Category: Government

Google car halted by California

January 6, 2016 Astrid Countee Leave a comment Business, Government, News, Tech

Google has been famously testing out their version of a driverless car. The company wants to transform transportation by taking the driver out of the equation.

Driverless cars will be able to shuttle people from place to place while reducing the human error that is often the catalyst for road accidents.The California Department of Motor Vehicles recently made a proposal of rules for driverless cars. These new rules were presented for public commentary in mid December of 2015. The DMV wants to involve the public and will be hosting two workshops early in 2016, one in Sacramento and the other in Los Angeles.This proposal draft is the next step in allowing driverless cars on California roads. But Google is unhappy about one of the provisions.

The regulators are calling for the manufacturers of driverless cars to meet several safety and performance standards. These include things such as protecting the privacy of operators from the needless collection of user data and having a third party independently access performance. The rules also call for a licensed human driver, capable of taking over the steering wheel and pedals in the event of an emergency. The problem is that Google’s prototype for a driverless car does not have a steering wheel or pedals.

Google’s maintains that it wants to improve safety by equipping the car itself with protocols that surpass what a human could detect. For instance their cars have sensors that detect objects as far as two football fields away–in all directions. The state of California is looking at the broader aspect of autonomous cars, and remains more conservative on the issue. They  have warned Google in the past to add steering wheels and pedals. California legislators pushed The DMV to require that driverless cars contain wheels and people to steer them whenever they’re operated on public roads.

Google is disappointed that California legislators are limiting the potential of fully autonomous vehicles, the company said. Although the company is still in the prototyping phase where changes can easily be made, it is still a setback.

 

Article via TechNewsWorld, 18th December 2015

Photo:Auto che guidano da sole. Forse non le vedremo mai sulle nostre strade by Automobile Italia [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Zuckerberg defends Free Basics in India

January 3, 2016 Abby Shulman Leave a comment Business, Citizen Justice, Government, Social Media

Facebook’s initiative to provide Internet to developing parts of the world, Free Basics, has been met with substantial criticism from those who believe that the service violates Net Neutrality. This Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the service in an opinion article in the Times of India.

Zuckerberg’s effort to offer free Internet throughout India was obstructed by the country’s Telecom Regulatory Authority’s request that Facebook discontinue the program. India has 132 million active Facebook users, the second largest population of Facebook users behind the Unite States’ 193 million users.

Critics argue that Free Basics, the website that offers Internet services, provides more content from Facebook than from other sources. When Zuckerberg visited India in October, however, he implied that the Facebook service did not breach Net Neutrality when he said that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally.

“Instead of wanting to give people access to some basic Internet services for free, critics of the program continue to spread false claims—even if that means leaving behind a billion people,” Zuckerberg said. “Who could possibly be against this? Choose facts over false claims. Everyone deserves access to the Internet.”

Article via CNET, December 28, 2015

Photo: Mark Zuckerberg via Mathieu Thouvenin [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

New website compiles Congress’s secret research reports for public access

January 2, 2016 Abby Shulman Leave a comment Government

The website CRSReports.com is leading an initiative to create a public archive of 33,000 research papers on policy issues that have long been contained in the confidential files of Senators and Representatives. The Congressional Research Service—Congress’s in-house think tank—has provided nonpartisan research studies to lawmakers for 101 years, most of which are never made available to the public.

“What we’re doing is simply accessing publicly available websites and downloading what we think are CRS documents,” said Antoine McGrath, who previously worked for a free digital library called the Internet Archive. He is now teaming up with two other software programmers to scan around 100 sites for CRS metadata.

CRSReports.com has given itself the title of the Internet’s “largest free and public collection of Congressional Research Service reports.” However, CRS releases thousands of studies on all topics to lawmakers every year, and thus the public collections of reports—from CRSReports.com and its two major competitors, the Federation of American Scientists and the University of North Texas—are still missing countless papers.

The small number of reports that Congress does release are not compiled in one location, with the exception of CRS.gov, which is only available to lawmakers. CRSReports.com and its competitors therefore have to scan the Internet to find CRS studies in scattered locations, from academic sites to news released by embassies.

This has forced programmers like McGrath to design code that can scan a broad range of publicly available websites. To search out CRS documents, he says, “We’re casting a wide net.”

Article via The Washington Post, December 14, 2015

Photo: Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness Hearing (201503120003HQ) via NASA HQ PHOTO [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

EU to pass comprehensive privacy law

December 26, 2015 Abby Shulman Leave a comment Citizen Justice, Government, Privacy

In June of 2012, the European Council approved the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation draft. The soon-to-be-approved final law is an updated version of the EU’s 1995 data protection rules, intended to bolster online privacy rights. The EU’s effort to consolidate privacy laws stands in contrast to the U.S.’s consistent battles with mass data collection by big business and government agencies.

Privacy—a broad and nebulous term—is treated differently in the European Union than it is in the U.S. According to Brian Kudowitz, commercial product director for privacy and data security at Bloomberg Law, privacy is “essentially a human right” in the EU. Whereas the EU has comprehensive law protecting privacy in all its forms—especially with the GDPR initiative—the U.S. deals with the protection of information in a series of laws that regulate different sectors.

The EU’s focus on privacy can be explained in historical terms, Kudowitz added. “You go back to all of the different things that have occurred in Europe over the last 70 years, it’s very easy to see how that perspective developed.”

In a recent Eurobarometer survey, 67 percent of Europeans said they were concerned about not having control over what information was provided about them on the Internet, and 70 percent expressed concern about how companies used their information.

Beyond what everyday citizens think of privacy, businesses and government agencies operate differently in the U.S. than in the EU as well. Organizations protect data proactively in the EU, whereas breaches of privacy are dealt with retroactively in the U.S.

According to Phil Lee, a representative at the multinational law firm Fieldfisher, “[t]his is partially because class action regimes aren’t well developed in the EU. EU countries don’t have a concept of punitive damages in the same way that you do in the U.S.”

Article via Legaltech News, December 22, 2015

Photo: Croatia welcomed to the EU via European Parliament [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

Brazil suspends Whatsapp for 100 million users

December 21, 2015 Abby Shulman Leave a comment Business, Citizen Justice, Court, Government, Privacy, Social Media

Brazil’s government recently banned the Facebook-owned communication service Whatsapp for 48 hours after the company refused to hand over user data to authorities. Whatsapp is used by 100 million Brazilians, many who prefer the app to standard texting and calling. As a result, the ban was met with outrage. Some called for the impeachment of Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff; others immediately switched to an alternative messaging service, Telegram.

Law enforcement has been in conflict with Whatsapp for months due to Facebook’s refusal to hand over user data from a suspected drug user. The irony, however, is that Brazil condemned the NSA in 2013 after Edward Snowden exposed the surveillance agency’s data collection practices.

In a 2013 speech to the U.N., President Rousseff asserted, “My government will do everything within its reach to defend the human rights of all Brazilians, and to protect the fruits borne from the ingenuity of our workers and our companies.”

Following Snowden’s leak, Brazil even committed to a $185 million project to construct a fiber optic cable transporting data to and from Portugal while bypassing the United States, so that U.S. authorities could not intercept information. U.S. businesses were prohibited from participating in the project.

In response to the suspension of Whatsapp, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said: “I am stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp.”

Article via Washington Post, December 17, 2015

Photo: Visita de Dilma Rousseff via La Moncloa Gobierno de Espana

[Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]

New legal aid caucus announced

December 9, 2015 Shelby Bice Leave a comment Government, Human Rights

Though it may seem that support for more legal aid would mostly arise from the liberal side of politics, both Republican and Democratic representatives have come together to establish a new legal aid caucus. The caucus, entitled “Access to Civil Legal Services Caucus”, was announced by Representatives Joe Kennedy III from Massachusetts and Susan Brooks from Indiana. Their goal is focused around “expanding access to legal representation for low-income families” including “…veterans, and victims of domestic abuse.” Ensuring that legal services are accessible is extremely important because without it, individuals “can face enormous burdens that devastate families, result in a further descent into poverty, and cause homelessness.”

Additionally, the caucus will focus on making sure there is enough funding for legal aid at the national level. Lack of funding is a serious issue; in 2013, 64% of cases that were eligible for legal aid in Massachusetts were turned away because organizations simply didn’t have enough funding. Representative Kennedy hopes that the caucus will “build a strong coalition in Congress to advocate for civil legal aid programs and ensure access to representation is never limited by income.”

Article via Above the Law, December 8, 2015

Photo: Capitol Hill, Washington DC via Toni Syvänen [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs]