climate change is shifting the zones where plants grow – With the arrival of spring in North America, many people are gravitating to the gardening and landscaping section of home improvement stores, where displays are overstocked with eye-catching seed packs and benches are filled with potted annuals and perennials. But some plants that once thrived in your yard may not flourish there now. To understand why, Dr. Matt Kasson looks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent update of its plant hardiness zone map, which has long helped gardeners and growers figure out which plants are most likely to thrive in a given location.
  • AI in Banking and Finance, March 17, 2024 – This semi-monthly column by Sabrina I. Pacifici highlights news, government reports, NGO/IGO papers, industry white papers, academic papers and speeches on the subject of AI’s fast paced impact on the banking and finance sectors. The chronological links provided are to the primary sources, and as available, indicate links to alternate free versions. Five highlights from this post: How AI is reshaping banking; The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Algorithms; Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs; ChatGPT and Corporate Policies; and How Artificial Intelligence Could Start To Boost Crypto Crime: Chainalysis.
  • What Happens When Your Art is Used to Train AI – A conversation with web cartoonist Dorothy Gambrell on the curdled internet, labor, and how we became just numbers.
  • Trapped in Darkness: Women in Europe remain defenseless against gender-based violence – A new cross-border data investigation by the European Journalism Network reveals gaps in the registration of femicides in Europe and the ineffective protection of women against crimes of sexual, physical, psychological and economic violence over the last decade. Reporting by Janine Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios, and Kostas Zafeiropoulos.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 31, 2024 – Four highlights from this week: Video Doorbells Sold By Big Retailers Have Major Security Flaws; Few states have ‘established’ privacy program; 3 Ways AI Could Transform Your Insurance Policy; Use Consumer Reports’ Security Planner to Stay Safer Online; and Survey: Few states have ‘established’ privacy program.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 23, 2024 – Eight highlights from this week: How to Figure Out What Your Car Knows About You; The Feds Can Film Your Front Porch for 68 Days Without a Warrant, Says Court; X Continues to Break as Fraudsters Use Deceptive Links to Scam; FDA and You; Artificial Intelligence and Medical Products: How CBER, CDER, CDRH, and OCP are Working Together; DOJ sues Apple in antitrust case, says it has illegal monopoly over smartphones; Data brokers admit they’re selling information on precise location, kids, and reproductive healthcare; X Continues to Break as Fraudsters Use Deceptive Links to Scam You; and Why you should stop using SMS.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 16, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras; How Fraudsters Break Into Social Security Accounts and Steal Benefits; 10 free cybersecurity guides you might have missed; Who Is Collecting Data from Your Car?; and Driving fast or braking hard? Your connected car may be telling your insurance company.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 9, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: News farm impersonates 60+ major outlets: BBC, CNN, CNBC, Guardian; FTC Cracks Down on Mass Data Collectors: A Closer Look at Avast, X-Mode, InMarket; Video Doorbells Sold By Big Retailers Have Major Security Flaws; Co-working spaces might actually be a security nightmare; and Whistleblower Accuses Aledade, Largest US Independent Primary Care Network, of Medicare Fraud.
  • Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, March 2, 2024 – Five highlights from this week: A Vending Machine Error Revealed Secret Face Recognition Tech; The Impact of Technology on the Workplace: 2024 Report; A government watchdog hacked a US federal agency to stress-test its cloud security; Using AI to fight fraud is paying off, Treasury says; and These Video Doorbells Have Terrible Security. Amazon Sells Them Anyway.

LLRX.com® – the free web journal on law, technology, knowledge discovery and research for Librarians, Lawyers, Researchers, Academics, and Journalists. Founded in 1996.

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Cybersecurity, KM, Legal Research

What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State

Kevin Novak begins his article with a reference to a report in The Wall Street Journal that caught his attention. Commercial data brokers are selling their third-party data to the government. If you’re an optimist, you would think this could be a good thing. Our intelligence agencies and the defense department may be able to identify patterns that could predict and prevent an unfortunate event – terrorism, for example. But honestly, how would you feel if all the conversations in your house that Siri and Alexa are silently listening in on are sold in the aggregate to the government…or something else?

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Computer Security, Congress, Cybercrime, Cyberlaw Legislation, Cybersecurity, Data Mining, Economy, Gadgets/Gizmos, Legal Research, Social Media

Trapped in Darkness: Women in Europe remain defenseless against gender-based violence

A new cross-border data investigation by the European Journalism Network reveals gaps in the registration of femicides in Europe and the ineffective protection of women against crimes of sexual, physical, psychological and economic violence over the last decade. Reporting by Janine Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios, and Kostas Zafeiropoulos.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Comparative/Foreign Law, Criminal Law, Legal Research

Toward a durable, dictator-proof Washington Post

David H. Rothman’s timely, outside the box commentary addresses the growing wave of news outlets abruptly closing down their websites, laying off staff, and in some cases, eliminating access to their respective archives. Rothman proposes an alternative to “how do I charge them enough” to stem the tide of closures, an avenue he prompts billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, to consider. A good-sized trust or corporate equivalent would enable the Washington Post to be run as a sustainable enterprise in the public interest, rather than as a mere profit generator.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Economy, Ethics, Free Speech, Freedom of Information, KM, Leadership, Management, Social Media, Technology Trends

Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated February 2024

Sabrina I. Pacifici is identifying and documenting pertinent sources for researchers on the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack and violence against women and girls. The guide was originally published on November 23, 2023 – link here, and had 8 pertinent sources on this topic comprising government reports, academic papers, reviews of UN/NGO programs, news, databases, analysis and commentary. Part 2 of this series, published December 31, 2023 – link here, expanded the original guide with more than a dozen new sources. This update comprises primary government sources and secondary news sources along with extensive video footage and eye witness testimony to facilitate accurate research about the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. It includes links and abstracts to more than a dozen additional sources from interviews, reports, and ongoing investigations identifying critical facts about the planning and systemic use of violence against women and girls during, and subsequent to, the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks.

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

DOJ funding pipeline subsidizes questionable big data surveillance technologies

Professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson discusses how predictive policing has been shown to be an ineffective and biased policing tool. Yet, the Department of Justice has been funding the crime surveillance and analysis technology for years and continues to do so despite criticism from researchers, privacy advocates and members of Congress. Guthrie’s research reveals an entire ecosystem of how technology companies, police departments and academics benefit from the flow of federal dollars for these surveillance technologies.

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Subjects: Big Data, Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Legal Research, Privacy, Spyware

Buried under the rubble: Haunted reflections at the turn of the year

The buried children have been haunting Catherine Morris. She states it’s difficult to celebrate the turning of the year while thousands of children remain lost in the rubble of humanitarian catastrophes caused by disasters, political turmoil, and armed conflicts around the world. In 2023, apocalyptic stories of children and families lost through earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, atrocities, and war crimes filled the news. The Middle East and Ukraine dominated headlines while Afghanistan, Myanmar, and other places were pushed from attention. An insistent question began to intrude. “What if it was your kids under the rubble?” In late November 2023 this question suddenly came close to my family.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Human Rights, International Legal Research, Legal Research, Refugees, Terrorism

Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated December 2023

Sabrina I. Pacifici is curating sources for their relevance and relationship to this site’s Israel-Hamas War Project articles. The first article on this subject can be read here. Until recent weeks there was a dearth of publicly available information about the scope of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas. But a New York Times article headline dated December 28, 2023 – “How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” – focused public attention on the facts. My updated article includes links and abstracts to 12 additional sources that provide corroborating testimonies, some in graphic detail, of the sexual violence committed against the initial victims, as well as against released hostages who have shared their experiences from their time in captivity.

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Subjects: Civil Liberties, Criminal Law, Ethics, Human Rights, International Legal Research, Legal Research, Terrorism

‘Unmasking AI’ and the Fight for Algorithmic Justice

Nabiha Syed is the chief executive officer of The Markup. She interviews Dr. Joy Buolamwini who has been thinking about collective harm and AI for years, especially when it comes to algorithmic accountability and justice. Her new book, “Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines,” is a must-read exploration of how broad swaths of humanity are vulnerable in a world that is rapidly adopting AI tools. We, like Buolamwini, are optimists: We can demand a better path than the one we’re on, but that requires us thinking collectively, participating, and innovating in a different way than we have in the past.

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Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Labor Law, Legal Research, Privacy

The Tech at ‘Cop Con’: Cigarette Carton Trackers, VR for School Shootings, and ‘Peacekeeper Batons’

Ese Olumhense a reporter at The Markup gives us an overview of how the International Association of Chiefs of Police brings police leadership and tech vendors together at its annual conference, where clear trends about the future of law enforcement emerged.

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Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Data Mining, Human Rights, Legal Research, Privacy
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