Privacy

The story has itself gone viral: A new Google tool tracks the spread of actual influenza by monitoring Web searches for terms like “flu.” By aggregating such virtual searches, Google can also anticipate flu outbreaks in the real world by a week to 10 days. Even if Google were to amend its motto to “First, do no evil,” can we trust national health policy to the same search engine trend-spotting tool that puts a wrinkled comedian and a airbrushed model at an equal level of “Hotness”?

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a freedom of information (FOIA) request to the U.S. government over “reports that an active military unit has been deployed inside the U.S. to help with ‘civil unrest’ and ‘crowd control’ – matters traditionally handled by civilian authorities.” As MnIndy has reported, the Army’s Consequence Management Response [...]

In the third 2008 presidential debate, john McCain made “air quotes” while referring to women’s “health.” This Minnesota Independent video mash-up mixes McCain’s version of the gesture with that of its self-professed inventor: Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. See all 38 surreal seconds for yourself after the jump.

With several members of the RNC8 — the people charged with felonies in conjunction with planned protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last month — heading to court today for hearings in their cases, the Friends of the RNC8 are asking supporters to phone three local officials today to urge that charges [...]

Voter databases have become nearly as essential to national politics as money itself, and for the better part of the last decade the advantage has gone to the Republican Party and its Voter Vault database. This year the playing field has been leveled.

Also inside: Sarah Palin’s purloined Yahoo emails; Google Labs’ new audio search engine.

Last week we sampled the spam Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s office released in response to a Minnesota Independent request. Pawlenty’s staff says he sends no e-mail and says under law they can make public only one of every seven of his incoming e-mails. That claim may be in keeping with Pawlenty’s one-word description of vice-presidential duties [...]

The nonprofit group Citizens for Civil Discourse says it will bring its National Political Do Not Contact Registry campaign to Minnesota to stop robocalls in the state this election season. The organization is seeking voters willing to file official complaints and demand enforcement of laws that require political phone messages begin with an introduction from [...]

A post-9/11 intelligence agency created to collect and analyze suspicious activity reports from across Minnesota is operating without an important and widely used safeguard meant to check against inappropriate use of data. Most law-enforcement databases are protected with software that automatically keeps a record of every search that’s performed. That way supervisors can easily [...]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s unwillingness to make his e-mails public, which came to light in a recent Star Tribune report, raised questions about what he’s hiding as well as the legitimacy of the legal claim behind his twitchy delete-key finger. Another question—do other governors shield their e-mails from constituents?—gets answered online at a handy wiki table [...]

When he’s looking to justify deleting his emails, Gov. Tim Pawlenty tastes run to the retro. The 40-year-old Minnesota Supreme Court case that the governor cites to support his position is a “legal antique,” says a local communications attorney. But that doesn’t mean it’s illegal for government officials to maintain scant public records. And email [...]