By Kimberly Fields Tor Ekeland, an attorney who represents defendants in federal prosecutions under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act; Scott Klein, senior editor of news applications at ProPublica; and Isaac Wolf, a national reporter for Scripps News, talked about the ethical issues surrounding web scraping during the session “Hacks or Hackers?” Here are some…
Read MoreThe Pentagon spends about $100 million a year to find men like World War II POW Arthur “Bud” Kelder, following the ethos of “leave no man behind,” ProPublica reports. Yet it solves surprisingly few cases, hobbled by overlapping bureaucracy and a stubborn refusal to seize the full potential of modern forensic science. Last year, the military identified just…
Read More[View the story “Highlights: The next generation of data viz” on Storify]
Read MoreBy Donovan Harrell Three journalists offered advice to students struggling with public records requests during a brown bag session at the 2014 CAR Conference. Student attendees talked about attempts to outmaneuver their respective universities, which had been denying public records requests using laws such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the…
Read MoreSeven IRE members from two news organizations won the 2014 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Chris Hamby, Ronnie Greene, Jim Morris and Chris Zubak-Skees of the Center for Public Integrity and Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News were recognized for their work on “Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried…
Read MoreThe death of 16-year-old Amber Marie, who died when her 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt crashed the air bag failed to deploy, was an early warning in what would become a decade-long failure by G.M. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to address a problem that engineers and regulators had been alerted to years ago. For…
Read MoreThe California Department of Social Services cleared workers without the proper background checks, a KCRA 3 investigation found. The department allowed some with felony arrest records for crimes like elder and child abuse to work in nursing facilities, foster homes and daycares. The state said officials have been issuing “criminal records clearance” letters to workers…
Read MoreThe hearing was kept quiet. Officers with the Dobson Bike Patrol displayed a lack of respect to the homeless and immigrants in their community, keeping bulletin boards of mocking photos and signs. One officer even posed for a photo as a Nazi stormtrooper. The hearing resulted in disciplinary action against the officers, but the department…
Read MoreThe University of California has lost tens of millions of dollars, and is set to lose far more, after making risky bets on interest rates on the advice of Wall Street bankers. University officials agreed to the financial deals – complex contracts known as interest-rate swaps – because they believed they could save money in…
Read MoreThe LA Times obtained a report criticizing the U.S. Border Patrol for a “lack of diligence” and its use of tactics that may give officers an excuse to open fire. The report by law enforcement experts was the result of a review commissioned by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Of 67 cases involving border patrol officers…
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