Part-Time Policy Wonk

"Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate on Wednesday accused the British Broadcasting Corp. of using taxpayers' money to build a "digital empire" that would compete with commercial rivals.

The BBC, which receives about 3 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) a year in public funding, has announced plans to relaunch its Web site to incorporate more user-generated content such as blogs and video, as well as developing new broadband portals in areas including sports, music, health and science."

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/14432614.htm

Posted by Anne at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Center for Responsive Politics has released a new database to track lobbying activities. Find data on expenditures of lobbying firms and lobbyists to Congress and other government agencies. Search by lobby firm or lobbyist name, industry (such as defense or agribusiness), issue (budget, trade, and others), or government agency. Data goes back to 1998.

Posted by Anne at 09:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From News.com:

A hotly contested Democratic bid to enshrine extensive Net neutrality regulations in the law books failed Wednesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.

By a 34-22 vote, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee rejected a Democratic-backed Net neutrality amendment that also enjoyed support from Internet and software companies including Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google.

Posted by Anne at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

NARA released the results of their audit on reclassification yesterday:

Under the provisions of Executive Order (E.O.) 12958, as amended, "Classified National Security Information" (the Order) and in response to a request from the Archivist of the United States as well as a group of concerned individuals and organizations, the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) performed an audit of all re-review efforts undertaken since 1995 by agencies in their belief that certain records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) had not been properly reviewed for declassification, but had been made available to the public. The audit found a total of ten unrelated efforts to identify such records, which resulted in the withdrawal of at least 25,315 publicly available records; approximately 40 percent were withdrawn because the reviewing agency purported that its classified information had been designated unclassified without its permission and about 60 percent were identified by the reviewing agency for referral to another agency for declassification or other public disclosure review.

In reviewing a sample consisting of 1,353 of the withdrawn records, we concluded that 64 percent of the sampled records did, in fact, contain information that clearly met the standards for continued classification. Much of this information had been declassified in the early years of implementation of the current framework before agencies had in place all of the required procedures and training. Agency declassification guidance was, at times, misconstrued and agency declassification personnel did not always recognize information that needed to be reviewed by other agencies. While these problems have been largely addressed over the years, we have concluded that more needs to be done.

The audit also found that in attempting to recover records that still contained classified information, there were a significant number of instances when records that were clearly inappropriate for continued classification were withdrawn from public access. We concluded that 24 percent of the sampled records fell into this category, and an additional 12 percent were questionable. In one re-review effort, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) withdrew a considerable number of purely unclassified records in order to obfuscate the classified equity that the agency was intent on protecting. Included in the inappropriate category above, at least 12 percent of the records sampled had apparently been properly declassified, but were later improperly reclassified.

The National Security Archive issued their response:

Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs reacted by stating, "We are stunned to learn that this program is even larger than we were previously told. For the last two months we thought only 9,500 records were reclassified. In fact more than twice that number were reclassified, and we now know that re-reviews happened at Presidential libraries as well as at NARA and that between 24 and 36 percent of those should not have been reclassified."

Posted by Anne at 09:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Secrecy News reports:

The Department of Energy Office of Intelligence has reverted to a policy of budget secrecy that it rejected more than a decade ago.

For as long as anyone can remember, the small DOE intelligence unit always had an unclassified budget (around $40 million in recent years). . .

. . .In 2004, the 9/11 Commission recommended that all U.S. intelligence agencies should do what INR and DOE Intelligence had long done, and disclose their annual budget totals. . .

. . . Other agencies simply ignored the 9/11 Commission's recommendation. But amazingly, DOE responded by doing the exact opposite of what the 9/11 Commission said was necessary.

Boldly striving for mediocrity, DOE began to classify its intelligence budget figure in Fiscal Year 2005.

Posted by Anne at 09:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Washington Times:

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

Posted by Anne at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A federal court yesterday granted partial summary judgment to the National Security Archive finding that the Air Force has violated the Freedom of Information Act and has engaged in a pattern or practice of violating the FOIA. In a suit brought by the Archive in March 2005, seeking to compel responses to 82 FOIA requests that had been pending between one and eighteen years, the court ordered the Air Force to provide the Archive with detailed information regarding each requested record and its FOIA processing, resolve each request with immediacy of attention and result, notify all agencies to which it has referred requests that it is operating under court order, and appear in court to discuss how to achieve results.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20060419a/index.htm

Posted by Anne at 09:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From News.com:

More Americans would be forced to pay taxes subsidizing broadband service in "unserved" locales, and cities would be free to go into the Wi-Fi business under an upcoming U.S. Senate bill.

Later this week, Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, plans to introduce a legislative package called the Broadband for America Act of 2006, he said Tuesday morning at a conference here hosted by the National Telecommunications CooperativeAssociation, which represents small and rural carriers.

Conspicuously absent from the bill, however, is any mention of Net neutrality, which refers to the idea of the federal government forcibly preventing broadband providers from favoring some Web sites or video streams' connection speeds over others.

Posted by Anne at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From News.com:

Most state governments are not actively tackling the creeping problem of digital archives and long-term access to public documents, according to the head of an industry group.

Apart from a handful of cases, states have not devised comprehensive strategies for retaining "born digital" documents, said Doug Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO). Such documents are created in electronic format and do not exist on paper.

Posted by Anne at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Editor & Publisher:
This is a big wake-up call for defenders of free speech in the United States, an urgent one, and worrisomely little known.

Embedded deep in H.R. 683—“The Trademark Dilution Revision Act,” which awaits what may well be a last look in the U.S. House of Representatives before being signed into law by President Bush—is language that would remove key free-speech protections that have been part of U.S. trademark law since 1996.

With only the most minimal notice in the mainstream press, the bill as it currently stands would remove three exceptions from part of the present trademark law:

• News reporting and commentary.
• Fair use.
• Non-commercial use.

Posted by Anne at 09:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From News.com:

Days before a congressional committee is set to vote on an overhaul of the nation's telecommunications policy, a broad coalition of media, consumer and Internet groups has organized behind a dramatic tagline: "Save the Internet."

Dozens of organizations ranging from the conservative-to-libertarian Gun Owners of America to the liberal group Moveon.org to the American Library Association, have just launched a Web site under the "Save the Internet" banner.

Posted by Anne at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Pentagon and Justice Department have agreed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from a gay rights group about its domestic surveillance.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., reported in court papers filed Thursday, the Defense Intelligence Agency will respond by April 27 to a FOIA request filed by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network on January 5.

SLDN filed the lawsuit after NBC News reported in December 2005 the Defense Department had collected information about war protestors and civil rights groups it deemed a threat under the "TALON". The anti-terror database, begun in May 2003, is meant to catalog raw information about suspicious incidents near military bases.

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060420-050556-5143r

Posted by Anne at 09:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now this is an interesting program. From the New York Times:
George C. Minden, who for 37 years ran a secret American program that put 10 million Western books and magazines in the hands of intellectuals and professionals in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, died on April 9 at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.

Mr. Minden was president of the International Literary Center, an organization financed by the Central Intelligence Agency, which tried to win influential friends by giving them reading material unavailable in their own countries. The material ranged from dictionaries, medical texts and novels by Joyce and Nabokov to art museum catalogs and Parisian fashion magazines.

Posted by Anne at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times reports on the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006:

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers. . .

. . . The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

It also represents a political setback for critics of expanding copyright law, who have been backing federal legislation that veers in the opposite direction and permits bypassing copy protection for "fair use" purposes. That bill--introduced in 2002 by Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat--has been bottled up in a subcommittee ever since. . .

. . .The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does the following:

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating "advanced tools of forensic science to investigate" copyright crimes.
• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.
• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.
• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be "destroyed" or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules established by federal drug laws.
• Says copyright holders can impound "records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in" infringements.

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I've got to say, this seems seems a bit off to me. I've never heard of Joan Miro until today. Seeing the Google logo introduced me to her style. Shouldn't that be a good thing?

From the Mercury News:

After angering authors last fall with a wide-ranging book-copying project, Google may now be alienating some visual artists as well by allegedly reproducing famous works in drawings on the search giant's home page.

On Thursday, the family of Joan Miro was upset to discover elements of several works by the Spanish surrealist incorporated into Google's logo.

The Artists Rights Society, a group that represents the Miro family and more than 40,000 visual artists and their estates, asked Google to remove the image early Thursday morning.

Posted by Anne at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Wall Street Journal:

A government watchdog may get the SEC records it wants -- but may have to pay millions of dollars for them.

SEC Insight Inc., a Plymouth, Minn., firm that monitors the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act for SEC records into possible investigations of 26 companies. The SEC denied the request and the firm sued the regulator in late 2004 in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. . .

. . .In a court filing last month, the regulator informed SEC Insight that it will be charged "at least $2 million" to review the requests. The SEC says it would take 30 attorneys a year to review "tens of millions of pages" of case records. The SEC made its estimate using its standard fee of $28 an hour to research FOIA requests by commercial firms. . .

. . .At issue is whether the SEC can pass on the expense as a standard FOIA review fee, or whether the SEC is responsible for the costs because of the court order. As part of the broader case, the court is expected to rule on that narrow question in weeks.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The NY TImes Magazine ran a great article over the weekend on Google's experience in China. The article provides insights into the Internet market and China's techniques in blocking access to certain content.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Secrecy News reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency conducted a review of its "operational files" last year, as it is required to do every ten years under the CIA Information Act of 1984, to see if any such files could have their "operational" designation rescinded, making them subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

But instead of removing any files from operational status, as contemplated by the 1984 Act, the CIA added nearly two dozen new categories of files that will now be exempt from search and review under the FOIA, according to a newly disclosed report to Congress.

Remarkably, the CIA report to Congress misstated the requirements of the 1984 law. The CIA told Congress that:
"The CIA Information Act... required that not less than once every ten years, the DCI review the operational files exemptions then in force to determine whether such exemptions could be removed from any category of exempted files or portion of those files, and whether any new categories of files should be designated as exempt."
Only the first half of that sentence is true.

The statute that governs these reviews -- 50 U.S.C. 432 -- refers only to the removal of the operational file exemption based on "historical value or other public interest." It says nothing about adding new designations.
Having misstated the law, CIA proceeded to implement its own misrepresentation.

The Agency did not remove any operational file exemptions at all. Instead, it added twenty three new file category exemptions.

Posted by Anne at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From MacWorld:

As U.S. Congress debates on major telecommunications legislation, lawmakers are considering proposals that would prohibit large telecom providers from charging fees to online content companies that use their broadband networks.

The measures would prevent the vendors from blocking services or providing slower download times for other vendors’ services.

Posted by Anne at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Washington Post:

The National Archives will no longer enter into secret agreements with federal agencies that want to withdraw records from public access on Archives shelves and will do more to disclose when documents are removed for national security reasons.

The new policy cannot guarantee full disclosure, however, because in some cases federal regulations limit the Archives' ability to reveal which agency is reviewing records and why, said Susan Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Archives.

Posted by Anne at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Reporters Without Borders has obtained a copy of the verdict in the case of Jiang Lijun, sentenced to four years in prison in November 2003 for his online pro-democracy articles, showing that Yahoo! helped Chinese police to identify him.

It is the third such case, following those of Shi Tao and Li Zhi, proving the implication of the American Internet company."

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=17180

Posted by Anne at 08:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"This page allows you to search a database of requests for information filed with departments and agencies of the Canadian government under Canada's Access to Information Act. You can use this database to identify requests that relate to your own research interests. Next, you can contact departments and agencies to obtain records already made public in response to those requests."

Posted by Anne at 08:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Forty-seven Attorneys General submitted a letter to the Internal Revenue Service objecting to proposed IRS rules that would make it easier for businesses to share and use personal information included on tax returns. The Attorneys General said "the best, most prudent course" the IRS could take to protect individuals' privacy would be to ban tax preparers from sharing their customers' information for any purpose unrelated to the preparation of tax returns.

http://www.naag.org/news/pr-20060403-irs-privacy.php

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From ALA, this guide to 2005-2006 Congressional PATRIOT Act Votes and Library Funding Support, which includes "a record of how your Members of Congress voted for the PATRIOT Act reauthorization and for funding for libraries."

Posted by Anne at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein learned that a second classified Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) relating to the re-review of open records existed. He requested its immediate declassification. This MOU, drawn up by the CIA, was declassified on Friday, April 14, 2006, and is available to the public today. Because this agreement unlike the one with the Air Force was generic and procedural in nature, National Archives staff initially did not view it as part of the reclassification program.

Upon learning of the second agreement, Professor Weinstein said, "There can never be a classified aspect to our mission. Classified agreements are the antithesis of our reason for being. Our focus is on the preservation of records and ensuring their availability to the American public while at the same time fulfilling the people's expectation that we will properly safeguard the classified records entrusted to our custody. Agencies have the prerogative to classify their requests to the National Archives if disclosure of the reasons why they are asking us to take action would cause identifiable damage to national security. However, what we do in response to such requests, and how we do it, will always be as transparent as possible. If records must be removed for reasons of national security, the American people will always, at the very least, know when it occurs and how many records are affected."

http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2006/nr06-92.html

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From the Washington Post:

In the crowded conference room of a Washington think tank yesterday, filmmaker Ken Burns passionately described his affection for the Smithsonian Institution and the vast array of historical materials in its archives. Then he just as sternly rebuked the Smithsonian for developing new rules for filmmakers and researchers.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the New York Times (registration required:

SHHH! Don't tell anyone: The British and American intelligence services worked together in World War II.

What may seem to some an obvious historical fact struck a Central Intelligence Agency apparatchik in 2002 as a secret still worth protecting. He redacted a sentence describing the "close coordination" of the allies' spies from a 1946 memorandum recounting war propaganda duties before approving its public release. For good measure, he also took out the number of American spies in 1946 ("400 in the field and 260 in Washington") and the name of Brig. Gen. John Magruder, then the intelligence chief.

The anonymous security reviewer's vigilance was for naught. Matthew M. Aid, a Washington historian, noticed recently that the memorandum had been published in 1997, details intact, in a historical volume by the State Department. The department had even posted the document's text on its Web site, where anybody can read about the "close coordination" between British and American spies.

Why do bureaucrats insist on spending the taxpayers' money to keep aging government paperwork from the taxpayers? . . .

. . .Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, proceeded to recount what he knew about a secretive program he said he had first learned about from a newspaper article. But then he too hit a wall of secrecy.

Mr. Weinstein said part of the reclassification effort was guided by a written agreement between the National Archives and "a component of the Department of Defense." Mr. Weinstein couldn't say just which component or what was in the agreement, because "it contains classified information which I am not prepared to discuss in open session."

This prompted an exasperated Representative Henry A. Waxman of California to ask, "Why is it classified?"
To which Mr. Weinstein forlornly replied, "I don't know."

It was an Alice in Wonderland moment, as one congressman put it, that epitomized government agencies' reflexive urge to keep things secret.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Library Journal:

While the Oklahoma House of Representatives voted 60 to 33 to deny state funding to libraries that don't confine gay-themed books and other age-inappropriate material to areas exclusively for adults," the bill Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) sponsored was not considered by the Democrat-dominated Senate.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the New York Tmes (Registration required):

As the recent coupling between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks continues to roil the documentary film world, more than 215 filmmakers, television executives and academics have signed a letter demanding that the Smithsonian, a publicly financed museum, not only reveal financial details of the joint venture but also abandon it.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Federal Computer Week:

The Government Printing Office has set aggressive deadlines to acquire a digital dissemination system that will transform a 19th-century printing office into a 21st-century electronic information agency. But some procurement experts say GPO’s haste could slow its Future Digital System project.

Last week, GPO requested bids for a master integrator to design an electronic system for disseminating government publications. Vendors have 30 days to respond to the request for proposals, after which GPO will begin an extensive evaluation of the submissions. GPO officials said they hope to award a contract this summer.

Posted by Anne at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In the seven years since Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), examples of the law's impact on legitimate consumers, scientists, and competitors continue to mount. A new report released today from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), "Unintended Consequences: Seven Years Under the DMCA," collects reports of the misuses of the DMCA -- chilling free expression and scientific research, jeopardizing fair use, impeding competition and innovation, and interfering with other laws on the books. The report updates a previous version issued by EFF in 2003.

Posted by Anne at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

During his life and career as a muckraking journalist in Washington, Jack Anderson cultivated secret sources throughout the halls of government -- sources who passed on information that allowed Anderson to investigate and write about Watergate, CIA assassination schemes, and countless scandals. His syndicated column, Washington Merry-Go-Round, earned him the enmity of the corrupt and powerful -- so much so that during the Watergate years, associates of Nixon had discussed assassinating the columnist. They never went through with the plot. Anderson died last December at the age of 83.

His archive, some 200 boxes now being held by George Washington University's library, could be a trove of information about state secrets, dirty dealings, political maneuverings, and old-fashioned investigative journalism, open for historians and up-and-coming reporters to see.

But the government wants to see the documents before anyone else.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation have told university officials and members of the Anderson family that they want to go through the archive, and that agents will remove any item they deem confidential or top secret.

Posted by Anne at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From ABC News:

Germany agreed Tuesday to help clear the way for the opening of Nazi records on some 17 million Jews and enslaved laborers who were persecuted and slain by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust more than 60 years ago.

Posted by Anne at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Chicago Tribune:

China certainly has the most sophisticated censorship regime in the world. And it is utterly outmatched.

The government is adept at curbing expression, sometimes brutally, with prison terms of more than 10 years for unlawful political speech. But understanding China today means looking beyond the confines of mainstream communication--the dutiful newspapers, the censored films, the Google-scrubbed search pages--to a shadow marketplace of ideas in which Chinese citizens are finding, watching and reading a growing share of what they want. . .

. . . But amid the attention on all that gets censored, it is easy to lose sight of all that gets through.

The Internet, even censored with U.S. corporate help, is fundamentally altering China's one-party state. In the span of barely a decade, the Communist Party has lost the monopoly on knowledge. China's ranks of 111million Web users have grown nearly 20 percent from a year ago.

To keep an eye on them, China has enlisted an estimated 30,000 Web watchers who troll for sensitive Web sites and chat postings to remove. Yet the censors' task has barely begun: 92 percent of China's population has yet to go online. With analysts predicting that China could have 400 million Web users within 10 years--more than the U.S. population--authorities face a daunting challenge to keep pace.

Censorship opponents are getting savvier too. Chinese Web users who want to elude China's firewalls can now choose from a range of online services with names such as Freegate and UltraSurf. Though they are difficult to use, the sites funnel Web traffic through third-party computers, allowing Web users in China to view sites and send messages that otherwise are blocked.

Posted by Anne at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From News.com:

America Online on Wednesday apparently began blocking e-mail on its servers containing the Web address of a petition against the company's upcoming certified-mail program, an issue the company called a "glitch."

The Internet service provider, which has roughly 20 million subscribers in the United States, began bouncing e-mail communications with the URL "Dearaol.com" sometime late Wednesday and continuing through Thursday.

Posted by Anne at 02:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From MSN:

Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt on Wednesday defended the search engine's cooperation with Chinese censorship as he announced the creation of a Beijing research center and unveiled a Chinese-language brand name.

Google is trying to raise its profile in China after waiting until January to launch its Chinese-language site Google.cn. Activists have criticized the company for blocking searches for material about Taiwan, Tibet, democracy and other sensitive issues on the site.

"We believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one," Schmidt said at a news conference.

Posted by Anne at 02:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From ComputerWorld:

The Social Security numbers, driver's license information and bank account details belonging to potentially millions of current and former residents of Florida are available to anyone on the Internet because sensitive information has not been redacted from public records being posted on county Web sites.

Although questions about the availability of personal data online initially focused on Broward County, an official there stressed today that all counties in Florida are subject to the same state law. A spot check of other county Web sites today confirmed that sensitive data is easily available through public property records.
In fact, according to Sue Baldwin, director of the Broward County Records Division, counties across the nation face the same issue.

. . ."All this information has been out there and available since the beginning of time," Baldwin said. "It was out there, and the people who were educated about it knew it was there. It's been online since 1999."

. . . She added that the information available on the Web is also freely available for public purchase and inspection at the county offices. “Professional list-making companies have always purchased copies of records and data from recorders to use in the creation of specialized marketing lists, which they sell,” she said. So too have title insurance underwriters and credit-reporting agencies.

Posted by Anne at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.

Posted by Anne at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Federal Register: April 10, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 68)][Rules and Regulations][Page 18007-18008], National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Final Rule: "The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), is publishing this Directive pursuant to section 102(b)(1) of Executive Order 12829, as amended, relating to the National Industrial Security Program. This order establishes a National Industrial Security Program (NISP) to safeguard Federal Government classified information that is released to contractors, licensees, and grantees of the United States Government. Redundant, overlapping, or unnecessary requirements impede those interests. Therefore, the NISP serves as the single, integrated, cohesive industrial security program to protect classified information and to preserve our Nation's economic and technological interests. This Directive sets forth guidance to agencies to set uniform standards throughout the NISP that promote these objectives."

Posted by Anne at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Canadian Globe and Mail:

In an unusual move, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided to re-hear a controversial case involving the rights of freelance writers so that its newest judge -- an expert in copyright law -- can participate in the decision.

The court said yesterday that it will take another run at the class action, which involves a battle between The Globe and Mail and its freelancers over who owns the rights to material reproduced in databases and CD-ROMs.
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Dec. 6, but since then, one of the judges who heard the case, Mr. Justice John Major, has retired from the court.

The judges now want to involve Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein, who joined them in March. They will review the transcript of the December hearing and watch the videotape of the proceedings. They may also send written questions to lawyers for both sides.

While the court did not explicitly say so, lawyers familiar with the case say the judges may be having trouble making a decision, and will want to take advantage of Judge Rothstein's expertise in intellectual property rights.

Posted by Anne at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the ACLU: "Less than six weeks after the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the government has given up its legal battle over a gag order on Connecticut librarians affected by a controversial provision of the law, which will allow them to speak publicly for the first time about their objections to secret FBI demands for patrons’ library and e-mail records, the American Civil Liberties Union announced today."

From the ALA press release: "While we are pleased 'John Doe' will finally be able to speak, the government's timing is highly suspicious coming merely a month after the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. The American public should be outraged that the one person in the United States who could have spoken from real experience with a National Security Letter (NSL), and who was seeking to join the national debate, was forbidden from doing so until after that debate was complete. This appears to be secrecy for the sake of control of the public debate, rather than a true concern for national security."

Posted by Anne at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The National Security Archive has uncovered a secret agreement between the National Archives and various military