With federal facial recognition regulation stalled, local legislators start to step in

Unwilling to wait for federal regulation to develop, municipal leaders from California to Massachusetts are pushing their own rules on the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology.

FBI agent’s career was jeopardized by the Bureau’s discovery of gay activist son

A pioneer of the contemporary gay rights movement was forced to use an alias to protect his father’s career. Jack Nichols, Jr., co-founder of the Mattachine Society of Washington, conducted most of his activism under the pseudonym “Warren Adkins” at the request of his father, Jack Nichols Sr.. The senior Nichols was a Special Agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and believed his son’s sexuality and related advocacy would bring serious career repercussions.
 

According to records released to Emma Best as part of the Freedom of LGBTQIA+ Information project, Special Agent Nichols was right.

Only three of North Carolina’s 100 counties have fulfilled prison phone requests

North Carolina has exactly 100 counties, and two weeks ago, MuckRock sent a public records request to each one of them in an effort to learn more about inmates’ options for prison communication.

Recently declassified records outline the psychological warfare aspect of D-Day

Formerly TOP SECRET records in Central Intelligence Agency’s archives, only declassified in 2013, outline the Office of Strategic Services plan to wage psychological warfare against Nazi Germany ahead of the D-Day invasion.

Release Notes: Come say hi at RightsCon and IRE

If you’re in Tunis or Houston, come say hi and see what’s in store as we continue integrating MuckRock and DocumentCloud. On the development front, only minor updates this week, including a tweak to stop our site statistics from breaking and more robust username handling.

This week’s FOIA round-up: The Interior Department releases redacted records regarding the Border Patrol assistance efforts and the criminal investigation into the Flint water crisis continues