The 141-page document serves as the official rulebook for the treatment and behavior of inmates held at the military prison (including WikiLeaks firestarter Chelsea Manning) and addresses everything from media contact with inmates to rules regarding their appearance and hygiene.

The FOIA request was intended to increase transparency regarding the U.S. Army’s regulation of USDB inmates held at Fort Leavenworth, to better inform the press about rules regarding their contact with prisoners and to shed light on the status of civil liberties within the prison’s walls.

You can view the entire document below:

“There are not all negative stories,” Hoit said at the 2014 Medill National Security Journalism Initiative Conference on Thursday. “Female veterans have other parts of their life. They are just not balanced representations. It’s not sexy, that’s why the media doesn’t write about it.”

Hoit joined the U.S. Army Reserve in 2001 when she was 17. After three years she was deployed to Balad, Iraq, where she served as a military journalist for a year.

“Not all of the female veterans have experienced military sexual trauma, homelessness or unemployment,” Hoit said, but too often those issues are highlighted in news stories at the expense of other issues important to women, like getting more education, taking care of their families or dealing with civilian life.

From Hoit’s perspective, many female veterans are mothers or young girls going to college after coming back from war, trying to integrate into society and disassociate with military life.

“It [time in the service] was hugely different than coming home,” Hoit said. Although she got a good job, she felt disconnected. “I was just a 21-year-old chick,” she said, “I lost that identity, which was what a lot of people are struggling with as well.”

It took Hoit almost eight years to rebuild her personal and professional connections after she left the military. “Getting on the plane, going oversees and being dropped somewhere is not hard when you don’t know what you are expecting,” Hoit said, but coming back to “the place you are supposed to be most recognizable but you were not” is hard.

Hoit serves as the director of communications at Got Your 6, a cultural impact campaign designed to help close the military-civilian divide.

Partnered with 32 national veteran organizations and a Hollywood production crew, the communication team of Got Your 6 aims to rebuild the “victim” perception of female veterans in pop culture.

Overall suicides in the U.S. military were down just under 10% in 2013 over the year before, although there was slight increase (5%) among reservists and those not on active duty, new data from the Department of Defense shows.

With the wind-down in Afghanistan well under way, the gap between casualties and suicides grew even more dramatically, now nearly 4-1 vs. just under 2-1 the year before. (See chart above).

The data was part of the extensive annual “Suicide Event Report” that is put together by the National Center for Telehealth & Technology. The latest report covered calendar year 2012, while a news release about the report include top-level data for 2013. (Access a PDF of that report and earlier years back to 2008 here).

The U.S. Army halted what had been monthly updates of its suicide data after November data was posted in December. Reports suggest the Army is changing its methodology and will move to a quarterly instead of monthly release.

The Marines and Navy have, and continue to, release data each month, often updating the earlier month’s data. In 2013, Navy and Marine suicides fell, while attempted suicides by Marines jumped, based on the monthly data release.

For the Army in 2013, total suicides were on the decline but the percentage that were reservists had increased as a percentage of all suicides, from 40% to 50%. That data does not include December statistics, which have yet to be released.

And here it is:

Links to those stories:

• Huffington Post
• Orlando Sentinel
• Dallas Morning News
• The Scoop Blog (Dallas Morning News)
• Houston Chronicle
• ABC7 Denver (The Denver Channel)
• Guns.com
• NewsMax.com
• Texas Public Radio
• Phoenix New Times
• Fox News
• USA Today
• Los Angeles Times
• Star Tribune

• WJLA Washington

• WTSP Tampa
• KOLO Reno
• HSToday.com
• The Oregonian (Oregon Live)
• Security Magazine
• Dallas Observer
• JuanitaJean.com
• Transportation.org (Jan 9. 2014 edition)
• Pittsburgh TribLive

The yearly average rate for “Gulf War Era II” veterans dropped to 9% from 9.9% the year before. The rate for all veterans fell to 6.6% from 7% and for non-veterans, to 7.2% from 7.9%.

The gap between non-veterans and Gulf War II veterans peaked at 39% in 2011 and has been 25% for two years now.

Monthly data showed a significant drop for Gulf War II veterans in December, to 7.3% from 9.9%, but month-to-month data is not necessarily a good indicator of a trend. Quarterly and annual data, given the sample size of unemployed veterans, is more reliable. The rate for all veterans fell as well in December to 5.5% from 6.7% — the first drop below 6% since 2008.

SOURCE: Data extracted from Bureau of Labor Statistics

• View and download data for 2006 through 2013 for veterans, types of veterans and non-veterans.
  
• View and download monthly data for all veteran types and non-veterans, from mid-2006 through 2013.
  

The vast majority of guns — 84% — were loaded when Transportation Security Administration agents discovered them during security screenings, and of those loaded, one in three had a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire.

The increase over 2012 is the third annual jump since 2010 — and the largest.

Data used in this story was gathered and analyzed by Medill National Security Journalism Initiative from weekly data releases the TSA makes on its blog.

Final numbers that were released by the TSA after we published our tally showed 15 fewer confiscation incidents for the year, or 1,813. While the TSA all along has said final numbers would vary from its weekly blog post data (higher, probably, it had been saying) it is unclear why 15 incidents that had been reported did not make the final list this time or at what airports. TSA has not responded to requests to explain the discrepancy, but has changed its blog disclaimer to say final numbers “will vary slightly,” instead of “will vary slightly (increase).”

Of the 207 airports at which at least one gun was found, Atlanta had the most with 110, followed by Dallas-Fort Worth (98) and Houston Bush (67). One in four airports had 10 or more confiscations. (See Top 10 list below).

Two types of guns — .380 and 9mm — were the most frequently found. Together, they made up nearly half of the guns confiscated. (See table below).

     

It is illegal to carry a handgun aboard a commercial airliner; guns must be part of checked baggage and meet certain guidelines. The TSA notifies local authorities when a gun is found at security checkpoints; the local authorities determine whether to make an arrest, issue a ticket or taken other action.

Visit this spreadsheet to view details for each incident, as well as weekly breakdown and charts. The data is also downloadable and you are free to use it, as long as you give credit to Medill National Security Journalism Initiative and include a link to our front page.

In the interactive graphic below, data for each airport plotted on a map. Large red markers are the Top 10 airports. Yellow had the fewest confiscations (under 10) while blue had between 10 and 39. Click on markers to see information for that airport.

Below is a heat map that illuminates location of airports where the most guns were found. Intensity in this heat map runs from lowest (light green) to highest (dark red) based on the number of guns confiscated.

Thanks to NSJI’s Natalie Jones for ongoing data entry support!

(Posted Jan. 6, 2014)

Data below compiled from weekly TSA Blog updates on the number and type of weapons confiscated during carry-on searches at airports. Data is updated weekly (current data through Dec. 31, 2013). (Download CSV file).

The number of guns confiscated from passengers trying to board planes in the U.S. jumped 20% in 2013 to 1,828, with Atlanta leading the way with the most with 110. Confiscations averaged five per day across the U.S.

Full story on 2013 data.

Data for 2014 will be posted soon.

[field name=”barchart”]

Daily Data

Visit this page for a table that includes data for each incident, by airport.

Download the Data

→ Download year-to-date data. (Click on File | Download As and choose your format).

Thanks to NSJI’s Natalie Jones for help with data entry.

Click on column label below to sort that column. There are 30 records visible at a time; click the arrow key at the bottom to see the next (or previous) set of records.

For weekly table and more details, visit this page.

[field name=”daily-list”]

Download Data

→ Download year-to-date data. (Click on File | Download As and choose your format).

Thanks to NSJI’s Natalie Jones for help with data entry.

Most of those cases resulted in the government getting at least some data, including e-mails, photos and uploaded files.

Friday’s was Yahoo’s first-ever transparency report and it says it will continue every six months. Twitter and Microsoft released their reports earlier this summer; Google, which has been releasing reports longer than the other major players, has yet to for the first half of 2013. (Related: The Washington Post reported this morning that Google has stepped-up its efforts to encrypt that data that moves between its servers in an attempt to thwart spying).

“Democracy demands accountability, and accountability requires transparency,” Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell wrote in a blog post on Friday. “We hope our report encourages governments around the world to more openly share information about the requests they make for users’ information.”

Yahoo reported that in about 8% of cases, either no data was found or Yahoo rejected the request. So in just over 9 in 10 cases, at least some data was turned over.

About half the time — 55% — that was “non-content data,” which Yahoo describes as “basic subscriber information including the information captured at the time of registration such as an alternate e-mail address, name, location, and IP address, login details, billing information, and other transactional information (e.g., “to,” “from,” and “date” fields from email headers).”

In nearly 2 in 5 cases, other content was turned over. Yahoo’s description: “Data that our users create, communicate, and store on or through our services. This could include words in a communication (e.g., Mail or Messenger), photos on Flickr, files uploaded, Yahoo Address Book entries, Yahoo Calendar event details, thoughts recorded in Yahoo Notepad or comments or posts on Yahoo Answers or any other Yahoo property.”

Yahoo reported about the same number of government requests as Facebook, but affecting substantially more user accounts — 40,300 vs. up to 21,000. Twitter reported 902 requests affecting 1,319 accounts for the first half of the year.

Germany, Italy, Taiwan and France filled out the Top 5 in number of requests after the U.S. Outside the U.S., requests totaled 17,026, involving 22,453 accounts.

The government requests usually involve criminal investigations and came come by way of warrant or subpoena. Yahoo says it only complies “in response to valid, compulsory legal process from a government agency with proper jurisdiction and authority.”

National security authorities also make the requests. All companies are restricted about how much they can say — even specific numbers — about requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yahoo and others have been pressing the government to allow them more freedom to divulge those details.

→ Earlier stories on transparency report data.