Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Library Journal:

Judicial Watch, a Washington, DC-based conservative public interest group, is suing the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), frustrated that more than a year has passed since it first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) office diary, day planner, telephone log book, and other documents from her eight-year tenure as First Lady. It is unlikely, however, that archivists at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, AR, where the records are stored, will be forced to release the documents before the 2008 election. Judicial Watch's FOIA request is one of hundreds filed with the library since the Clinton papers were released in January 2006.

Posted by Anne at 07:33 PM | Permalink

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The public has the right to know the names of police officers and the salaries of local and state government employees, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday in two cases in which government agencies had challenged the news media's access to personnel information.

Posted by Anne at 07:32 PM | Permalink

From Columbia Law School:

Aiming to make federal case law fast and easy to search, more accessible to the public – and free – Columbia Law School and the University of Colorado Law School have launched a Web site called AltLaw.org, which has the potential to transform the national landscape of case law resources.

AltLaw.org contains nearly 170,000 decisions dating back to the early 1990s from the U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Appellate courts. The site’s creators, Columbia Law School’s Timothy Wu and Stuart Sierra, and University of Colorado Law School’s Paul Ohm, said the site’s database would grow over time.

Posted by Anne at 07:31 PM | Permalink

From CNN:

Yahoo Inc. has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit over the company's alleged role in the imprisonment of two Chinese dissidents, arguing U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over Chinese government actions against its own citizens.

Posted by Anne at 07:30 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Police in China's capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user's browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content.

Starting Sept. 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China's top portals, including Sohu and Sina, and by the end of the year will appear on all Web sites registered with Beijing servers, the Beijing Public Security Ministry said in a statement.

Posted by Anne at 07:29 PM | Permalink

From the Independent Online:

Proposed amendments to the Film and Publications Act of 1996 could have severe censorship consequences for librarians, writers, artists, academics and those in the publishing industry.

Freedom of Expression Director Jane Duncan announced this at the World Library and Information Congress in Durban on Wednesday.

Duncan said that these sectors could be subjected to the same sort of prepublication censorship that the media and the South African National Editors' Forum were opposing.

Posted by Anne at 07:28 PM | Permalink

From the Risk Policy Report: (Subscription required)

In a case brought against EPA by an agency union challenging a decision to dismantle a library network widely used to research health risks and regulatory issues, union officials say they are confident about succeeding with their argument that the agency engaged in unfair labor practices in dismantling the libraries, citing an administrative law judge's recent ruling that he has enough information to decide the case without holding a formal hearing.

If they win, the union officials say, it could bolster their position in subsequent arbitration talks. Union representatives have said the libraries are essential to the agency's work and are used by program staff to research chemical health risks and environmental impacts of new technologies. The library closures impede the ability of EPA staff to access library data necessary to carry out their jobs, union officials argue.

Posted by Anne at 09:15 PM | Permalink

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

A Melbourne teenager who has managed to circumvent the Federal Government's internet pornography filter has described it as "completely useless".

Earlier this month Prime Minister John Howard announced that the filter would be made available free to every family.

But 16-year-old Melbourne student Tom Wood says he was able to completely override the filter in half an hour.

Posted by Anne at 09:06 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

Staff in the Australian prime minister's department have been accused of editing potentially damaging entries in online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

Workers made 126 edits on subjects such as immigration policy and Treasurer Peter Costello, a local daily said.

Posted by Anne at 09:05 PM | Permalink

From Information Today:

The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) is a coalition launched with developmental support from the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers to alert Congress to the unintended consequences of government interference in scientific and scholarly publishing. The group has launched a Web site at www.prismcoalition.org, where it articulates the PRISM Principles, an affirmation of publishers’ contributions to science, research, and peer review, and an expression of support for continued private sector efforts to expand access to scientific information.

The coalition was formed in response to legislative efforts to mandate that peer-reviewed articles resulting from government-funded research be made available at no cost.

Posted by Anne at 09:04 PM | Permalink

From the International Herald Tribune:

Two New York inmates challenging a ban on some religious books in chapel libraries at U.S. prisons are trying to take the fight nationwide, asking that their lawsuit be given class action status so it can benefit thousands of others behind bars.

Posted by Anne at 09:03 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

There are no governmentwide standards for digitizing books, records, photos, maps and films or other analog materials. But federal agencies are working together to create standards for bringing millions of creative works into the digital world.

Representatives from the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Transportation Department and other organizations are establishing guidelines for a massive digitization project.

The Federal Digitization Standards Working Group of the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board (NDSAB) is developing governmentwide standards or guidelines that will help agencies preserve documents and other works and share them.

Posted by Anne at 09:01 PM | Permalink

From the LibraryLaw Blog:

Hot off the press: Check out an interview about Stanford's copyright renewal database that I conducted with Mimi Calter, Executive Assistant to the University Librarian Stanford University.

Posted by Anne at 08:59 PM | Permalink

From Newsday:

A top Congressional overseer has blasted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for failing to inform him about plans to use spy satellites to gather information for domestic homeland security and law enforcement.

The Aug. 22 letter from House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) chastised Chertoff for not advising his committee about the new program, slated to begin Oct. 1, saying "the release of important information to the public without prior notification to this committee is unacceptable."

Posted by Anne at 08:58 PM | Permalink

From JURIST:

The US Defense Department's controversial Threat and Local Observation Notice system, or TALON database, will be discontinued on September 17 [press release] but the data it has collected will be retained in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Gary Keck said Tuesday. Keck said that TALON is being suspended because it no longer has "analytical value." Keck announced that a new reporting system has not yet been implemented and, in the interim, the Department of Defense will use the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Guardian reporting system.

Posted by Anne at 08:55 PM | Permalink

From the New York TImes:

The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.”

The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, gave last week to The El Paso Times in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

In compliance with a requirement imposed by Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified and released the executive summary of a CIA Inspector General report (pdf) that was generally critical of CIA performance prior to September 11, 2001.

From a secrecy policy point of view, the most interesting thing about the disclosure is that it was the result of a congressional initiative undertaken against the wishes of the executive branch.

Posted by Anne at 08:52 PM | Permalink

From FamilySearch.org:

Thousands of published family histories, city and county histories, historic city directories, and related records are coming to the Internet. The Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, and FamilySearch's Family History Library in Salt Lake City announced the joint project today. When complete, it will be the most comprehensive collection of city and county histories on the Web—and access will be free at www.familyhistoryarchive.byu.edu.

The digital history project will target over 100,000 published family histories and thousands of local histories that are rich in names as well as biographical and genealogical data associated with those names. "Publishing those collections from the three libraries involved will make a significant and attractive family history digital library online for genealogists and historians," said David Rencher, director of Records and Information for FamilySearch.

Posted by Anne at 08:49 PM | Permalink

From Reason Online:

Meet the only three would-be chief execs who will dare to tell you how the government spends your money.

Presidential aspirants Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) don't agree on very much.

When it comes to immigration, stem-cell research, abortion, health care, trade--you name it, basically--these three get along about as well as Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, and George Steinbrenner did during the Yankees' legendarily fractious 1977 season.

But they alone among would-be White House occupants have signed a trans-partisan initiative that has the potential to radically transform not just the presidency but the way the federal government does business. Obama, Brownback, and Paul have all signed The Oath of Presidential Transparency, a pledge to follow through on two actions.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

Although sharing data with the public is important, so is making that information easy to find, said Molly O’Neill, chief information officer at the Environmental Protection Agency.

She said that nine times out of 10 she can’t find what she’s looking for using either the agency’s search engine or Google.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

In an update to NASA archive news posted earlier this week, the space agency has officially announced plans to develop a massive online archive of photography, film and video from its 50-year history. The archive will be developed under a five-year agreement with the Internet Archive, which will host the free site and help compile the imagery, according to NASA. The agency said it signed a nonexclusive Space Act agreement with the Internet Archive to develop the project, which will come at no cost to taxpayers.

The site, NASAImages.org, has yet to launch, and NASA did not say when it will.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

The St. Petersburg Times of Florida and Congressional Quarterly of Washington, D.C. – two of America’s most trusted, independent newsrooms – have created the site to help voters separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications. We’ll publish new findings every day on PolitiFact.com, and list our sources for all to see.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration argued in court papers this week that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act as part of its effort to fend off a civil lawsuit seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers.

The claim, made in a motion filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, is at odds with a depiction of the office on the White House's own Web site. As of yesterday, the site listed the Office of Administration as one of six presidential entities subject to the open-records law, which is commonly known by its abbreviation, FOIA.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Democracy & Technology:

A member of Congress has agreed to provide CDT with a running list of new Congressional Research Service reports in order to help bolster CDT's OpenCRS project, which provides the reports to the public at no cost. CRS generates in-depth, non-partisan research on a wide range of issues critical to Americans, but while the taxpayer-funded reports are unclassified, the government has never made them readily available to the public. Drawing on the catalog provided by the lawmaker -- who asked to remain anonymous -- CDT has created a list of "fugitive" reports that are not yet in the database. OpenCRS is an interactive project that encourages users to obtain and add new reports to the database.

CDT Press Release

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

Metavid is a project which seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time collective [re]mediation of legislative proceedings. Metavid makes use of entirely free and open source software and video codecs to make both the footage and the architecture of the site available, accessible and recontextualizable.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From the Center for Democracy & Technology:

It seems Congress may be getting the message that Internet safety education — rather than mandatory censorship or burdensome regulatory regimes — represents the brightest hope for protecting kids online. In recent weeks, we’ve been pleased to see bills introduced in the House and Senate that direct the Federal Trade Commission to conduct a public awareness and education campaign on Internet safety.

Representative Melissa Bean (D-IL) introduced the SAFER NET Act — “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and Reorganizing New and Efficient Technologies Act” (H.R. 3461) — that directs the FTC to create a program to educate “families, businesses, organizations and other users” about how safely to engage in e-commerce, and protect “against threats to financial information and privacy, threats from cyber-crime, and threats to juveniles, including cyber-predators and material that is inappropriate for minors.”

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) introduced a bill (S. 1965) with nearly identical language. His “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act” also directs the FTC to conduct a public awareness and education campaign, but with the narrower focus of promoting “safe online activity for children,” protecting “children from cyber-crimes, including crimes by online predators,” and helping “parents shield their children from material that is inappropriate for minors.” (Although CDT supports the education provisions of this bill, we have serious concerns about other parts of the legislation.)

Both the SAFER NET Act and the Stevens bill would provide substantial funding for these education campaigns: approximately $10 million over the next two years.

Posted by Anne at 08:11 PM | Permalink

From Human Rights Watch:

One year before the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing, the Chinese government is violating commitments on media freedom it made to the International Olympics Committee by continuing to harass, intimidate and detain foreign journalists and their local colleagues, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 40-page report, “You Will Be Harassed and Detained,” documents how Chinese authorities have repeatedly obstructed the work of foreign journalists this year, even though China on January 1 adopted temporary regulations to comply with commitments it made to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) on guaranteeing journalists freedom. The report draws on interviews and information provided from 36 foreign and Chinese journalists in June 2007.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From Library Journal:

In the race to digitize the public domain, is the future of the library at stake? An interview with the Open Content Alliance's Brewster Kahle

For all the potential of Web.2.0 technologies, our literary future still rests on what we make of our past, specifically, the centuries of ideas and human thought recorded in the miles of print books sitting on library shelves around the world. To merge the texts and traditions of our print past and our web future, explains visionary technologist Brewster Kahle, represents a truly historic moment for our culture. And, he adds, an opportunity that librarians must be prepared to seize.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From D-Lib Magazine:

Despite the software and hardware problems that these CD-ROMs pose, the main challenges of a large-scale CD-ROM "rescue" project are not primarily technological. Files from CD-ROMs can be systematically copied to redundant, stable server environments. Obsolete file formats can be migrated to non-proprietary formats for continued use of the data; unusual or obsolete software programs can be made available through web-based virtualization. Rather, the main challenges are to organize and fund a collaborative rescue project so that institutions can contribute to different tasks as they are able and willing; to establish a decision-making framework so that portions of the collection that are at highest risk can be addressed first, according to agreed-upon standards; and to ensure quality control of both "rescued" CD-ROM files and associated metadata. The Yale Library pilot project described here has served not only as a means for analyzing and documenting aspects of a CD-ROM migration approach, but also as a launching pad for a community-wide consideration of a large-scale, distributed project to migrate this legacy collection and ensure permanent public access to government information distributed on CD-ROMs.

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From ALA's District Dispatch:

Members of the library community (representing ALA, SLA, AALL, MLA, and FLICC) met with representatives of EPA on July 25, 2007 at ALA's Washington Office. While the EPA seems to be making efforts to be more transparent and include the library community in the planning, they seem to have a long way to go. See the notes from 7/25/2007 meeting.

Posted by Anne at 08:07 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

How does that song go? We've all used the Internet to search for the lyrics to songs whose tune we know but whose words we just can't muster.

Often the Web sites we end up on have misspellings or incomplete and inaccurate lyrics, not to mention annoying pop-up and flashing ads. But there's another problem with the sites--many of them are violating copyright by republishing the lyrics without permission. And they are making money from the Google text ads that appear on the site.

Posted by Anne at 08:06 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Ohio's method of conducting elections with electronic voting machines appears to have created a true privacy nightmare for state residents: revealing who voted for which candidates.

Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election's results--including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes.

Posted by Anne at 08:04 PM | Permalink

From the Wall Street Journal:

A top Senate Democrat on Monday threatened to hold members of the Bush administration in contempt for not producing subpoenaed information about the legal justification for President Bush's secretive eavesdropping program.

Posted by Anne at 08:03 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

According to documents released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) by the Army and Defense Department, soldier journalists post far less information that could harm military operations than official .mil websites do. These documents call into question the need for new restrictions on soldiers' online speech, which some critics say will cause military bloggers to cut back on their posts or shut down their sites altogether.

Posted by Anne at 08:02 PM | Permalink

From the New York TImes:

For years, a handful of civilian agencies have used limited images from the nation’s constellation of spy satellites to track hurricane damage, monitor climate change and create topographical maps.

But a new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.

Posted by Anne at 08:00 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

In an unusual move that may signal a new, more discriminating judicial view of the state secrets privilege, a federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit which a lower court had dismissed after the government invoked the state secrets privilege.

Posted by Anne at 07:59 PM | Permalink

From Wired:

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

See also:

Companies and party aides cast censorious eye over Wikipedia (from the Guardian)

Seeing Corporate Fingerprints in Wikipedia Edits (from the New York Times)

Posted by Anne at 07:56 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday appeared unwilling to end a pair of lawsuits that claim the Bush administration engaged in widespread illegal surveillance of Americans.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly pressed Gregory Garre, the Bush administration's deputy solicitor general, to justify his requests to toss out the suits on grounds they could endanger national security by possibly revealing "state secrets."

Judge Harry Pregerson wondered: "We just have to take the word of members of the executive branch that it's a state secret. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"

A moment later Judge Michael Hawkins suggested that granting the request could mean "abdication" of our duties.

Posted by Anne at 07:55 PM | Permalink

From Federal Computer Week:

In response to more than 600 public comments, the Homeland Security Department has shortened the amount of time it will retain data and made other changes to its Automated Targeting System (ATS).

Under ATS, information on cargo destined to arrive in the United States, and on incoming U.S. and foreign travelers, is assessed against several terrorist threat databases to determine whether additional security checks are needed.

Formerly, the incoming passenger personal information in the system was to be held for 40 years, but now that time has been reduced to 15 years, DHS said.

Posted by Anne at 07:53 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

A secret U.S. intelligence court has ordered the Bush administration to register its views about a records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which wants the court to release a series of pivotal orders issued earlier this year about the National Security Agency's wiretapping program.

The move is highly unusual, because the court -- which approves warrants for electronic surveillance within the United States by intelligence and counterterrorism agencies -- operates in almost total secrecy and has made only one ruling public in its 29-year history.

Posted by Anne at 07:52 PM | Permalink

From the USA Today:

Holocaust survivors move closer this week to being able to find a paper trail of their own persecution when the keepers of a Nazi archive deliver copies of Gestapo papers and concentration camp records to museums in Washington and Jerusalem.

Posted by Anne at 07:51 PM | Permalink

From the Houston Chronicle:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton touts her experience as one reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady.

Clinton's calendars, appointment logs and memos are stored at her husband's presidential library, in the custody of federal archivists who do not expect them to be released until after the 2008 presidential election.

Also, from the Washington Post: The Saga of the First Lady Files

Word that nearly 2 million pages of documents related to Hillary Rodham Clinton's time as first lady could remain locked up until after next year's election produced the predictable catcalls among critics suspecting coverup. But it raises the broader, unprecedented question of how someone's service as first lady should be evaluated in terms of her qualifications to be president in the first place.

Posted by Anne at 07:49 PM | Permalink

From the Law Librarian Blog:

Based on the Presidential Timeline website, "Presidential Archives Uncovered" broadcasts audio clips from the National Archives Presidential Libraries' collection. Podcasts range from serious policy discussions between the President and his advisors to conversations among Presidential family members.

• Presidential Archives Uncovered Podcasts
• Subscribe to the Feed

Posted by Anne at 07:46 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

The domination of two legal research services over the publication of federal and state court decisions is being challenged by an Internet gadfly who has embarked on an ambitious project to make more than 10 million pages of case law available free online.

The project is the latest effort of Carl Malamud, an activist who founded public.resource.org in March, with the broad intent of building “public works” accessible via the network, and with the specific plan to force the federal government to make information more publicly accessible.

Last week, Mr. Malamud began using advanced computer scanning technology to copy decisions, which have been available only in law libraries or via subscription from the Thomson West unit of the Canadian publishing conglomerate Thomson, and LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier, based in London.

Posted by Anne at 07:45 PM | Permalink

From ResearchBuzz:

Footnote.com has announced that it has digitized the entire Project Blue Book, which is a collection of official records covering government investigations of UFOs, 1947-1969. It’s available for free at http://www.footnote.com/.

You can browse the information or do a keyword search.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From Yahoo! News:

The American Bar Association has scrapped a proposal that called for closing certain arrest and court records to the public.

The proposal's sponsors said ready access to court records has led to employment and housing discrimination against people who were arrested but never convicted of crimes or who have completed sentences and returned to society.

It was to have been considered at the ABA's annual meeting here, but instead was withdrawn in the face of widespread criticism from media, business and other groups, said George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg, a sponsor.

Posted by Anne at 08:14 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

Sweeping new guidelines barring military personnel from speaking about their service publicly have been quietly introduced by the Ministry of Defence, the Guardian has learned.

Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel will not be able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence.

They also cannot release video, still images or audio - material which has previously led to investigations into the abuse of Iraqis. Instead, the guidelines state that "all such communication must help to maintain and, where possible, enhance the reputation of defence".

Posted by Anne at 08:13 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Comprehensive data on U.S. military deaths from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 through Operation Iraqi Freedom were presented in a recently updated report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service.

"This report is written in response to numerous requests for war casualty statistics and lists of war dead. It provides tables, compiled by sources at the Department of Defense (DOD), indicating the number of casualties among American military personnel serving in principal wars and combat actions."

For the more recent military actions beginning with the Korean War, information on specific cause of death and demographic data are provided.

The Congressional Research Service does not make its publications directly available to the public. A copy of the report was obtained by Secrecy News.

See "American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics," updated June 29, 2007.

Posted by Anne at 08:09 PM |