Our weekly collection of the biggest stories from FOIA

As this holiday shopping season reaches its climax, we thought we’d take you for a stroll past some of the federal government agencies that make sure things run smoothly and the types of records they might handle.

Ever notice a typo in an Assignments question? Get some feedback from folks helping you crowdsource analysis and wish you could incorporate it right away? You finally can: Assignment questions are now fully editable, with lots of backups in place.

Our weekly collection of the biggest stories from FOIA

On December 17, MuckRock, Code for Boston, and Hacks/Hackers are putting together a demo night to highlight a number of open source projects, including MuckRock’s newest government transparency tool, GovLens. Registration is free!

This week’s FOIA drama from the Trump administration and technology

The university began tracking attendance through the Wi-Fi on students’ phones and other devices in November after entering into a one-year agreement with vendor Degree Analytics.

The largest city in the country seemed ready to create a framework to follow. But the final NYC Automated Decision Systems Task Force report, released last month, concluded that quick answers wouldn’t be available for addressing questions of fairness and accountability, even when trying to define ADS itself.

MuckRock has used public records and a growing community of concerned citizens to investigate these growing uses and abuses of technology by police departments, schools, and other government agencies. Contributing to greater transparency only takes a minute, just long enough to let us know that you care about knowing what’s happening in your town.

Last week the MuckRock team took a short week to celebrate Thanksgiving, so there are no new features. This week, we’ll be back at it, including at our weekly volunteer night Tuesday evening.

Read a great FOIA-based news story we should highlight? Let us know and maybe we can include it in our next round-up!

In January, amendments made under recent Texas legislation will go into effect, strengthening the Texas Public Information Act (PIA) and addressing court-created obstacles to accessing contractor information within the state.

As campuses expand their surveillance abilities, that common college nightmare—the one where you’re in class for the first time and it’s the day of the final—might not make it into the next decade.

Last week, we pushed a new feature that lets you see the number of Assignment submissions per day. We also added improved logging on our end to help identify and correct bugs more quickly.

Read a great FOIA-based news story we should highlight? Let us know and maybe we can include it in our next round-up! Send it over via email, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

Recently, MuckRock hit a new milestone: the 70,000th request we had helped file on behalf of our users. Here’s a little of what goes on behind the scenes and how you can have your support for that mission multiplied by 12 through the end of the year.

An interim report released earlier this month by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence says the U.S. will lose important advantages in defense, human resources, and the economy if it doesn’t cooperate with industry and academia to prioritize progress in AI research and development.

While most support the public’s right to know, few have plans for expansion or will commit to subjecting the White House to stronger sunlight.

Last week, we added notifications about donation cancellations for users without accounts, improved our error handling, and started working on our December demo night in Boston.

A layman’s guide to Chicago public records and city officials’ disregard for it. Transparency blog called for testimony to amend Kansas FOIA. Robots who see your phone and know who you are. It’s this week’s FOIA round-up.

In early 1999, a piece of malware with one of the oddest origins hit the scene. This article explores the investigative methodology used by the FBI, and highlights some of their findings.

Ahead of the December installation of Kehinde Wiley’s “Rumors of War” at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, we thought we’d see what people have to say so far.

A bug in some of the code used to make selected Assignment submissions public broke some editing functions; that’s now fixed. More importantly, you can join us for an evening of food, beverages, and open data demos on Dec. 17 at Code for Boston Demo Night, where we’ll be unveiling our new project.

Read a great FOIA-based news story we should highlight? Let us know and maybe we can include it in our next round-up!

Law enforcement agencies nationwide are using predictive policing software, yet almost none of their users, past or present, have clear measures for how effective or accurate they are.