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The prime directive of American jurisprudence
Sidney Jourard was one of the brightest shining lights of humanistic psychology. He was fond of saying, repeatedly, that all human behavior is based on either maintaining or enhancing the self-image....
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The blotter: Week ending 27 June 2010
Business Maureen Johnson has published a simple manifesto: I am not a brand. It’s in response to being asked to speak — as an expert — at conferences and panels where all the speakers are hawking...
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ACLU, others challenge suspicionless border searches of electronic devices
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) have brought a federal lawsuit (.pdf; 868KB)...
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The blotter: Week ending 3 October 2010
Business Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor named by President Obama as a special advisor to oversee the development of a new federal Consumer Finance Protection Agency, earned US$90,000 as...
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ProPublica shines a light on the dark corners of US dialysis
Robin Fields, writing for ProPublica, spent more than a year investigating dialysis in the United States. Her report is also excerpted and co-published as “God Help You. You’re on Dialysis” in the...
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The neutering of the internet
Last Tuesday, 21 December 2010, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to approve a weak and watered down internet access regulation, under the guise of supporting network neutrality....
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ProPublica publishes dialysis data
The US government has, for years, collected rich data about the performance and outcomes achieved by individual dialysis facilities across the country. For just as many years this information has been...
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The blotter: Week ending 9 January 2011
Business Griff Wigley has launched Your Thick Skull, a series of online learning courses for grown ups who are not easily offended. I’ve known Wigley for years and he’s absolutely accurate when he...
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The blotter: Week ending 30 January 2011
Business Still using Facebook? Really? The social network is going to start adding your “likes” and “check-ins” to advertisements in users’ news feeds. And it’s not optional, according to Irina...
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The blotter: Week ending 20 February 2011
Internet Jon Udell’s “Seven ways to think like the web” is a stunning exploration into making the best possible use of the distributed hypermedia system that is the web. Udell’s outline for working...
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Don’t worry, the Fed will just print more
The US Federal Reserve headed off a depression by “providing as much as US$1.2 trillion in public money to banks and other companies” between August 2007 and April 2010. In secret. That’s what...
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The FBI’s terrorist watch list is forever
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has always been able to put just about whoever they liked on the US government’s terrorist watch list. Now, in response to a Freedom of Information Act...
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Whittling away at FOIA
President Barak Obama’s Department of Justice is proposing to allow federal agencies to lie to people requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The proposal would allow...
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Carrier IQ in cahoots with FBI?
Earlier this month we collectively learned that Carrier IQ had installed its software on some 150 million mobile phones and was monitoring users. Without the users’ permission or knowledge. Without...
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TPP may be worse than ACTA; we’ll never know until it’s too late
The US versions of vastly overreaching anti-piracy legislation — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House of Representatives and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate — were...
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ProPublica updates dialysis facility data
Two years ago, ProPublica — the independent, nonprofit investigative news organization — published a website detailing data on individual dialysis centers, focusing on a dozen quality measures. The...
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Beware the entertainment cartel’s TPP
The US-based entertainment cartel is hell-bent on putting the internet genie back in its bottle, regardless of cost and consequences — intentional and unintentional. Its latest weapon of choice to...
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More light on the Epogen problem
Amgen’s Epogen — a human erythropoietin drug produced using recombinant DNA technology and used to treat severe anemia by raising patients’ hemoglobin levels — is one of the most financially...
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Piercing the surveillance secrecy veil
A remarkable series of events is taking place in the Federal District Court in Houston. Stephen Smith, one of the court’s magistrate judges, began to wonder why law enforcement requests for mobile...
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EFF and ACLU submit amicus brief on Stingray
Earlier this month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted a joint amicus brief (.pdf; 569KB) in United States v. Rigmaiden, a case revolving...
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