A study published this week by Center for Justice Research, a partnership between the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Bowling Green State University, revealed gun crime decreased in six of Ohio’s eight largest cities following the implementation of the Constitutional Carry law.
Read the full storyTag: Data
Tennessee Among Worst States for Potholes, Analysis Finds
Google Trends data analyzed by USA Today shows Tennessee among the worst states for potholes.
Read the full storyReport: Intelligence Agencies Buying ‘Sensitive and Intimate’ Data of American Citizens
A recently-declassified report alleges that multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have been actively “flouting the law” by gathering massive collections of “sensitive and intimate” data on American citizens.
According to the New York Post, the claims were made in a report to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines, which was only recently declassified and is now being amplified by watchdog groups and privacy advocates. The report details a loophole that has allowed intelligence agencies, including the FBI, DHS, and NSA, to simply buy large troves of cell phone data for tracking purposes without needing a warrant.
Read the full storyFlorida’s DeSantis Signs Digital Bill of Rights into Law
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law on Tuesday a bill that creates a Digital Bill of Rights for Floridians.
Senate Bill 262 sponsored by State Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, creates the Digital Bill of Rights, which includes the right to control personal data and the right to delete, confirm, and access personal data on social media platforms.
Read the full storyTennessee Population Surpasses Seven Million Residents
Tennessee’s population has officially surpassed 7 million, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. Between 2021-2022, the state’s population increased by 1.2 percent.
Read the full storyFraternal Order of Police Reports 323 Officers Shot in the Line of Duty in 2022, Including 12 from Tennessee
The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) released a report this week that showed 323 officers were shot in the line of duty, with 60 killed. In Tennessee, 12 officers were shot in the line of duty this year.
FOP called 2022 “one of the most dangerous years for law enforcement.”
Read the full storyTennessee AG Skrmetti Comments on Taylor Swift Debacle, Walmart and Google Settlements
Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to the newsmaker line to discuss the Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster debacle and big settlement for the state from Walmart and Google.
Read the full storyBeacon Center Publishes Report Examining Return on Investment of Degrees at Tennessee’s Public Universities
A new report was released by the Beacon Center of Tennessee on Wednesday examining the return on investment for students and taxpayers at Tennessee’s public universities and colleges.
Read the full storyTennessee Secretary of State’s Office Releases First Four Days of Early Voter Turnout Data
Early and absentee voting data for the first four days in Tennessee and the federal general election has been released by the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office. In the first four days of early and absentee voting, 178,182 Tennesseans cast their vote, according to the data.
Read the full storyGovernment Agencies Buying Cellphone, Internet Data to Track Americans
In a little noted trend, law enforcement agencies at every level of government are increasingly buying data from private, third-party data brokers on Americans’ phone and internet activities in order to track them, often without a warrant.
While proponents say this practice provides critical help for investigations, critics argue it poses a serious violation of civil liberties that needs to be addressed through legislation.
Read the full storyTennessee Department of Finance and Administration Releases June Revenue Numbers
The Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration announced Friday that overall June state tax revenues exceeded budgeted estimates. On an accrual basis, June is the 11th month in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
Read the full storyOnly Two Tennessee Counties Saw Unemployment Rates Above Five Percent in May
New data released by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD) on Thursday showed unemployment rates increased slightly during May in each of the state’s 95 counties. However, even with the minimal increases, 93 of Tennessee’s 95 counties maintained rates lower than 5% for the month.
Read the full story‘It’s Not Their Business’: Representative Tim Burchett Explains Why He Voted No on LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act
The House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 4176 titled the LGBTQI+ Data Inclusion Act on Thursday by a vote of 220-201. Every Tennessee Republican Representative voted against the bill while both Democratic Representatives from the state, Steve Cohen and Jim Cooper, voted for the bill.
Read the full storyNew Study Ranks Tennessee Roads in Top 10 List of ‘Most Dangerous’ in the Country
New research by 1-800 Injured shows that Tennessee roads rank as some of the most dangerous in the country. For the study, states were ranked based on an index of fatality rates per 100,000 people, per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, and per 100,000 licensed drivers to determine a “Road Danger Rating”.
Read the full storyAnalysis: Famed Bangladesh Mask Study Excluded Crucial Data
With one exception, every gold standard study of masks in community settings has failed to find that they slow the spread of contagious respiratory diseases. The outlier is a widely cited study run in Bangladesh during the Covid-19 pandemic, and some of its authors claim it proves that mask mandates “or strategies like handing out masks at churches and other public events—could save thousands of lives each day globally and hundreds each day in the United States.”
Read the full storyFebruary Unemployment Rate Drops in Every Tennessee County Following National Trend
Unemployment rates dropped in every Tennessee county in February, according to new data released by the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD). The department made the announcement in a press release Thursday.
Read the full storyTennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty Back Legislation That Would Ensure Abortion Data Is Reported Accurately and Completely
On Friday, Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined 16 of their Senate colleagues in introducing legislation that would require states to report accurate and complete data about abortion—including cases where babies are born alive during abortions.
Read the full storyU-Haul Data Ranks Tennessee as Top Three State for Yearly Migration Trend
Tennessee ranked third in the nation for growth in moves to the state in the year 2021 according to a press release by the moving company U-Haul. The ranking is based on the company’s yearly U-Haul Growth Index which analyzed the net gain of one-way entry to states for the year.
Read the full storyFamily Tracking App Life360 Is Selling Customers’ Locations to Data Brokers: REPORT
A family safety app used to track children’s movements is selling location data to several different data brokers, according to an investigation by The Markup.
Life360, which bills itself as a “family location sharing app” that purports to “simplify safety” for families, is selling customers’ location data to over a dozen data brokers including X-Mode, SafeGraph and Cuebiq, the Markup reported, citing interviews with two ex–Life360 employees and two former employees of major location data brokers.
Life360 is used by 31 million members, according to its website, and is intended to provide parents with the ability to track their children’s movements. The company discloses in its privacy policy that it sells “identifiers, Internet/Network information, Geolocation, Inferences, and Other personal information, including driving event and movement data” to third parties.
Read the full storyMaury County Mayor Andy Ogles Asks: ‘Do We Have the Next Generation of Conservative Leaders That Are Tired of the BS?’
Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to discuss hard data on COVID death rates and whether or not Conservatives have had enough.
Read the full storyFiscal Year 2021 Becomes Third-Highest Year on Record in Border Encounters, Reaching 1.7 Million
Border officials encountered the third-highest number of migrants at the southern border on record, reaching more than 1.7 million apprehensions, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Border officials reported 192,000 encounters with migrants attempting to illegally enter the U.S. through the southwest border in September, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. A record high of more than 213,500 migrants were apprehended in July and another 209,800 were encountered in August.
“CBP encounters along the Southwest border declined in September from the prior month, and a majority of noncitizens encountered were expelled under Title 42,” Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement. “The men and women of CBP continued to rise admirably to the challenge, despite the strain associated with operating during a global pandemic that has claimed far too many lives among our frontline personnel.”
Read the full storyUnemployment Rates Continue to Improve Throughout Tennessee
According to the Tennessee Department of Labor & Workforce Development, unemployment rates in nearly all of Tennessee’s counties decreased in August. This marks the second consecutive month the jobless situation has improved in 93 or more of the state’s 95 counties.
Read the full storyTennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn Pushes Big Tech for Answers Regarding Their Predatory Privacy Practices
On Tuesday during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) questioned Big Tech’s invasive practices.
Read the full storyOver 200,000 Illegal Migrants Encountered at the Southern Border for the Second Month in a Row
Monthly border encounters with migrants attempting to illegally enter the U.S. decreased slightly in August for the first time since President Joe Biden took office but remain near record highs, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Border officials encountered nearly 209,000 migrants at the southern border in August, down from a record high of 213,500 people in July, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Officials encountered a record-high number of migrants compared to 50,000 in August 2020 and 62,700 in August 2019.
However, a “larger-than-usual number of migrants” are attempting to illegally cross the border several times so “total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border,” CBP announced. Officials encountered 156,600 unique individuals in August and 25% of them had at least one prior encounter in the last 12 months.
Read the full storyU.S. Economy Added Just 235,000 Jobs in August, Way Short of Economists’ Projections
The U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate fell to 5.2%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
The number of unemployed people decreased to 8.4 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Economists projected 720,000 Americans — roughly three times the actual number — would be added to payrolls prior to Friday’s report, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Despite the delta variant, there is still an opening up of the service sector of the U.S. economy,” Nationwide Mutual Insurance Chief Economist David Berson told the WSJ. “While that started some months ago, it’s not nearly complete.”
Read the full storyMayor Andy Ogles Talks Lack of Science in Masking Our Kids
Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to revisit mask mandates imposed by the Biden administration and the lack of data to support it.
Read the full storyPhil Kerpen of American Commitment Outlines the Data and Science on Masking Our Children
Friday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed American Commitment’s Phil Kerpan to the newsmaker line to explain the COVID science and data he found regarding child mask-wearing.
Read the full storyScience on Mask Usage Indicates Scant Benefit
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recommended that all schools require mask-wearing indoors by teachers and students, vaccinated or unvaccinated against COVID-19.
And many school districts are adopting that requirement, to the dismay of many parents.
Read the full storyIllegal immigration, Drug Seizures Spike in July
New federal reporting shows illegal immigration has continued to grow worse as the Biden administration increasingly takes heat for the crisis at the southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection released new immigration data that shows border agents encountered 212,672 undocumented migrants attempting to enter the country illegally in July, the highest number in more than two decades.
“The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “It is complicated, changing, and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic.”
Read the full storyThe Number of White People in America Has Declined for the First Time Since 1790
The number of white people in the United States has dropped for the first time since 1790, according to new data from the 2020 Census.
Data from the 2020 count of people living in America shows that the country has become substantially more ethnically diverse, particularly in the under-18 category. Additionally, the country’s population grew 7.4% in the last ten years, a slower rate than any decade since the 1930s.
The numbers indicate that growth in the American population for the last decade has been driven by minority populations. While whites still make up a little less than 58% of the American population, that figure dropped below 60% for the first time since the census-taking began.
Read the full storyMetro Nashville Public School Board Member Fran Bush Recounts Disdain for Parental Concerns as Mask Mandates Sneak Through
Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed MNPS School Board Member for District Six, Fran Bush in studio to discuss Tuesday evening’s school board-parent debate on mask mandates for students.
Read the full storyMarketing Expert Craig Huey Discusses a Potential Gavin Newsom Loss and How to Beat Him
Thursday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed marketing guru Craig Huey in studio to discuss the dynamics of the California governor recall race.
Read the full storyLouisiana’s Senator Kennedy Files Bill Targeting Social Media Companies That Promote Divisive Content
Louisiana U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has introduced a bill to limit protections for social media companies that secretly leverage user data to promote divisive content.
Kennedy, a Republican, blasted Silicon Valley behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter for “provoking” platform users and blamed the “manipulative” business practice for causing unnecessary social conflict.
“Social media giants are using people’s data to manipulate them into spending more time on their sites, but the price is a more polarized America,” Kennedy said in a statement. “It’s time to stop rewarding platforms that use their algorithms to target users with content that plays on individuals’ emotions without their consent.”
Read the full storyMichigan State Auditor to Review Nursing Home COVID-19 Deaths
State Auditor Doug Ringler says he will review how many Michiganders died from COVID-19 in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
Ringler wrote the June letter to House Oversight Chair Steve Johnson, R-Wayland, over the concerns of inaccurately counted COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
“We will be working with various departments’ databases to address your concerns, which will impact the timing of our work,” Ringler wrote.
Read the full storyCommentary: CDC Reports 51 Percent Increase in Suicide Attempts Among Teenage Girls
Beth Palmer was 17 and dreaming of becoming a singer in March 2020 when the United Kingdom went into lockdown because of the coronavirus. One month later, she was dead.
“She was a wonderful, wonderful daughter. She was just funny, she lit up the room.,” said Mike Palmer, Beth’s father. “She was so affectionate and loving as well. She basically had the world at her feet. She had everything, everything to live for.”
Palmer didn’t die of the coronavirus. She took her own life.
Read the full storyCommentary: New Harvard Data (Accidentally) Reveal How Lockdowns Crushed the Working Class While Leaving Elites Unscathed
Founding father and the second president of the United States John Adams once said that “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” What he meant was that objective, raw numbers don’t lie—and this remains true hundreds of years later.
We just got yet another example. A new data analysis from Harvard University, Brown University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation calculates how different employment levels have been impacted during the pandemic to date. The findings reveal that government lockdown orders devastated workers at the bottom of the financial food chain but left the upper-tier actually better off.
The analysis examined employment levels in January 2020, before the coronavirus spread widely and before lockdown orders and other restrictions on the economy were implemented. It compared them to employment figures from March 31, 2021.
Read the full storyIWF’s Kelsey Bolsar Reveals Pregnant Women’s Concerns with Employer Mandated Vaccines and Safety
Wednesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Independent Women’s Forum Senior Policy Analyst and The Federalist contributor Kelsey Bolsar to the newsmakers line to discuss employer vaccine mandates and safety, privacy concerning pregnant women.
Read the full storyCalifornia Refugee and Direct Marketing Expert Craig Huey Weighs in on Davidson County’s Congressional Election Strategies
Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed direct marketing expert Craig Huey in studio to speculate on the 2022 Davidson County congressional race and the campaign strategies Odessa Kelly may employ.
Read the full storyCommentary: TikTok is Just the First Chinese App the Trump Admin is Eyeing for Crackdown Over Spying
Two days after President Trump told reporters that he plans to ban TikTok from the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in an interview with Fox News that executive action may soon be taken against many other apps owned by Chinese firms.
Trump remarked to journalists aboard Air Force One on Friday that he could ban TikTok “with an executive order,” suggesting that the president has made up his mind about the popular short video platform. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech conglomerate ByteDance, has been at the center of a months-long debate over whether the data that it collects from American users could be exploited by China’s government.
Read the full storyHosts Leahy and Kellett Discuss Mandated COVID-19 Face Masks
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed early edition co-host, Doug Kellett to the studio.
During the first hour, Leahy and Kellett discussed the lack of data to support the face mask mandate across the nation. Leahy noted that the public health officials at healthaffairs.org had used analyses providing supporting evidence that face masks only reduced the spread of coronavirus by only two percent.
Read the full storyMaryland Says It Will Provide ‘Timely Testing Number Data’
The Maryland Department of Health told The Tennessee Star earlier this week that it is working to provide “timely testing number data.”
Read the full storyFounder and President of CPRC Dr. John Lott Describes Cornovirus Correlation to Hot and Cold Temperatures in Tracking Spread
Live from Music Row on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast live Tuesday morning on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. founder and president of the Crime Prevention and Research Center (CPRC) to the newsmakers line. Lott is also an economist and a world-recognized expert on guns and crime and a former professor at Yale, Stanford and the University of Chicago.
Read the full storyGoogle Agrees to Buy Fitbit for About $2.1 Billion
Google has agreed to purchase fitness watchmaker Fitbit for about $2.1 billion, the activity-tracking company announced in a Friday press release.
Read the full storyCommentary: Data Disrupts the Deep State Narrative
The deep state, and the administrative elites more broadly, are in deep digital trouble. And so are their current narratives. But it’s not clear they fully realize it yet.
Read the full storyFacebook Reveals How It Ranks Items in the News Feed
Reuters Facebook is lifting the lid on the algorithm that decides which posts appear in its news feed, as part of a drive to be more transparent and offer greater control to users. The feature “Why am I seeing this post?”, being rolled out from Monday, offers some insight into the tens of thousands of inputs used by the social network to rank stories, photos and video in the news feed, the foundation of the platform. “The basic thing that this tool does is let people see why they are seeing a particular post in their news feed, and it helps them access the actions they might want to take if they want to change that,” Facebook’s Head of News Feed John Hegeman told reporters on Monday. After a series of privacy scandals, Facebook needs to regain users’ trust as it prepares to roll out a single messaging service combining Facebook messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram that could make it even more central to users’ communications. The new news feed feature will show users the data that connect them to a particular type of post, Hegeman said, for example that they are friends with the poster and they’ve liked their…
Read the full storyGoogle Parent Company to Open Treatment Center in Dayton, Ohio
Alphabet Inc., the multinational conglomerate that both was established by and currently owns Google.com, has announced that they will be establishing an opioid treatment center in Dayton, Ohio. While this could be good news for a community that is still deeply in the midst of an opioid epidemic, the recent revelations about data collection by Google and other digital tech companies raise questions about the new treatment center. The effort, dubbed OneFifteen, will be headed by Andy Conrad, Ph.D. (pictured above) and housed in a new “tech enabled campus.” It will be an initiative of Verily, the development wing of Alphabet that deals with life sciences. The new facility was announced Wednesday in a blog post on the company website. The post points out the alarming statistics regarding opioid abuse and the intent of this new campus to treat these problems. It also explicitly notes that one of the biggest challenges to healthcare is a severe lack of data, most notably the data gaps. While this is undoubtedly accurate, there are many concerns with greater data aggregation. In recent years, data companies have proven themselves to be at best wildly irresponsible and at worst explicitly malicious in aggregating and then selling the personal data of individuals. The notion of this…
Read the full storyQuantum Computing and Its Threat to Cybersecurity
by Dorothy Denning Cybersecurity researchers and analysts are rightly worried that a new type of computer, based on quantum physics rather than more standard electronics, could break most modern cryptography. The effect would be to render communications as insecure as if they weren’t encoded at all. Fortunately, the threat so far is hypothetical. The quantum computers that exist today are not capable of breaking any commonly used encryption methods. Significant technical advances are required before they will be able to break the strong codes in widespread use around the internet, according to a new report from the National Academy of Sciences. Still, there is cause for concern. The cryptography underpinning modern internet communications and e-commerce could someday succumb to a quantum attack. To understand the risk and what can be done about it, it’s important to look more closely at digital cryptography and how it’s used – and broken. Cryptography basics Y At its most basic, encryption is the act of taking an original piece of information – a message, for instance – and following a series of steps to transform it into something that looks like gibberish. Today’s digital ciphers use complex mathematical formulas to transform clear data…
Read the full storyNSA Deletion of Call Records Raising Questions
The National Security Agency is deleting more than 685 million call records the government obtained since 2015 from telecommunication companies in connection with investigations, raising questions about the viability of the program. The NSA’s bulk collection of call records was initially curtailed by Congress after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents revealing extensive government surveillance. The law, enacted in June 2015, said that going forward, the data would be retained by telecommunications companies, not the NSA, but that the intelligence agency could query the massive database. Now the NSA is deleting all the information it collected from the queries. The agency released a statement late Thursday saying it started deleting the records in May after NSA analysts noted “technical irregularities in some data received from telecommunication service providers.” It also said the irregularities resulted in the NSA obtaining some call details it was not authorized to receive. That points to a failure of the program, according to David Kris, a former top national security official at the Justice Department. “They said they have to purge three years’ worth of data going back to 2015, and that the data they did collect during that time — which they are now…
Read the full storyMicrosoft Confirms It is Acquiring GitHub for $7.5 Billion
Microsoft on Monday said it will buy software development platform GitHub, in a deal worth $7.5 billion which will blend two opposite corporate cultures. The tech giant, based in Washington state, is a heavyweight in terms of software whose source codes are not openly available or modifiable, exactly the counter of GitHub’s philosophy. Created in 2008, GitHub allows developers to cooperatively manage software and has more than 28 million users around the world. “Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.” The veteran tech firm said it “will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock.” Subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review, the deal is expected to be finalized by the end of the year, Microsoft said in a statement on its website. “GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries,” Microsoft…
Read the full storyGoogle Withdraws As Host Of Democratic Fundraising Event
by Eric Lieberman Google was set to rent out its D.C. headquarters to a progressive group running a fundraiser for top Senate Democrats, but canceled it Friday just days before. The group “Run For Something” cultivates up-and-coming Democrats for all levels of government. Its event, “Party For Something,” was supposed to occur June 6 at a location only disclosed if tickets ($100 to $1,000) were purchased. “Important note! Confirmation of the date, time, and venue will be in your donation receipt,” reads the website, which also says “Location available upon RSVP” elsewhere. “No need to print anything; just check in with ID when you arrive.” The venue likely shows up as something different now since Google confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation that the event was occurring at its offices in the nation’s capital, and subsequently that it was canceled since leadership had allegedly just become aware. “June 6th: Games, drinks and building the bench with Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand & Cory Booker!!” the invite states at the top. “Why? Because Run For Something set a goal of recruiting 50,000 new voices this year to run for office — and you want to help make it happen.” Google representatives declined…
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