Wired: A Campus Murder Tests Facebook Clicks as Evidence of Hate. “INVESTIGATORS SAY THEY still don’t know why Sean Urbanski, a 22-year-old University of Maryland student, walked up to 23-year-old Richard Collins III, a US Army lieutenant just days shy of college graduation, and fatally stabbed him at a campus bus stop this weekend. What they do say they know is that Collins, who was visiting a friend at UMD and did not appear to know Urbanski, was black, and that Urbanski belonged to a Facebook group called Alt-Reich: Nation, a haven of white supremacist content.”
legal
Wikipedia can pursue NSA surveillance lawsuit: U.S. appeals court (Reuters)
Reuters: Wikipedia can pursue NSA surveillance lawsuit: U.S. appeals court. “A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a Wikipedia lawsuit that challenges a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program of mass online surveillance, and claims that the government unconstitutionally invades people’s privacy rights.”
Wired: Zuckerberg-Backed Data Trove Exposes the Injustices of Criminal Justice
Wired: Zuckerberg-Backed Data Trove Exposes the Injustices of Criminal Justice. “Measures for Justice compiles granular data for 32 different metrics that indicate how equitable a given county’s justice system might be. The portal shows, for instance, how many people within a county plead guilty without a lawyer present, how many non-violent misdemeanor offenders the courts sentence to jail time, and how many people are in jail because they failed to pay bail of less than $500. It offers insight into re-conviction rates and never-prosecuted cases. Users can compare counties or filter information based on how certain measures impact people of different races or income levels. And the site organizes all of it into easily digestible data visualizations.”
The Conversation: New public database reveals striking differences in how guns are regulated from state to state
The Conversation: New public database reveals striking differences in how guns are regulated from state to state. “We have just released a new public database that tracks a wide range of firearm laws across all 50 states for the past 27 years. For the first time, long-term trends in the enactment of gun safety laws can be compared between states. We found striking disparities between states in both the number of firearm laws and the rate of adoption of these laws over time.”
Reuters: EU to conclude Google antitrust cases in next few months
Reuters: EU to conclude Google antitrust cases in next few months. “EU antitrust regulators will rule in the ‘next few months’ whether Alphabet’s Google abused its dominance of internet searches and other areas, a senior European Commission official said on Monday, an outcome that could lead to a hefty fine.”
The Verge: An internal Google email shows how the company cracks down on leaks
The Verge: An internal Google email shows how the company cracks down on leaks. “Google is facing a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court alleging that the company has fostered a culture of secrecy and fear. Leaks to the media are forbidden, and employees are encouraged to monitor their colleagues for leaks, according to the suit, which was filed in December by an anonymous ex-employee who claims they were unjustly fired.”
Revealed: Google tried to block media coverage of gender discrimination case (The Guardian)
UGH. The Guardian: Revealed: Google tried to block media coverage of gender discrimination case. “Google has tried to restrict reporting on a high-stakes gender discrimination case brought by the US government and fought to have the case thrown out of court because of a federal attorney’s comments to a reporter. Court documents reveal that Google unsuccessfully argued that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Labor (DoL), claiming that a government attorney may have violated ethics rules by doing an interview with the Guardian on 7 April.”
