Civil rights advocates flooded a City Council hearing to protest the Boston Police Department’s plan to buy $1.4 million in social media monitoring software. Advocates questioned police promises to respect citizen privacy, as well as whether the technology can actually detect threats.
A team of scientists led by the National Institutes of Health published their analysis of using big data to track infectious diseases in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, and found that it can make surveillance more effective.
Deloitte’s report, “Next Gen Child Support,” outlines new approaches to improving services within child support enforcement. In particular, states are focusing on modernizing legacy IT systems to better leverage data and bring operational improvements.
More than 500 people have visited Oakland County’s new open data portal, which was launched Nov. 1 and offers access to 92 data sets.
Whether you’re going over the river or through the woods, Google Maps is ready to help you get to Grandmother’s house this Thanksgiving. The Google Maps team looked at historical Google Maps traffic data to help travelers avoid Thanksgiving gridlock. While the best time to leave has already passed, travelers can still avoid the worst travel time.
Donald Trump won the presidency in the wee hours of the morning of Nov. 9 to the shock of many people, including election forecasters. The poor quality of the big data used to create their forecasts may account for why so many people did not anticipate the election results.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is partnering with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to deploy two devices that will collect weather-related transportation data.
An app designed to help drivers avoid traffic proved helpful during a recent deadly flood. Traffic data from Waze helped government officials and first responders in Louisiana during Baton Rouge’s flooding in August. Esri announced a partnership with Waze and local governments on Oct. 12 to encourage more states and cities to use roadway data for similar projects.
One in two American adults is in a law enforcement facial recognition database, which has the potential to disproportionately affect people of color, according to a report released by the Center for Privacy and Technology at the Georgetown University law school. A coalition of 52 civil liberties groups wrote a letter to the Justice Department, expressing their concern that facial recognition systems disproportionately affect communities of color.
