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Our search for the best OCR tool in 2023, and what we found
A side-by-side comparison of five OCR tools using multiple kinds of documents from DocumentCloud.
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How Centro de Periodismo Investigativo chips away at Puerto Rico’s financial secrecy
Carla Minet, founder and executive director for Puerto Rico’s Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), and Carlos Ramos-Hernandez, a public interest attorney at CPI, recently joined us to share how they used their Gateway Grant and DocumentCloud’s advanced automation and analysis tools to scour tens of thousands of previously secret documents from the island’s secretive Fiscal Control Board (FCB).
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Upload large collections of documents to DocumentCloud with ease
Uploading large sets (hundreds, thousands, or even millions) of documents to DocumentCloud using the user interface can be laborious and requires careful monitoring of uploads for processing errors and splitting up the document set into smaller batches.
DocumentCloud’s Batch Upload Script was initially written to upload the CIA Crest files, which contains almost 1 million files. It keeps track of which files were uploaded successfully, so that it can be stopped and restarted and it will pick up where it left off, and errors can be retried. It uploads files in batches. It can be stopped gracefully by pressing CTRL+C (once) while it is running. A recent rewrite allows the script to run on any directory of documents.
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The future president’s feelings on Freedom of Information
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.
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The 2020 Presidential Candidates Stances on FOIA
Tom Steyer Is Great And He Probably Won’t Be President But We Still Appreciate Him
Related: RIP Beto you will live forever in our hearts
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The CIA was unimpressed with the Atomic Energy Commission’s attempts at secrecy
In July of 1955, Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, wrote to CIA director Allen Dulles over matters of mutual interest. In one of those letters, uncovered in the Agency’s archives, Strauss thanked Dulles for a package he had sent him, using deliberately vague terms to describe its contents as to “avoid classifying this letter.” Strauss’ efforts were in vain however. Not only was the letter classified for just shy of 50 years, but the vague descriptor itself remains classified to this day.
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Upcoming Supreme Court case could hand broadened FOIA censorship powers to corporations
Does your right to know which companies are receiving your tax dollars outweigh those companies’ rights to competitive secrets? That’s the question at stake in an upcoming Supreme Court case set to be heard in April, and the result could either cement the public’s right to know or severely restrict the ability to track the flow of tax dollars into private companies.
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The CIA gave Congress a report on the JFK assassination that was edited to remove human rights violations - and mention of JFK
As a result of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the Central Intelligence Agency ostensibly produced a copy of the Hart Report, more famously known as the “Monster Plot,” which was intended to be a definitive account of the Yuri Nosenko affair and a takedown of disgraced spymaster James Angleton. What the CIA actually released, however, resembles Hart’s actual report as much as the television edit of The Big Lebowski resembles the actual dialogue.
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State Department cable shows exposure of Lockheed bribes threatened NATO’s stability
A State Department cable in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Kissinger archive claims that pending revelations from the Church Committee would rock the Netherlands, potentially forcing it to leave NATO. Even more drastically, the memo warned that this scandal could lead to “the restructuring of the Dutch political system.”
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Join our project to track the CIA’s official contacts with other agencies
Last week, MuckRock asked for your help going extracting names and affiliations from Central Intelligence Agency’s list of official contacts and liaisons with other government agencies. Since then, MuckRock users have combed through half the list, producing names, affiliations and other leads. The response has been strong enough that we’re launching a new project for the effort.