May 2017

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press was quick to condemn the comments, attributed to President Donald Trump, that then FBI director James Comey should be looking to put reporters in prison for publishing classified information. The Reporters Committee was citing the New York Times story that Comey had taken contemporaneous notes about a conversation where the President had suggested Comey back off investigating former national security advisor Gen. Michael Flynn over contacts with Russia but should be investigating leaks and potentially punishing journalists.

"The comments attributed to President Trump cross a dangerous line," said Reporters Committee executive director Bruce Brown. "But no president gets to jail journalists. Reporters are protected by judges and juries, by a congress that relies on them to stay informed, and by a Justice Department that for decades has honored the role of a free press by spurning prosecutions of journalists for publishing leaks of classified information."

There’s no exact metric for gauging if Kansas City (MO) is the smartest city on our continent at present, but it’s doubtful that many other US cities would want to call CIO Bob Bennett out on the legitimacy of his claim. Kansas City’s smart city infrastructure is strong — strong and advancing rapidly. Now, as it continues to move forward, city officials have added a new data visualization map aimed at keeping track of digital inclusion efforts as well, so that all populations within the city will benefit from the technological growth of its infrastructure. This new map contains information about Internet speeds provided by AT&T, Google and Time Warner (now also known as Spectrum), with speeds pegged by a Federal Communications Commission support, and it cross references that info with US Census data about poverty levels, creating what is quite likely the first map in the country to do so. In addition, the locations of Kansas City’s popular smart street cars are also available there in real time.