CNET: Google aims to show you how it uses your data. “If you’re tired of hunting aimlessly for privacy information in your Google account settings, this announcement is for you. Google has made account settings easier to navigate and understand, the company said Thursday in a blog post.”
transparency
BBC: Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile
BBC: Facebook ordered to explain deleted profile. “Facebook has been ordered by a UK high court judge to reveal who told it to delete the profile of a jazz musician and his band, six months after he died. The Times reports that the firm said it had acted on a request but had declined to reveal to the family who had instructed it. Mirza Krupalija’s partner Azra Sabados says she is certain that it was not a family member or friend.”
ECNS: China’s nationwide property database comes into effect
ECNS: China’s nationwide property database comes into effect . “China’s long-expected national property database has started to connect information stations across the country, according to Ministry of Natural Resources. There have been 3,001 property registration stations in 335 cities and 2,853 counties serving more than 300,000 enterprises and individuals averagely each day, according to latest statistics.”
Techdirt: Norwegian Court Orders Website Of Public Domain Court Decisions Shut Down With No Due Process
Techdirt: Norwegian Court Orders Website Of Public Domain Court Decisions Shut Down With No Due Process. “Enter Hakon Wium Lie. You might know him as basically the father of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Or the former CTO of the Opera browser. Or maybe even as the founder of the Pirate Party in Norway. Either way, he’s been around a while in this space, and knows what he’s talking about. Via Boing Boing we learn that: (1) Wium Lie has been sued for a completely absurd reason of (2) helping a site publish public domain court rulings that (3) are not even protected by a database right and (4) the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff (5) in 24 hours (6) before Lie could respond and (7) ordered him to pay the legal fees of the other side.”
Spacing Toronto: Why I revived the Bureau of Municipal Research
Spacing Toronto: Why I revived the Bureau of Municipal Research. “Ten years ago, as a grad student researching the history of Toronto’s waterfront, I came across a study, published in 1977, that could very well have been written today: ‘Should the Island be an Airport?’ The report, I came to learn, was produced by a long-lived, but largely forgotten, citizens group known as the Bureau of Municipal Research. The Bureau was established in 1914, as the Toronto Daily Star reported at the time, as a centre of “general municipal intelligence.” Its mission and motto was to produce “better government through research,” and for seventy years that’s what it did, publishing over 800 research bulletins and reports on more than a hundred different topics, before closing its doors in 1983.”
Muckrock: MuckRock and DocumentCloud merge to build tools for a more informed society
Muckrock: MuckRock and DocumentCloud merge to build tools for a more informed society. “We are thrilled to announce that DocumentCloud and MuckRock are merging. The reason is simple: Mission. Our organizations share a core belief that institutions should be open, transparent and accountable to the people they serve.”
Happy birthday, GPO Access Act: 25 years of online government info (District Dispatch)
District Dispatch: Happy birthday, GPO Access Act: 25 years of online government info. “June 8, 2018, is a significant anniversary for public access to government information: it’s 25 years since the enactment of the Government Printing Office (GPO) Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act of 1993, or the GPO Access Act for short. While it’s not a household name, it was a foundational law in driving government use of the internet to provide access to information.”
