Part-Time Policy Wonk

From the International Herald Tribune:

In the early stages of its planning, the European Digital Library held the promise of a counterstrike to Google domination of digital archives through the search engine's vast book search project and powerful alliances with American universities.

But as the European project prepares for its debut early next year, the 80 museums, film institutes and national libraries involved are facing the reality of limited government funding for the enormous task of digitizing material, and they are now developing a new realism about striking a variety of alliances with private companies, including national deals with Google.

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

As required by law, the Director of National Intelligence today disclosed (pdf) that the budget for the National Intelligence Program in Fiscal Year 2007 was $43.5 billion.

The disclosure was strongly resisted by the intelligence bureaucracy, and for that very reason it may have significant repercussions for national security classification policy.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From The Times Online:

Italy's leaders barely understand word processors, let alone the web. Now they've turned against the country's bloggers.

Recently, Italian lawmakers once again took aim at modern life, introducing an incredibly broad law that would effectively require all bloggers, and even users of social networks, to register with the state. Even a harmless blog about a favourite football squad or a teenager grousing about life’s unfairness would be subject to government oversight, and even taxation – even if it’s not a commercial website.

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From BBC News:

The first official order for the so-called "$100 laptop" has been placed by the government of Uruguay.

The South American country has bought 100,000 of the machines for schoolchildren aged six to 12.

A further 300,000 may be purchased to provide a machine for every child in the country by 2009.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From the Toronto Star:

Michael Geist discusses the complexities of international copyright law and the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP).

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

If elected president, Barack Obama plans to prioritize, well, barring broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from prioritizing Internet content.

Affixing his signature to federal Net neutrality rules would be high on the list during his first year in the Oval Office, the junior senator from Illinois said during an interactive forum Monday afternoon with the popular contender put on by MTV and MySpace at Coe College in Iowa.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

After ignoring the Internet for years to focus on controlling traditional media such as television and newspapers, the Kremlin and its allies are turning their attention to cyberspace, which remains a haven for critical reporting and vibrant discussion in Russia's dwindling public sphere.

Allies of President Vladimir Putin are creating pro-government news and pop culture Web sites while purchasing some established online outlets known for independent journalism. They are nurturing a network of friendly bloggers ready to disseminate propaganda on command. And there is talk of creating a new Russian computer network -- one that would be separate from the Internet at large and, potentially, much easier for the authorities to control.

Posted by Anne at 05:29 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

The National Security Archive filed a motion on Friday, October 26, seeking expedited discovery against the Executive Office of the President to find out what e-mails are missing from the White House e-mail system or backup tapes.

Posted by Anne at 05:28 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times' political blog The Caucus:

Fox News Channel confirms that it has ordered the campaign of Senator John McCain to cancel its new ad featuring a clip of him at last Sunday’s debate, which was sponsored by Fox News. The news network prohibits candidates from using debate clips in their political advertisements.

The spot uses a debate clip liberally, highlighting Mr. McCain’s dig at Senator Hillary Clinton for pushing a $1 million earmark for a museum commemorating Woodstock and his quip that he was “tied up” during the concert – that is, tied in up North Vietnam as a prisoner of war.

Posted by Anne at 05:26 PM | Permalink

From the Council of Europe:

The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers just adopted several important documents related to the challenges freedom of expression and information face today in its 47 Member States. The Committee adopted Guidelines on protecting freedom of expression and information in times of crisis, a Declaration in which it calls on Member States to defend and promote investigative journalism and a Recommendation on promoting freedom of expression and information in the new information and communications environment.

The specific Guidelines on protecting freedom of expression and information in times of crisis in Member States have been adopted by the Committee due to their concern that crisis situations, such as wars and terrorist attacks, are still widespread and that governments may be tempted to restrict this right.

Posted by Anne at 06:33 PM | Permalink

From The National Academies:

To strengthen the essential role that science and technology play in maintaining national and economic security, the United States should ensure the open exchange of unclassified research despite the small risk that it could be misused for harm by terrorists or rogue nations, says a new report by the National Research Council. Because science and technology are truly global pursuits, U.S. universities and research institutions must continue to welcome foreign-born science and engineering students, said the committee of former national security leaders and senior university researchers and administrators that wrote the report.

While concerns about certain types of research findings falling into the wrong hands are legitimate and safeguards are needed, the gains in science and technology that flow from the free exchange of information far outweigh the slight risks, the report says. Extreme measures to curtail the flow of essential information or people would significantly disrupt advances that are critical to U.S. military and economic security. Meeting the challenges of future technological or biological threats depends upon developments that can only come from long-term academic research.

Posted by Anne at 06:28 PM | Permalink

From The Hill:

The White House will allow leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee to access documents on the Bush administration’s secret spying program, in an effort to win their support for retroactive legal protections covering the telecommunications firms that participated in the program, Democrats said Thursday.

Posted by Anne at 06:26 PM | Permalink

From the UK National Archives:

The Prime Minister announced on 25 October that he has commissioned a review of when historical records are transferred to The National Archives and largely opened to public access. This currently happens 30 years after an event, and the Prime Minister’s review will look at whether this period should be reduced…

. . . The National Archives will support the review, and the review team will put forward their proposals in the spring.

Posted by Anne at 06:23 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

When California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed the California Toxic Release Inventory Act of 2007 (Assembly Bill 833) into law on Oct. 13, California became the first state to pass legislation to undo the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) December 2006 weakening of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The new state law establishes the threshold for detailed reporting at 500 pounds of a listed toxic chemical, which was the original threshold for the TRI program before EPA changed the regulations to reduce the reporting burden on companies.

Posted by Anne at 10:37 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

Popular thinking tells us that for any trend, fad or heavily pursued activity, the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way. As we approach the 2008 elections, this may well be the case for government transparency, which, after years of increasing government secrecy, appears to be getting greater attention than ever before.

Posted by Anne at 10:35 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

A key congressional panel endorsed legislation on Tuesday that would bar U.S. Internet companies from cooperating with authorities in China and other repressive regimes.

The U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee voted in favor of legislation designed to stop companies such as Yahoo Inc from turning over personal information to governments that use it to suppress dissent.

Posted by Anne at 10:34 PM | Permalink

2 from the Washington Post:

Materials Missing At Library of Congress

About one-sixth of the books, monographs and bound periodicals at the Library of Congress weren't where they were supposed to be because of flaws in the systems for shelving and retrieving materials, according to a survey to be made public at a congressional hearing today.

Officials at the library say they believe most of the missing materials are misplaced, not stolen or lost.
Investigators for the congressional library have told lawmakers on a House oversight committee that its review of the retrieval system for the general collection concluded that a 17 percent of materials requested could not be found.

House Panel Chides Library of Congress

Corporations such as United Parcel Service and Wal-Mart know how to keep track of their packages and merchandise, a weary but sympathetic congressional panel told officials of the Library of Congress yesterday.

"That might be a good model to follow," suggested Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), the ranking minority member of the House Administration Committee. In the past year, spot-checks have shown the library hasn't been able to account for 10 to 17 percent of its books, monographs and bound periodicals.

The example of how the private sector moves items around wasn't one that library administrators thought fit. "We are a working library, not a storehouse. It requires a different approach," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

Posted by Anne at 10:32 PM | Permalink

NARA Press Release:

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Wayne Metcalfe, vice president of the Genealogical Society of Utah, today announced a five-year partnership agreement to digitize case files of approved pension applications of widows of Civil War Union soldiers from the National Archives. GSU has many years of experience microfilming historical records at the National Archives and throughout the world and in recent years has moved to providing digital capture and publishing services. Digitization makes possible unprecedented access to the unique historic documents in the custody of the National Archives.

Posted by Anne at 10:30 PM | Permalink

Alliance for Taxpayer Access Press Release:

The U.S. Senate last night approved the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill (S.1710), including a provision that directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to strengthen its Public Access Policy by requiring rather than requesting participation by researchers. The bill will now be reconciled with the House Appropriations Bill, which contains a similar provision, in another step toward support for public access to publicly funded research becoming United States law.

Posted by Anne at 10:28 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Bespacific:

governmentattic.org... "rummaging in the government's attic" launches with the FOIA Logs for 50 federal agencies (in PDF), as well several dozen sets of government documents obtained via FOIA requests. The topical documents range from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) Standardized Chapel Library Project book list to the US DOJ Federal Bureau of Investigation Documents re: No Fly Lists 2001 - 2003 [251 pages]. This is an eclectic, interesting and expanding treasure trove of government documents that otherwise may not be available to the public were it not for the efforts of the website's authors.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

NARA Press Release:

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) will open for the first time all of the individual Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) of Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard military personnel who served and were discharged, retired or died while in the service, prior to 1946. Collectively, these files comprise more than six million records. This is the second step in the progressive opening of the entire paper and microfiche OMPF collection of over 57 million individual files. Additional military personnel records will be made available to the public each year through 2067 until the entire collection is opened.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

Hack, Mash & Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency by Jerry Brito (October 22, 2007):

The federal government makes an overwhelming amount of data publicly available each year. Laws ranging from the Administrative Procedure Act to the Paperwork Reduction Act require these disclosures in the name of transparency and accountability. However, the data are often only nominally publicly available. First, this is the case because it is not available online or even in electronic format. Second, the data that can be found online is often not available in an easily accessible or searchable format. If government information was made public online and in standard open formats, the online masses could be leveraged to help ensure the transparency and accountability that is the reason for making information public in the first place.

When the government makes data available in a structured format, it opens the doors to innovative and enlightening remixes of information known as mashups. Mashups, in turn, are tools that can potentially be used by journalists, bloggers, and citizens-the Internet's intelligent crowds-to better scrutinize government's activities. When government does not make data available online, or makes it available but not in a structured format, third parties take it upon themselves to fill the void by implementing ingenious "hacks" to free the data.

Dowload the full article (PDF).

Posted by Anne at 08:18 PM | Permalink

From Heise Online:

Following several fruitless rounds of talks the Max Planck Society (MPG) has, effective January 1, 2008, terminated the online contract with the Springer publishing house which for eight years now has given all institutes electronic access to some 1,200 scientific journals. The analysis of user statistics and comparisons with other important publishing houses had shown that Springer was charging twice the amount the MPG still considered justifiable for access to the journals, the Society declared. "And that 'justifiable' rate is still higher than comparable offers of other major publishing houses," a spokesman of the Max Planck Digital Library told heise online.

Posted by Anne at 09:20 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Within a week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will formally disclose the size of the National Intelligence Program budget for fiscal year 2007, an ODNI spokeswoman said.

The anticipated disclosure marks the culmination of decades of advocacy, debate and litigation.

Posted by Anne at 09:19 PM | Permalink

From Government Computer News:

NASA is looking to reign in its rapidly growing archive of research data. Officials with the agency’s Advanced Supercomputing facility at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., are deploying Silicon Graphics’ InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility to manage, store and retrieve archived data. NASA officials will use DMF to move older data files to a tape archive. DMF ultimately will allow the agency to archive and manage 40 petabytes of information — an amount equal to approximately 2,000 times the size of the entire print collection of the Library of Congress, NASA officials said.

Posted by Anne at 09:17 PM | Permalink

From Slate:

A publishing house associated with the Vatican announced on Friday that it will publish copies of the Parchment of Chinon, a 700-year-old document about the Knights Templar that was uncovered in the Vatican Secret Archives in 2001. What other goodies do the secret archives hold?

Mostly administrative records. The archives, which were founded in the early 17th century, house records from the Vatican's day-to-day dealings—papal bulls, records of diplomacy, official correspondence, the records of apostolic nunciature (Vatican embassies), and more.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

The Electoral Commission is planning a web-enabled database to increase its effectiveness and improve public access to political parties’ financial information.

The agency is an independent body charged with ensuring fair elections, including overseeing loans and donations and regulating campaign spending.

An improved database allowing online submission of and access to data will help maintain public confidence in the UK democratic process, said the Commission.

Posted by Anne at 08:44 PM | Permalink

A Report by the California Voter Foundation, with the Center for Governmental Studies and the UCLA School of Law:

Grading State Disclosure is a study of the Campaign Disclosure Project, which seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to money in state politics through assessments of state disclosure laws and programs. The Campaign Disclosure Project is a collaboration of the UCLA School of Law, the Center for Governmental Studies and the California Voter Foundation and is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The study is a comprehensive, comparative analysis of candidate campaign finance disclosure laws and practices in the 50 states. The 2007 assessment presents findings from a fourth round of state evaluations and provides an overview of nationwide trends and state-by-state changes.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

A Report by the California Voter Foundation, with the Center for Governmental Studies and the UCLA School of Law:

Grading State Disclosure is a study of the Campaign Disclosure Project, which seeks to bring greater transparency and accountability to money in state politics through assessments of state disclosure laws and programs. The Campaign Disclosure Project is a collaboration of the UCLA School of Law, the Center for Governmental Studies and the California Voter Foundation and is supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The study is a comprehensive, comparative analysis of candidate campaign finance disclosure laws and practices in the 50 states. The 2007 assessment presents findings from a fourth round of state evaluations and provides an overview of nationwide trends and state-by-state changes.

Posted by Anne at 08:40 PM | Permalink

From the ACLU:

New documents uncovered as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense secretly issued hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval. A comprehensive analysis of 455 NSLs issued after 9/11 shows that the Defense Department seems to have collaborated with the FBI to circumvent the law, may have overstepped its legal authority to obtain financial and credit records, provided misleading information to Congress, and silenced NSL recipients from speaking out about the records requests, according to the ACLU.

All of the Defense Department documents obtained by the ACLU are available at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/32088res20071014.html.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From SLA's Government Information Division:

New York Times reporter Scott Shane and Washington Post research editor Alice Crites educated and entertained the crowd at a joint meeting of the SLA Government Information Division (DGI) and the ALA Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT) in Arlington, VA on October 15, 2007. Scott and Alice discussed how they find and use government information, what their favorite sources are, and which documents even they have trouble tracking down.

Posted by Anne at 08:38 PM | Permalink

From CTV:

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP.

The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy.''

Posted by Anne at 08:36 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

A coalition of major media and Internet companies Thursday issued a set of guidelines for handling copyright-protected videos on large user-generated sites such as MySpace.

Conspicuously absent was Google Inc., whose YouTube Web site this week rolled out its own technology to filter copyrighted videos once they've been posted.

Media companies Walt Disney Co., Viacom Inc., CBS Corp., NBC Universal and News Corp. joined Internet companies Microsoft Corp., MySpace, Veoh Networks and Dailymotion to issue the guidelines, which would require sites to use filtering technology to block copyrighted clips from being posted without permission.

The incentive for the coalition's Web sites and others to comply is the media companies' promise not to sue if any copyrighted material sneaks past their best efforts to block it.

Posted by Anne at 08:35 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Comcast actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which the Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

Posted by Anne at 08:34 PM | Permalink

From Heise Online:

Canadian International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) has gone off-line following a cease and desist warning by music and theatre publisher Universal Edition. The IMSLP is an online library for music scores which are no longer protected by copyright and uses the Wiki principle. Universal Edition, however, warned that IMSLP was also offering copyrighted scores. The owner of IMSLP writes on his home page that the music publisher had not asked him to take the project off-line. He says, however, that it would take considerable effort and funds to comply with Universal Edition's demands and that, since he has neither of those, the online library was no longer available.

The cease and desist warning (pdf file) of October 5th, 2007 claims that Universal Edition owns the copyright for the works of composers like Béla Bartók, Alban Berg and Gustav Mahler. In Canada, copyrights expire 50 years after the author's death - in Europe, however, it is 70 years. The IMSLP was given until October 19th to install a filter system which prevents users from uploading copyrighted material. Failure to comply would result in personal liability of the project owner.

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian:

Disgruntled fans of Sheffield Wednesday who vented their dissatisfaction with the football club's bigwigs in anonymous internet postings may face expensive libel claims after the chairman, chief executive and five directors won a high-court ruling last week forcing the owner of a website to reveal their identity.

The case, featuring the website owlstalk.co.uk, is the second within days to highlight the danger of assuming that the apparent cloak of anonymity gives users of internet forums and chatrooms carte blanche to say whatever they like.

Posted by Anne at 08:32 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

A U.S. magistrate judge urged a federal judge yesterday to order the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, rejecting arguments by the Bush administration.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola said it is necessary to hold out the threat of a contempt-of-court citation to ensure that White House personnel safeguard backup tapes of electronic messages that may have been deleted.

Posted by Anne at 08:29 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Posted by Anne at 08:28 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

From Talking Points Memo: Exclusive: Senator Chris Dodd Will Put A Hold On Telecom Immunity Bill

Senator Chris Dodd plans to put a hold on the Senate FISA renewal bill because it reportedly grants retroactive immunity to telephone companies for any role they played in the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Election Central has learned.

Dodd will send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this afternoon informing him of his decision. Dodd also plans to put up a page today at his campaign Web site where opponents of the immunity provision can register their opposition.

Posted by Anne at 07:34 PM | Permalink

From UNESCO:

UNESCO and the US Library of Congress will join forces to build a World Digital Library, following the signing of an agreement by Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, and the Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 17 October, 2007.

The World Digital Library initiative will digitize unique and rare materials from libraries and other cultural institutions around the world and make them available free of charge on the Internet. These materials include manuscripts, maps, books, musical scores, sound recordings, films, prints and photographs.

Posted by Anne at 07:32 PM | Permalink

From PLoS Biology:

Since 2003, when PLoS Biology was launched, there has been a spectacular growth in “open-access” journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access journals as this article goes to press (and probably more by the time you read this). Authors also have various “open-access” options within existing subscription journals offered by traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, Springer, Oxford University Press, and many others). In return for a fee to the publisher, an author's individual article is made freely available and (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). But, as open access grows in prominence, so too has confusion about what open access means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion is being promulgated by journal publishers at the expense of authors and funding agencies wanting to support open access.

Posted by Anne at 07:30 PM | Permalink

From the Montana State Library:

While it is true that the Montana State Library has a few changes on the horizon, we are not closing our doors as you may have read in recent news articles. The Montana State Library will remain open to the public while working to significantly increase access to state archives by digitizing documents and making them available online for Montanans to more easily and quickly access.

Posted by Anne at 07:29 PM | Permalink

From Oregon Live:

A conservation group won its two-year battle to get information without charge on the damage caused by off-road vehicles and unmaintained roads on national forests around the West.

The U.S. Forest Service had refused to waive fees for providing the information, so Wildlands CPR sued under the Freedom of Information Act. The Forest Service relented in a consent decree filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.

Posted by Anne at 07:27 PM | Permalink

From the National Journal:

Internet watchdog Carl Malamud and a handful of other high-tech watchers wrote to Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters this week asking her to provide bulk access to the copyright catalog of monographs, documents, and serials on the Internet.

Currently, the information is available through a Copyright Office online application that allows the public to search for individual records -- but no bulk access is available, meaning that the entire database cannot be downloaded.

Posted by Anne at 08:23 PM | Permalink

From The Age:

Two Associated Press journalists have sued Arkansas officials, accusing them of breaking state law by withholding information about which government computers were used to edit politically sensitive Wikipedia pages about the governor and former governor.

Posted by Anne at 08:21 PM | Permalink

From News.com:

Despite veto threats from the Bush administration, the House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would shield journalists--and some bloggers--from being forced to reveal confidential sources in federal cases.

By a 398-21 vote, the politicians backed an amended version of the Free Flow of Information Act. Sponsored by Reps. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the proposal offers a "qualified" privilege to anyone engaged in journalism, which it defines as "gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public."

But beware, "casual" bloggers: The privilege isn't meant to apply to you, the bill's sponsors say.

Posted by Anne at 08:20 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

Bloggers are now finding themselves prey to censorship from repressive governments as much as journalists in traditional media, a report says.

Reporters Without Borders' annual study of press freedom says China is one of the worst offenders, having imprisoned 50 people for postings on the internet.

The report says governments realise the internet is now a key tool in promoting democracy and are moving to curb it.

See Reporters Without Borders' Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007

Posted by Anne at 08:17 PM | Permalink