New York newspaper defends identifying and mapping gun owners

By Katie Glueck, Politico, December 26, 2012

A suburban New York newspaper on Wednesday defended a decision to publish online maps that reveal names and addresses of people with gun licenses in several counties near New York City. … Over the weekend, the White Plains-based Journal News offered interactive maps of Westchester and Rockland counties which gave names and locations of people with pistol permits that the paper had obtained through the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The piece sparked uproar on the right and among some readers this week.

For full text of the article, please visit: New York newspaper defends identifying gun owners – Katie Glueck – POLITICO.com. Click here to see the interactive Map of the gun permits in Westchester county, NY.

Related Articles:

•  See also the Atlantic Op-ed “How Big Data Can Solve America’s Gun Problem” (Marc Parish, December 27, 2012).

• Newspaper to Identify Even More Gun Owners (fox8.com)
• Blogger Turns Tables on Newspaper that Published Map of Gun Owners (economicpolicyjournal.com)
• Newspaper’s Advertisers Face Huge Backlash Over Gun Map (huffingtonpost.com)

Who Really Benefits from Big Data?

By Daniel Sarewitz, Slate Magazine, Dec 27, 2012

This is the first in a series on big data and its impact on society from CSPO co-director Daniel Sarewitz. It also appears on As We Now Think, a site edited by the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University. ASU is a partner in Future Tense with Slate and the New America Foundation.

Advances in real-time data acquisition, processing, and display technologies means that it is possible to design a toll road that can continually change prices to control how many cars are on the road and how fast they are going. These “hot lanes“ have just been opened along a part of the Washington, D.C., Beltway, the 10-lane, traffic-infested artery that to normal humans is a metaphorical boundary between the real, outside-the-Beltway world and the weird, political one on the inside. For those of us who live around Washington and must drive on it, however, the Beltway is very concrete indeed, a daily flirtation with delay and frustration, homicidal instincts, and death itself.

For full text of this article, visit Slate Magazine at D.C. Beltway’s “hot lanes” demonstrate potential social inequalities of “big data.”.

Big Data in Law: Cloud Challenge, Analytics Opportunity

by Dave Einstein, NetApp, Forbes.com, October 31, 2012

The legal profession may have begun on Mount Sinai, where Moses delivered The Ten Commandments. But today, it’s heading into the cloud, where the privacy and security of big data are dramatically changing the legal landscape—especially internationally.

For full text of the article, please visit Big Data in Law: Cloud Challenge, Analytics Opportunity – Forbes.

Related articles

• The Big Data Fallacy And Why We Need To Collect Even Bigger Data | TechCrunch (isykes.wordpress.com)

 

Nov 30: Brown Bag: International Charter on Space and Natural Disasters

Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz, Director, National Center for Remote Sensing, Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi School of Law and Research Professor of Law, will discuss the Charter on Cooperation to Achieve the Coordinated Use of Space Facilities in the Event of Natural or Technological Disasters (Disasters Charter), which provides for the voluntary sharing of satellite imagery in the event of major disasters. Prof. Gabrynowicz will address the contents, structure, and status of the Charter, and highlight its strengths and weakness with a focus on how it could develop in the future. She also will discuss data access and sharing ideas.

Administration Efforts to Address Big Data Science and Engineering

October 24, 2012

Suzanne Iacono, deputy assistant director of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering will be featured on an InformationWeek Government Webcast, “Act on Big Data,” on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 at 2 p.m. ET.

Iacono, who also serves as vice chair of the Big Data Senior Steering Group of the interagency Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program, will be part of a panel of experts during the webcast. In that role she will provide an update on the Obama administration’s Big Data Initiative.

A New Big Data Roadmap for Government (and Business) – Forbes

 

TechAmerica Foundation’s Big Data Commission released today its long-awaited report, “Demystifying Big Data: A Practical Guide to Transforming the Business of Government.” It offers a comprehensive roadmap for the use of Big Data by the Federal government and a set of policy recommendations and practical steps agencies can take to get started on Big Data initiatives.

via A New Big Data Roadmap for Government (and Business) – Forbes.

Related articles

• A New Big Data Roadmap for Government (and Business) (forbes.com)

 

How the UN want to use Big Data to spot crises

Posted by Timo Luge on Social Media 4 Good Blog, May 15, 2012

Robert Kirkpatrick from the UN’s Global Pulse team is talking about how United Nations agencies would like to use big data to search for crises in real-time. It’s a fascinating talk and Kirkpatrick shows how his team has been using data mining techniques to monitor bread prices in Latin America and rice prices in Indonesia. …Equally interesting is what he would like to do in the future: for example get information showing the streams of money being sent via mobile banking in developing countries. If the UN could see changes in behaviour, he argues, then they might be able to spot issues that are in the process of developing.

For a full text of the article and link to the video of Robert Kirkpatrick’s talk visit How the UN want to use Big Data to spot crises : Social Media 4 Good.

NSF Issues IGERT Solicitation Focused on Big Data

Logo of the National Science Foundation (NSF). For NSF logo information visit: http://www.nsf.gov/policies/logos.jsp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Erwin Gianchandi, the Computing Community Consortium blog, April 23, 2012

The National Science Foundation (NSF) last week issued a new solicitation under its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, providing a specific track for training the next generation of researchers in computational and data-enabled science and engineering. The solicitation is part of the Foundation’s (and Administration’s) Big Data Initiative, which was announced last month.

According to the new solicitation (emphasis added):

“Building upon the IGERT platform, the purpose of this IGERT solicitation is to support new models in graduate education in which students are engaged in an environment that supports innovation to learn through hands-on experience how their own research may contribute in new ways to benefit society and to learn the processes for the successful implementation of such contributions.

Within the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) and IGERT, NSF recognizes the need to educate and support a next generation of researchers able to address fundamental challenges in 1) core techniques and technologies for advancing big data science and engineering; 2) analyzing and dealing with challenging computational and data enabled science and engineering (CDS&E) problems, and 3) researching, providing, and using the cyberinfrastructure that makes cutting-edge CDS&E research possible in any and all disciplines.

White House ‘Big Data’ Push Means Big Bucks for Drone Brains

White House ‘Big Data’ Push Means Big Bucks for Drone Brains

By Robert Beckhusen, Danger Room, Wired Magazine, March 29, 2012

The military has a data problem. More specifically, it has a too-much-data problem. Analysts have to sort through massive amounts of information collected by orbiting surveillance drones and satellites, or finding the data trails left behind by spies inside defense networks. Sorting through all this data is also necessary for making unmanned vehicles more autonomous. Bring on the White House’s new “big data” research initiative. Announced this morning, the plan aims to invest “more than $200 million” in six government agencies to develop systems to “extract knowledge and insights from large and complex collections of digital data,” according to a White House statement. …

For full text of the article, via White House ‘Big Data’ Push Means Big Bucks for Drone Brains | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Related articles

• White House ‘Big Data’ Push Means Big Bucks for Drone Brains (wired.com)
• Why science really needs big data – CNET News (news.cnet.com)
• Feds launch big data initiative to advance science (news.cnet.com)
• Big Data Initiative Or Big Government Boondoggle? (informationweek.com)

Kevin Pomfret’s Top 10 Spatial Law and Policy Stories of 2011

Spatial Law and Policy: Top 10 Stories of 2011

by Kevin Pomfret, Spatial Law and Policy Blob, December 27, 2011

• U.S. Supreme Court to address law enforcement’s use of tracking devices.
• Impact of budget cuts becoming more pronounced
• Privacy issues regarding geolocation becomes international story
• Increased efforts to regulate Internet
• Commercial use of drones becoming a reality
• Lightsquared/GPS dispute
• India revises its Remote Sensing Data Policy
• Indonesia passes Geospatial Information Act
• Big Data

For full text of Kevin’s article with a great discussion on each topic and useful links, visit Spatial Law and Policy: Spatial Law and Policy: Top 10 Stories of 2011.

Related articles

• Hot Spatial Law and Policy Issues for the Coming Year (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Spatial Law and the Smart Grid (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Geospatial Information Technology in Indonesia and its Legal Framework (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Six Provocations for Big Data (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Webinar on Geospatial Privacy (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• Former FGDC Executive Director on Mapping and the Spatial Data Infrastructure (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
• New CRS Report on Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)