Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

The brave new world of electronic libraries at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is turning into a nightmare, according to librarian complaints released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). With nearly one third of its library network now closed, internal and external researchers are frustrated by being forced to rely on balky, incomplete digital inventories.

Read the e-mails from EPA librarians

Posted by Anne at 08:55 PM | Permalink

From The Alliance for Taxpayer Access:

The National Society of Consulting Soil Scientists, which represents 156 private soil consulting firms in the U.S., has declared its support for the Federal Research Public Access Act. The society is the first to publicly announce its support for the Act.

Posted by Anne at 08:07 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

The FBI appears to have adopted an invasive Internet surveillance technique that collects far more data on innocent Americans than previously has been disclosed.

Instead of recording only what a particular suspect is doing, agents conducting investigations appear to be assembling the activities of thousands of Internet users at a time into massive databases, according to current and former officials. That database can subsequently be queried for names, e-mail addresses or keywords.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

American technology giants urged the U.S. government Tuesday to do more to confront China and other countries about Internet censorship.

Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. also defended themselves against accusations that they have helped governments such as China's crush dissent in return for access to booming Internet markets.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink

ALA Press Release:

On February 6, ALA President Leslie Burger will testify at an oversight hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the impact of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) library closings.

Posted by Anne at 07:59 PM | Permalink

Press Release from the British Library:

Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has signed an agreement with Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library, to collaborate on the development of a global science gateway. The gateway would eventually make science information resources of many nations accessible via a single Internet portal.

Called ‘Science.world,’ the planned resource would be available for use by scientists in all nations and by anyone interested in science. The approach will capitalise on existing technology to search vast collections of science information distributed across the globe, enabling much-needed access to smaller, less well-known sources of highly valuable science. Following the model of Science.gov, the U.S. interagency science portal that relies on content published by each participating agency, ‘Science.world’ will rely on scientific resources published by each participating nation. Other countries have been invited to participate in this international effort.

Posted by Anne at 07:56 PM | Permalink

From Nature:

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.

Posted by Anne at 07:55 PM | Permalink

From the First Amendment Center:

A new First Amendment Center report examines the rising conflicts between the federal government and the press over matters of secrecy, leaks and threats to prosecute journalists for espionage or treason for reporting classified information.

Government Secrecy vs. Freedom of the Press, by Geoffrey R. Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, is one in a series of First Reports by the center exploring crucial First Amendment topics. Included in the report is an analysis of the 1918 Espionage Act by Stephen I. Vladeck of the University of Miami School of Law.

Posted by Anne at 07:54 PM | Permalink

From Information Today:

The National Archive Publishing Co. (NAPC) has announced a 2-year project by which they will digitize a backfile of microfiche reports in ERIC (Education Resources Information Center). All documents date from 1966 to 1992—about 340,000 documents or 40 million pages. Due to a conservative interpretation of contract language used until 1993 for submitting documents to ERIC, the project will also involve chasing down copyright holders, both corporate and individual authors, for permission to offer access to the electronic documents. Though the digitization will proceed independent of the permission-seeking process, the availability of full-text PDF files of the documents (free at the ERIC Web site) will depend on securing permission.

Posted by Anne at 07:51 PM | Permalink

From the Boston Herald:

. . .Brown, 46, was convicted of stabbing and strangling Sabina Kulakowski. He was found guilty mostly on the strength of bite marks on her nude body that a prosecution witness linked to Brown.

After appeals were rejected, Brown filed a Freedom of Information request four years ago and paid $28.50 for copies of all the documents in his case. He found four affidavits relating to Barry Bench, the brother of Kulakowski’s ex-boyfriend.

Neither Brown nor his lawyers had previously seen the affidavits, which convinced Brown that Bench was the killer. Brown sent a letter from prison to Bench in 2003, accusing him of the murder. Several days later, Bench committed suicide by stepping in front of a train. . .

Posted by Anne at 07:50 PM | Permalink

From the Pasadena Weekly:

Getting public records from the feds has grown more difficult, but efforts are being made to increase access

. . . The fact is, say scholars and experts in the field, reporters with daily and weekly newspapers typically rely instead on their respective states' open records statutes to do their jobs, mainly because of the long periods of time it takes to get a response from a given agency being hit with a FOIA request, and because there is nothing in the legislation forcing compliance by the agency being asked for records.

This week, Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va., and members of her staff will be meeting with Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman of Woodland Hills, chair of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which now includes the newly formed House Subcommittee on Information Policy, the Census and the National Archives. . .

Posted by Anne at 07:48 PM | Permalink

From The New Yorker:

Every weekday, a truck pulls up to the Cecil H. Green Library, on the campus of Stanford University, and collects at least a thousand books, which are taken to an undisclosed location and scanned, page by page, into an enormous database being created by Google. The company is also retrieving books from libraries at several other leading universities, including Harvard and Oxford, as well as the New York Public Library. At the University of Michigan, Google’s original partner in Google Book Search, tens of thousands of books are processed each week on the company’s custom-made scanning equipment.

Posted by Anne at 07:47 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Chinese Communist Party chief Hu Jintao has vowed to "purify" the Internet, state media reported Wednesday, describing a top-level meeting that discussed ways to master the country's sprawling, unruly online population.

Hu made the comments as the ruling party's Politburo--its 24-member leading council--was studying China's Internet, which claimed 137 million registered users at the end of 2006.

Posted by Anne at 07:45 PM | Permalink

You may sign this petition to register your support for free and open access to European research and for the recommendations proposed in the EU's 'Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe'.

The sponsoring organisations are JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), SURF (Netherlands), SPARC Europe, DFG (Deutsches Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek, Denmark).

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

From LibraryLaw Blog:

A documentary filmmaker just contacted me, looking for examples of libraries that have received govt requests to destroy information:

For a documentary film on the nature of government secrecy and information, I am looking for copies of "withdraw and destroy" notifications.

If you can help him, put a comment on this post and I will forward to him. Feel free to forward to other blogs/lists.

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

The Bush administration hasn't settled on what data it would like Internet service providers to retain about their subscribers or for how long, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney said Tuesday.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made it clear last fall that he planned to seek national legislation requiring the controversial practice known as data retention, but "we don't have any position officially about how long records would have to be retained or what records would have to be retained," said Eric Wenger, a trial attorney with the Justice Department's computer crime unit.

Posted by Anne at 08:37 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Chinese Internet search leader Baidu won approval to become an online news portal, government and industry sources said on Tuesday, heating up a rivalry in the world's second-largest Web market.

China's State Council Information Office (SCIO), granted Baidu an Internet news content service license last week, a government source said, allowing Baidu.com--often referred to as "China's Google"--to do its own reporting rather than simply show news search results at present.

This will give Baidu a clear edge in terms of content over competitors who lack the permit, industry analysts said.

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

The number of Internet users in China made its highest recorded jump to reach 137 million at the end of 2006, a state information center said Tuesday.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

The folks at Free Government Information are posting their notes from several ALA Midwinter sessions with EPA representatives.

ALA Committee on Legislation Subcommittee on Federal Libraries Session
ALA Washington Office Briefing

Posted by Anne at 08:07 PM | Permalink

An English translation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision in the case Claude Reyes et al v. Chile is available at the Court's website. In this case the Inter-American Court upheld that the right to access to information is a human right under the American Convention.

Posted by Anne at 09:02 PM | Permalink

From the Daily Press:

Acquiring information from city government could soon get easier for Suffolk residents.

The city plans to create an office that will handle requests for documents that are available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act.

Posted by Anne at 09:00 PM | Permalink

The Center for Democracy and Technology has released their comprehensive legislative recommendations for 2007:

The 110th Congress faces a host of Internet policy decisions that will have a lasting impact on commerce, national security, and civil liberties. For more than a decade, the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has sought to defend the free and open Internet by advocating policies that preserve privacy and free expression and remove obstacles to continued innovation. As lawmakers take up Internet-related issues, we offer the following recommendations.

Posted by Anne at 08:57 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

A bill that Senate Democrats have touted as a means to curb corruption in Washington could instead target some political bloggers with new regulations and even criminal penalties.

The legislation, which began as an attempt to rewrite federal lobbying laws in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal, has ballooned to more than 9,000 words and a thicket of complicated rules.

Posted by Anne at 08:53 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

An Egyptian blogger went on trial Thursday on charges of insulting Islam and causing sectarian strife with his Internet writings. Egypt's first prosecution of a blogger came as Washington has backed away from pressuring its Mideast ally to improve its human rights record and bring democratic reform.

Abdel Kareem Nabil often denounced Islamic authorities and criticized Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his Arabic-language blog. He has been in detention since November and faces up to nine years in prison if convicted.

Posted by Anne at 08:50 PM | Permalink

From the Arizona Daily Sun:

Despite pressure from U.S. lawmakers and frustration among Holocaust survivors, a unique Nazi-era archive remains off-limits to researchers, and officials say it could take years before the millions of documents become available for study.

Eight months have passed since the 11 countries administering the vast storehouse of log books, transport lists and death registers agreed to open the archive for research. For nearly a decade, the group had wrangled over objections that disclosure would violate the privacy of some victims.

When German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries announced in Washington last April her nation's decision to drop its resistance, she told reporters that agreement among the member states should take no more than six months. Expectations that the archive would be accessible to researchers by year's end soared.

But that agreement was just the first step in a lengthy legal process to amend a 1955 treaty governing the archive of the International Tracing Service, or ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the German town of Bad Arolsen.

Posted by Anne at 08:49 PM | Permalink

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

A national controversy over cutbacks and outright closings of Environmental Protection Agency libraries came to Seattle over the weekend as librarians from around the country told EPA officials the agency is undercutting its own workers, its scientists and the public.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

From CBC News:

A woman from the Rural Municipality of Daly in western Manitoba faces a long wait — 13½ years, to be exact — for government records she requested about the province's livestock industry.

Before the holidays, Ruth Pryzner asked the Manitoba government for records on all known hog operations in the province, filing a number of requests under the Freedom of Information and Personal Privacy Act (FIPPA). . .

. . . But the province told Pryzner it would take 13½ years to get the documents together, she said.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

ACLU Press Release:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for National Security Studies today filed three Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the immediate release of records related to President Bush’s asserted authority to search Americans’ mail without a warrant. The president claimed this unprecedented authority in a "signing statement" attached to a statute that expressly prohibits opening First Class mail without a warrant.

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

A U.S. appeals court has rejected a bid by Internet activists to roll back federal laws that extended copyright protection over orphan works, or books and other media that are no longer in print.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision to dismiss Kahle v. Gonzales, which argued that legal changes made in the 1990s had vastly extended copyright protections at the expense of free speech rights.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Italy's top criminal court has ruled that downloading music, movies and software over the Internet isn't a crime if profit wasn't the motivation, though analysts questioned Monday whether the ruling would have much effect on copyright laws.

The court's decision, issued earlier this month but reported over the weekend by the Italian media, overturns earlier convictions against two former Turin Polytechnic Institute students who set up in 1994 a peer-to-peer, file-sharing network that was shut down within months.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From the Sydney Morning Herald, a discussion of the contrast in implementation between New Zealand and Australian of FOI laws.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From the Sacramento Bee:

Police agencies in the capital region and statewide routinely delay, dismiss or ignore ordinary citizens' requests for reports on basic public crime, arrest and other topics, according to a landmark audit of California law enforcement agency practices.

The audit, overseen by the nonprofit group Californians Aware, was performed by reporters at 28 newspapers and three television stations across the state, including The Sacramento Bee and two other McClatchy Co. newspapers in California, the Modesto Bee and the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision to close five of 26 agency libraries has prompted steady criticism from the American Library Association (ALA) and others, and that criticism has paid off: the agency won't close more libraries without further consultation. "We have re-engaged," a conciliatory, contrite Mike Flynn, of the EPA's Office of Environmental Information, said Saturday at an update session sponsored by the ALA Washington Office at the Midwinter Meeting in Seattle. He said the EPA had been ineffective in communicating its plans to rely more on electronic documents. "As we move forward, EPA is in the process of analyzing and seeking stakeholder input. We're planning on taking the current plan and revising it," he said. "We're not on a road to close all our physical libraries. We're looking for the right mix."

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From InfoToday:

Based on a model currently used by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) has launched to provide free access to a permanent online archive of peer-reviewed research papers in the medical and life sciences. A group of nine U.K. research organizations, led by the Wellcome Trust, awarded the contract to develop UKPMC to a partnership between The British Library, The University of Manchester, and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) last July.

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, something profound happened in the government secrecy system. With little fanfare, the paradigm of secrecy shifted. . .

. . . But it is not so simple. There is a dirty little secret about these secrets: They remain secreted away. You still can't rush down to the National Archives to check them out. In fact, it could be years before these public documents can be viewed by the public.

Fifty archivists can process 40 million pages in a year, but now they are facing 400 million. The backlog, inside the National Archives II facility in College Park, measures 160,000 cubic feet inside a massive classified vault with special lighting and climate controls to preserve old paper.

Posted by Anne at 08:08 PM | Permalink

From Yahoo! News:

After taking action against Microsoft and Google, Belgium's French-speaking newspapers are seeking redress from another Internet search engine, Yahoo, their lawyer has said.

"We sent a letter of formal notice to Yahoo yesterday" so that it will stop publishing articles from Belgian newspapers on its search engine without prior authorisation, said Bernard Magrez, lawyer for the editors group Copiepresse said on Thursday.

Copiepresse accuses Yahoo of violating copyright laws by giving Internet users access to archived newspaper articles which the papers themselves would now charge people to read.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

The National Freedom of Information Coalition protects the public's right to oversee its government.

Toward that end, NFOIC offers some $220,000 annually in pass-through grants to members to:
• foster the creation and growth of state FOI coalitions;
• assist with projects furthering public access to government records and meetings; and
• ensure the public's right to oversee its government.

The grant application deadline is March 15, 2007.

Posted by Anne at 08:01 PM | Permalink

IRS Press Release: (emphasis mine)

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson today released her annual report to Congress, designating the alternative minimum tax for individuals (AMT) and the federal tax gap as the most serious problems facing taxpayers. The report also focuses extensively on concerns about IRS collection policies and the transparency of IRS information to the taxpaying public.

Concerns about IRS Transparency

In her preface, Olson states that the primary theme of this year’s report is transparency and the important role it plays in tax administration. The report notes that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires the IRS to make certain procedures and guidance available to the public. The report credits the IRS with improving its compliance with FOIA requirements in recent years but concludes that further improvements are needed. “It goes without saying that the IRS needs to comply with the requirements of the law,” Olson said. “But we believe FOIA represents a floor on transparency, not a ceiling. Transparency benefits taxpayers and the IRS. It benefits taxpayers because they are entitled to know what legal standards and procedures the IRS is applying, and it benefits the IRS because we can improve our procedures when we receive meaningful feedback from informed taxpayers and practitioners,” she said.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

From People For the American Way:

President Bush has renominated controversial Peter Keisler to the D.C. Circuit. The White House is still stonewalling the Senate and the American public by blocking the release of relevant public records from Keisler’s tenure in the Office of Counsel during the Reagan Administration. People For the American Way believes it's critical that the Senate and the public get the material to properly evaluate Keisler's nomination to a lifetime seat on the nation's second highest court.

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has no plans to shut down more of its libraries and has ceased destroying duplicative research materials until it answers questions from Congress, a spokesperson said Friday. Jessica Emond, the deputy press secretary at the EPA, said the agency has rescheduled “the recycling” of EPA materials that are duplicates or obsolete.

Posted by Anne at 08:39 PM | Permalink

From CentreDaily:

In his second inauguration speech, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell proposed

a "new open-records law" to replace the current law governing public access to government documents. Right-to-know advocates consider the present law archaic because it restricts public access to specific categories of records rather than opening all records to scrutiny except specific ones. Rendell did not spell out what changes he would propose.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

From NewsMax:

President George W. Bush has decided not to reauthorize the controversial domestic warrantless surveillance program for terrorism suspects and to put it under the authority of a secret special court, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday.

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From NARA:

The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) announces the availability of 100,000 pages of recently declassified records as a result of a search for files relevant to Japanese war crimes.

The declassification is a result of a thorough investigation by several U.S. government agencies for classified records remaining in their files, pursuant to the requirements of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Disclosure Acts. The declassified records include a range of materials from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), CIA, the State Department, Army Intelligence, FBI, and other agencies, and cover many aspects of the Pacific conflict and postwar relations between the United States and Japan. In general, however, only a small portion of these records specifically pertains to Japanese war crimes. The records are open and available at the research room of the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From Georgetown University Library:

This research guide provides links to sources for learning about and obtaining copies of formerly classified U.S. government documents. Topics include the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and federal government websites. Also includes a link to Executive Order 12958, under which thousands of pages of documents were declassified at the end of 2006. Although some sources are only available to Georgetown University students, most are available to the general public. From Georgetown University Libraries.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times (Registration required):

The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

Posted by Anne at 07:55 PM | Permalink

From Directgov:

The government today launched its progress report on 'Transformational Government: enabled by technology' with the news that at least 551 government websites are to be cut to make access to information easier for citizens and businesses.

In a move that will benefit tens of millions of users, only 26 of the websites examined so far are certain to be retained by government, while 551 will go. Information of continuing relevance from closed sites will transfer to the Directgov and the Business Link webites.

Posted by Anne at 07:15 PM | Permalink

From 680 News:

Ever taped or PVRed a show so that you can watch it later, otherwise known as time shifting?

Or ripped a CD so you could listen to it on your MP3 player, called format shifting? With changes to Canada's copyright laws expected as early as next month, these mundane 21st century activities could theoretically be open to prosecution - unless the Conservative government steps in with expanded "fair use" or "fair dealing" protections for consumers.

Close observers of the file say all signs point to a new regime that will improve safeguards for major music, film and media companies and artists for unpaid use of their material, but neglect to make exemptions for personal use of copyrighted content.

Posted by Anne at 07:12 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

The way the government makes its vast amounts of data available to the public could be about to change.

It has decided to make access to a database of UK laws completely free for the public to access and re-use.

Posted by Anne at 07:10 PM | Permalink

From the FBI:

Imagine a library filled with a million books, each 270 pages long.

That’s how many historic FBI pages we declassified on December 31, in line with an executive order that now applies to the Bureau. . .

. . . That won’t happen overnight. “Just because the files are officially declassified doesn’t mean they are automatically ready for public review. We have a lot of work to do before that happens,” explains Hardy.

Such as: Scouring for—and then redacting—information that would compromise personal privacy or would expose a government informant, identify a sensitive technique, or violate a treaty or agreement with another country.

Posted by Anne at 07:08 PM | Permalink

CREW Press Release:

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sued the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for its failure to adequately respond to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to the destruction of Secret Service visitor record logs.

Posted by Anne at 07:05 PM | Permalink