After 47 years as little more than a local ghost story, Kentucky State Police announced that an unidentified murdered woman discovered near Harlan is Sonja Kaye Blair-Adams.
Author Archives: G.W. Schulz
Reporter
G.W. Schulz is a reporter for Reveal, covering security, privacy, technology and criminal justice. Since joining The Center for Investigative Reporting in 2008, he's reported stories for NPR, KQED, Wired.com, The Dallas Morning News, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones and more. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and was an early contributor to The Chauncey Bailey Project, which won a Tom Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2008. Schulz also has won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California Chapter. He graduated from the University of Kansas and is based in Austin, Texas.
Can an algorithm be any better than a coin toss at finding criminals?
A deep dive from ProPublica reporters who wanted to vet whether an algorithm could really determine the likelihood that someone would commit a crime in the future has produced some worrisome findings.
Posted inAccountability, Law Enforcement, Left for Dead
47 years later, authorities close in on identity of Mountain Jane Doe
Nearly half a century after the saga of “Mountain Jane Doe” began, authorities in a small Kentucky mining town say they are one step closer to identif
A photo and public database help ID victim in 1969 cold case
Police in Los Angeles recently revealed that a publicly accessible government database helped identify a woman who was brutally killed in 1969.
Why graphic violence is about to take over your Facebook feed
A rape and a shooting that recently made the rounds on social media are the unintended consequences of major pushes into real-time video by sites and apps such as Periscope, Meerkat, Facebook Live, Twitch and, soon, YouTube Connect.
Reveal/CIR projects grab National Headliner Awards
The stories uncovered opiates being handed out “like candy” to veterans, the nation’s failure to connect the missing and unidentified dead, dangerous conditions for oil field workers in North Dakota, and a culture of secrecy and alleged sex abuse in the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization.
Posted inSurveillance and Privacy
Are Christian conservatives behind breach of 18 million voter records?
A man in Texas recently uncovered an online breach of millions of bits of personal information for registered U.S. voters. The data appeared to stem from evangelical Christian activists’ political outreach efforts. But who had leaked it or hacked it – and why?
Arizona joins Texas in using police for contentious border strike force
Arizona officials want Congress to shell out taxpayer money to bankroll a so-called border strike force just weeks after quietly abandoning plans to use private money for the construction of a U.S.-Mexico border fence.
Contrary to claims, police wiretaps threatened by encryption are down
American law enforcement officials argue the Paris attacks show need for “backdoors” that enable government surveillance in computing devices and software despite a drop in requests for wiretaps on encrypted communications.
Is digital freedom good for business in Silicon Valley?
Google outperformed several other tech giants in Silicon Valley on digital freedom of expression and Internet privacy, including competitors Twitter and Facebook, according to a newly released index of corporate responsibility from the research consortium Ranking Digital Rights.