Part-Time Policy Wonk

Minnesota Public Radio hosted a call-in show on the politics of presidential libraries:

Presidential libraries are places for scholarship, according to the National Archives. But the attached museums are there to present an era -- and a person -- to the public, for better or worse. Two presidential library directors talk about the intersection of politics and posterity.

GUESTS
Timothy Naftali: Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
Tim Walch: Director, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in West Branch, Iowa.

Posted by Anne at 08:12 PM | Permalink

From the New Zealand Herald:

The Government's select committee report on the Copyright Amendment Bill was released on Friday and has generated some interesting discussion in the tech blogosphere.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The National Archives and Records Administration announced yesterday that it has reached a non-exclusive agreement with Amazon.com and one of its subsidiaries to reproduce and sell to the public copies of thousands of historic films and videotapes in the Archives' holdings.

The arrangement allows Amazon and a California subsidiary, CustomFlix Labs, to make digitized copies of some of history's most famous, and infamous, footage and make them available in DVD form for purchase via the Internet.
Archives and CustomFlix officials stressed yesterday that the agreement is non-exclusive, unlike the controversial semi-exclusive deal the Smithsonian Institution struck recently with the cable television network Showtime.

Posted by Anne at 08:08 PM | Permalink

Dick Durbin has expanded his call for suggestions to redstate.com:

Hello, I’m Senator Dick Durbin. I’m looking forward to our discussion about what should be included in America's national broadband strategy.

But before we get to any of that, let me deal with the 800 pound elephant in the room. What the heck am I doing blogging or even posting on RedState? And what do I hope to gain from it?

The answer is simple: different perspectives, different ideas, more people with a seat at the table. My hope is that I will receive comments and suggestions that will help me draft legislation that will make the United States more competitive in terms of broadband access.

Posted by Anne at 08:05 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Democracy & Technology:

In a far-reaching new proposal to Congress, the Administration is asking for authority to intercept, without a court order, any international telephone call or e-mail made by any American citizen. The proposed legislation would not require that the targeted communication involve terrorism or other dangerous conduct. The proposal would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to allow the National Security Agency to force communications carriers to turn over without a court order any international communications into and out of the United States for indefinite storage and data-mining. CDT strongly opposes the proposal.

Administration Letter [PDF] July 30, 2007

Posted by Anne at 07:01 PM | Permalink

From The Raw Story:

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) issued a Friday afternoon statement criticizing Republican colleagues for holding up an open government bill that seeks to reform the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and end delays in government compliance with requests for information.

Posted by Anne at 06:59 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The United States and the European Union have agreed to expand a security program that shares personal data about millions of U.S.-bound airline passengers a year, potentially including information about a person's race, ethnicity, religion and health.

Under the agreement, airlines flying from Europe to the United States are required to provide data related to these matters to U.S. authorities if it exists in their reservation systems. The deal allows Washington to retain and use it only "where the life of a data subject or of others could be imperiled or seriously impaired," such as in a counterterrorism investigation.

According to the deal, the information that can be used in such exceptional circumstances includes "racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership" and data about an individual's health, traveling partners and sexual orientation.

Posted by Anne at 06:58 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Kazakhstan and Georgia are among countries imposing excessive restrictions on how people use the Internet, a new report says, warning that regulations are having a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

"Governing the Internet," issued Thursday by the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, called the online policing "a bitter reminder of the ease with which some regimes - democracies and dictatorships alike - seek to suppress speech that they disapprove of, dislike, or simply fear."

Posted by Anne at 06:55 PM | Permalink

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

The United States is threatened by its fetish for secrecy, an expanding and often arbitrary impulse that adds 40,000 new documents each day to the federal government's mountain of "classified" papers.

That conclusion comes not from the ACLU or Moveon.org, though both organizations agree. It comes from Rep. Dave Reichert, a Republican from Bellevue and a former King County sheriff who is working on legislation that would refine the government's process for deciding which documents remain secret.

The urge to classify, he said, "has been institutionalized, and that's the problem. It's a Cold War mind-set, and it's a hurdle we have to overcome."

Posted by Anne at 08:49 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

For the first time since it began debating the issue more than three decades ago, Congress is now poised to adopt legislation that will require -- not merely recommend -- public disclosure of the total national intelligence budget.

"Not later than 30 days after the end of each fiscal year beginning with fiscal year 2007, the Director of National Intelligence shall disclose to the public the aggregate amount of funds appropriated by Congress for the National Intelligence Program for such fiscal year," states the House-Senate conference agreement on H.R. 1 (section 601), the massive bill to implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

From the L.A. Times:

As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day.

Instead, the department now reports on the electricity generated nationwide, a measurement that does not indicate how much power Iraqis in Baghdad or elsewhere actually receive.

Posted by Anne at 08:46 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Free Government Information for the pointer:

twitter.com/HouseFloor has live updates from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, updated every five minutes with any new information from:
clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.html.

This is in beta testing mode...

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From Public Citizen:

Public Citizen today unveiled a Web site that provides an up-to-date listing of the 2008 presidential hopefuls’ “bundlers,” the super-fundraisers who are powering the billion-dollar race for the White House. The revitalized site, an expansion of Public Citizen’s similar effort during the 2004 campaign and the only such clearinghouse for the 2008 campaign, is at www.WhiteHouseForSale.org.

The site identifies nearly 1,900 individuals who are funneling money from other donors to the candidates. Of these, more than 230 were bundlers for President George W. Bush in at least one of his presidential campaigns, or for either Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) or former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

Brown University Press Release:

Delaware and Michigan are the best states for e-government in the United States, according to the eighth annual e-government analysis conducted by researchers at Brown University. The federal portal USA.gov and the Department of Agriculture are the most highly rated federal sites.

Darrell M. West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University, and a team of researchers examined 1,548 state and federal sites. The researchers analyzed 1,487 state Web sites (an average of 30 sites per state), plus 48 federal government legislative and executive sites and 13 federal court sites. Research was completed during June and July 2007. This series of e-government studies has been released annually since 2000.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

PowerPoint slides from Susan Cornell, Freedom of Information Officer and Chief FOIA Liaison, NIH

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

In response to a Web site that outs criminal informants and undercover agents, some U.S. judges are withholding certain court documents from the Internet.

Federal judges in eastern Pennsylvania and southern Florida are keeping plea and sentencing memos out of online case files because of concerns that the information is being posted on a Web site called WhosARat.com.

The documents still will be available in person at the federal courthouse.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From Yahoo! News UK:

A senior Malaysian minister warned bloggers the government was fast losing patience and would bring the full weight of the law against those who use the Internet to insult the king or Islam, a report said Wednesday.

"Even thought the government has been tolerant of anti-government positions and criticisms on the Internet, we are very concerned about statements that insult religion and reek of racism," Nazri Aziz said.

Posted by Anne at 08:30 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Politicians charged on Tuesday that peer-to-peer networks can pose a "national security threat" because they enable federal employees to share sensitive or classified documents accidentally from their computers.

At a hearing on the topic, Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said, without offering details, that he is considering new laws aimed at addressing the problem. He said he was troubled by the possibility that foreign governments, terrorists or organized crime could gain access to documents that reveal national secrets.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site - more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, North Carolina officials said Tuesday.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From Reuters:

The British government rejected a plea to extend copyright laws for sound recordings to beyond 50 years on Tuesday, prompting the music industry to accuse it of not supporting musicians and artists.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

Disputes about printing confidential national security information have flared in recent years, but this particular letter is dated July 11, 1916, and was sent by Newton Baker, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of war. It is part of a vast collection of personal letters, financial documents, confidential reports, photographs and more — more than 700,000 pages in all — that The Times has donated to the New York Public Library.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From Press Esc:

US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.

Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) both argued that Internet was a dangerous place where parents alone will not be able to protect their children.

Posted by Anne at 08:24 PM | Permalink

From the House Oversight Committee:

In two separate letters, Chairman Waxman asks when the White House Counsel's office learned about White House officials' use of nongovernmental e-mail accounts for official purposes, and what steps, if any, it took to preserve these records and prevent violations of the Presidential Records Act. A staff report issued by the committee's majority staff in June found that the White House Counsel's office under Alberto Gonzales may have known about officials' use of these accounts as early as 2001 and done nothing to prevent continued use of the accounts for official business. Chairman Waxman asks Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Fred F. Fielding, the current White House Counsel, for information and documents.

• Letter to Fred Fielding
• Letter to Attorney General Gonzales

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink

From Eye Weekly:

. . . Augimeri is also on the board of the Toronto Public Library (TPL), which, just this morning, approved $1.23 million in cuts to staff, services and programs for the rest of 2007 (from September to December, to be exact).

It’s worth pointing out that Toronto’s library system — named the world’s second most used public library by circulation after Hong Kong — had already cut the equivalent of 200 full time staff members since amalgamation despite total activity increasing by over 30 percent.

The newly approved cost-saving measures came as a result of Mayor David Miller’s declaration — made the day after the vote to defer the proposed new taxes won — that all city divisions and agencies, boards and committees find ways cut their costs. TPL is one of the first agencies to approve cuts, and they aren’t pretty.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From ALA's District Dispatch:

Today, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that will provide crucial checks against the National Security Letters (NSLs) authority expanded under the USA PATRIOT Act, which has impacted numerous library patrons across the country. . .

. . . The National Security Letters Reform Act of would address many of the abuses disclosed by the Justice Department’s Inspector General in an internal FBI audit from March 2007. Specifically, the bill would:
• Give an NSL recipient the right to challenge the letter and its nondisclosure requirement;
• Place a time limit on the NSL gag order and allow for court approved extensions;
• Give notice to the target of an NSL if the government seeks to use the records obtained from the NSL in a subsequent proceeding; and
• Give the target an opportunity to receive legal counsel and challenge the use of those records.

Posted by Anne at 08:19 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

In the long-standing struggle to gain access to details regarding Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings in 2000 and 2001, the Washington Post reported last week some of the many players who influenced the vice president's policy recommendations. An undisclosed former White House official gave the Post a list of approximately 300 names, companies and organizations who met with White House staff.

Posted by Anne at 07:42 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

New Jersey library advocates are scrambling to respond to legislation that cuts database funding and caps municipal spending increases. The New Jersey Knowledge Initiative (NJKI), launched in 2005, aims to help entrepreneurs, small business owners, researchers, and students with free web access to science, technology, medical, and business databases. However, the FY08 budget provides only $2 million to continue the initiative, $1 million less than needed to maintain the program. The State Library and the NJKI Task Force aim to use the funds to maintain access for as long as the money lasts, likely until Feb. 28, 2008.

Posted by Anne at 07:40 PM | Permalink

From ZDNet UK:

While in no way unique in facing the challenge of how to preserve digital documents, the UK's National Archives certainly faces the issue on a larger scale than most organisations.

Posted by Anne at 07:39 PM | Permalink

From BeSpacific:

"The Center for Public Integrity researched state requirements on the filing of Personal Financial Disclosures by all three branches of state government — executive, legislative and judicial — to help the public hold officials accountable and determine the potential for conflicts of interest." [Note: see the drop-down menu on the right hand side to view copies of reports filed by members of the executive, judicial and legislative branches in the 50 states.

Posted by Anne at 07:38 PM | Permalink

From Dick Durbin on Open Left:

Today I'm writing to invite you to participate in an experiment -- an interactive approach to drafting legislation on one of the most significant public policy questions today: What should be America's national broadband strategy?

Starting this Tuesday, July 24 at 7pm EST on OpenLeft.com, I will be engaging in a series of four nightly broadband policy discussions with the online community. During those four nights, I am looking for the best and brightest ideas on what Congress should do to promote and foster broadband.

I will begin each night's discussion with a conversation about some of the core principles I think are important, and then I'll ask for you to contribute your ideas that will help me craft legislation.

Posted by Anne at 07:36 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Democracy and Technology:

As the Senate Commerce Committee debates how best to protect children on the Internet, lawmakers must take special care to avoid overly simple solutions that would do more harm than good. In its zeal to protect kids from predators and potentially inappropriate content, Congress must not trample the First Amendment rights of Internet users, CDT said in a statement submitted to the Committee today. The Committee is holding a hearing entitled "Protecting Children on the Internet," that features no representatives from the civil liberties community.

CDT Statement [PDF] July 24, 2007

Posted by Anne at 07:34 PM | Permalink

Microsoft Press Release:

Expanding on its ongoing work to help protect customer privacy, Microsoft Corp. today announced an enhanced set of privacy principles for Live Search and online advertising data collection, use and protection. The principles outline new, enhanced steps to help protect the privacy of Microsoft Windows Live users, including making search query data anonymous after 18 months by permanently removing cookie IDs, the entire IP address and other identifiers from search terms. Microsoft will also work to give customers more control over what information it uses to personalize their online search experience. In connection with its efforts to support a common industry approach to privacy issues, Microsoft also announced that it will join the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) later this year when it begins to offer third-party ad serving broadly.

Also from BusinessWeek:

Microsoft: Privacy Champion?

In its haste to build software that gives computer users new ways to communicate, store data, and scour the Web for information, the tech industry has unleashed a raft of threats to consumer privacy. Recently, though, companies from across the tech spectrum have begun taking pains to rein in such risks amid a backlash from legislators, regulators and consumer advocates. Are the efforts lip service aimed at quelling the furor or might the tech industry finally be getting serious about protecting privacy?

Posted by Anne at 07:32 PM | Permalink

Thanks to BeSpacific for the pointer:

The 53 cases have now been selected as finalists for the third European eGovernment Awards, organised by the European Commission. The final five winners will be announced during the Awards ceremony on 20 September at the Ministerial eGovernment Conference 2007 in Lisbon, Portugal. The list of all 53 cases can be found at the Good Practice portal.

Posted by Anne at 07:31 PM | Permalink

RaDiUS® is the most comprehensive database of information on federally-funded research and development (R&D).

The U.S. Federal Government spends many billions of dollars every year on research and development (R&D). Managing this vast enterprise effectively is critical for achieving national goals and for ensuring that such a large investment is wisely spent.

Historically, data on federally-funded R&D were compiled retrospectively, yielding information that was often already two to three years old when it was released. To complicate matters, federal agencies often did not follow a standard format when reporting on their R&D activities. The result was a highly aggregate, fragmented, and partial picture of the federal R&D portfolio.

To address this problem, RAND created the RaDiUS database. RaDiUS, which stands for "Research and Development in the United States," is the first database that tracks in virtually real-time all of the research and development activities and resources of the government.

Free access, registration required.

Posted by Anne at 07:42 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Reseource Shelf for pointing out this one:

A central repository of publicly available U.S. policy documents.

Includes documents from the White House, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency, Other Policy Sources. Searchable.

Source: Military Education Research Library Network (MERLN)

Posted by Anne at 07:39 PM | Permalink

From Government Computer News:

Since the 1990s, just about every division of the Library of Congress has been running out of space, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound (MPBRS) Division has been perhaps the hardest hit.

For more than 100 years, the library has collected moving pictures and audio recordings, amassing a trove of more than 4 million movies, videos, recorded broadcasts and sound recordings “on every imaginable format going back to 1890,” said LOC’s Gregory Lukow. . . .

. . . The division is moving this summer into the National Audio Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC), in Culpeper, Va., a gift from the Packard Humanities Institute.

The vaults of an old Federal Reserve Bank facility have been remodeled to provide 140,000 square feet of storage space for irreplaceable materials, and 300,000 square feet of new construction has added conservation labs with automated equipment to digitize old recordings, petabytes of storage and a high-speed link to servers feeding content to the library’s reading rooms on Capitol Hill.

Posted by Anne at 07:38 PM | Permalink

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it would review a small number of the Endangered Species Act decisions in which disgraced former Interior Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Wildlife and Parks Julie MacDonald had participated, acknowledging for the first time that MacDonald had "inappropriate influence" over endangered species science.

Numerous investigations found that MacDonald, a political appointee with no relevant scientific background, had bullied scientists and personally rewritten scientific documents to prevent the protection of imperiled species.

Posted by Anne at 07:33 PM | Permalink

From The New York Times:

. . . Terracom’s tale is more than a story about a business dispute in Rwanda. It is also emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.

Attempts to bring affordable high-speed Internet service to the masses have made little headway on the continent. Less than 4 percent of Africa’s population is connected to the Web; most subscribers are in North African countries and the republic of South Africa. . . .

Posted by Anne at 07:31 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Ask.com became the first major search engine to promise users it won't store data on their queries, giving the privacy conscious the option of conducting research on the Internet in relative anonymity.

The move comes amid increasing concerns about the release of search information through leaks or subpoenas. In some cases, the search terms a person uses can reveal plenty about medical conditions, marital troubles or kinky interests.

Posted by Anne at 07:30 PM | Permalink

From The Hill:

The watchdog group Judicial Watch revealed Wednesday that it is suing for access to documents from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) time as first lady.

The documents include Clinton’s daily office diary, her telephone logbook and her schedule.
More than a year ago, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which operated the Clinton Presidential Library records, but did not get access to the documents.

Posted by Anne at 10:16 PM | Permalink

From PBS' Learning.Now Blog:

We all know that Internet filtering policies have the best interest of students in mind. But what are we sacrificing when we don’t allow educators to override filters at their own professional discretion? It’s something I’ve asked myself over the years, but I’d never had to confront it head-on as I did this week while participating in an educational workshop at the JFK Library in Boston. . .

. . . Here we were, a group of educators participating in a professional development seminar trying to discuss the role that Web 2.0 sites can play in civic education - at a presidential library, no less - and we were denied access to the information and tools we needed to have that discussion. My hosts at the library did their best to override the filters, but no one could figure out how to do it.

Posted by Anne at 07:56 PM | Permalink

Project on Government Oversight Press Release:

POGO announced today that it is releasing an improved and more user-friendly "Federal Contractor Misconduct Database" (FCMD). For years, POGO has been scouring public sources to compile instances of misconduct involving the top 50 federal contractors to highlight how risky contractors continue to receive taxpayer funds. The new database, which covers instances of misconduct from 1995 to the present, includes the source documents for each instance, drawing primarily from government documents. While the database is not exhaustive, POGO hopes that contracting officials will use it as a resource when awarding contracts to assure that taxpayer dollars are only being directed to responsible contractors.

Posted by Anne at 07:54 PM | Permalink

From The Hill:

As the phone records of the “D.C. Madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, became public last week, curious Washingtonians started searching a mysterious database at dcphonelist.com that had organized mountains of her documents.

In their first on-the-record phone interview, the men behind the website spoke to the Hill about who they are, how they created the database and why they put it online.

Posted by Anne at 07:52 PM | Permalink

From Government Executive Magazine:

Criticism of proposed rules on fees for obtaining documents under the Freedom of Information Act has prompted the CIA to establish a definition of "news media" that could include bloggers.

The CIA's final rule on FOIA processing fees, from which members of the news media are usually exempt, takes a pass on a more complex fee structure proposed in a draft version. The CIA decided against the complicated structure due to the lack of public support for the change, according to a notice published in the Federal Register Wednesday.

Posted by Anne at 07:51 PM | Permalink

Alliance for Taxpayer Access Press Release:

In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide free public online access to agency-funded research findings within 12 months of their publication in a peer-reviewed journal. With broad bipartisan support, the House passed the provision as part of the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill.

Posted by Anne at 07:50 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The European Union on Thursday authorized Germany to give $165 million for research on Internet search-engine technologies that could someday challenge U.S. search giant Google Inc.

The Theseus research project _ the German arm of what the French call Quaero _ is aiming to develop the world's most advanced multimedia search engine for the next-generation Internet. It would translate, identify and index images, audio and text.

Posted by Anne at 07:48 PM | Permalink

From USA Today:

Lengthy waits plague FOIA. To fix that, Congress is on the verge of mandating that requests are tracked, deadlines enforced and agencies penalized for delays.

Following easy passage by the House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, the FOIA fix has been halted. Despite recent reports detailing delays and difficulties in getting government information, the Department of Justice has objected to the new legislation. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is blocking it under Senate rules that allow any senator to place a "hold" on a bill.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From LLRX:

I went to the corner magazine stand, bought a new Forbes magazine, read it, then ripped it to pieces. Did I have the right to do that? Of course. I picked it out and paid for it with my own money. Do I have the right to make copies of the articles and sell them on the street corners? Scan the articles and put them on my website? Of course not. We all know that even though I owned a current issue of Forbes, I don't own the copyright to its articles.

But what if the articles were really, really old? What if they are from a local magazine that's no longer in business? What if I had a diary or a letter that was never published? Then can I digitize it and put it on the web? Librarians ask me these questions; they seem to expect a reasonable, brief answer.

But no, this article is my reply.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink