Part-Time Policy Wonk

From Daniel Drezner's blog, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University:

There’s not a lot to laugh about the politicization of civil service hires at the Justice Department.

OK, I lied. There is one thing that seems pretty funny to me.

If Al Gore invented the Internet, then it appears that the Bush administration has invented the concept of searching the Internet. . .

. . . The text of the [DOJ] report provides more detail. Apparently, White House liaison Jan Williams deployed (and then relayed to Monica Goodling) the following string for Nexis searches for DOJ candidates:

[first name of a candidate] and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

You've got to hand it to them. It's quite a search string.

Posted by Anne at 08:47 PM | Permalink

From The News Leader:

House Resolution 1664 once again has reached the U.S. Senate, and voting on the bill once again has been postponed.

Bursting at the seams, the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library has the materials to expand its operations, but the bill it needs to gain funding for that expansion has hit another roadblock.

Though it has passed the House of Representatives twice, H.R. 1664, which asks that the federal government recognize the museum as a worthwhile organization, was stalled again at the Senate level this week, despite support from U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-6th.

Posted by Anne at 08:45 PM | Permalink

From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

Internet censorship in China is now being allowed during the Olympic period on the basis that the blocked websites are not related to the Games.

The stance is a backdown on earlier promises made by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Chinese Olympic organisers.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink

From The Crypt:

Sen. Tom Coburn is used to being a lonely "no" vote on overwhelming Senate votes, but on Monday afternoon, his GOP colleagues came to his defense.

Coburn (R-Okla.) prevailed in blocking a massive package of generally non-controversial bills that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brought to the floor, angering Democrats and some Republicans while raising Coburn's status as a cult hero to fiscal conservatives. The vote was 52-40 on a procedural motion that required 60 votes.

Posted by Anne at 08:41 PM | Permalink

From the National Security Archive:

Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today denied a motion by the White House to reconsider his earlier recommendations and reaffirmed his recommendation that the court order the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to search individual workstations used between March 2003 and October 2005 and preserve any e-mails located on those workstations or on portable media used by EOP employees.

Posted by Anne at 08:33 PM | Permalink

From the History News Network:

While researching my book on the history of presidential libraries, I discovered a shocking but perhaps not surprising situation: the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is improperly withholding its own records. Theoretically a non-partisan as well as non-political agency, NARA is at the center of some of the most controversial issues of our time, including government secrecy, executive privilege, and timely access to presidential records. Rather than abide by legislative requirements and professional standards, NARA has chosen to avoid accessioning and processing many (if not most) of its own records dating back more than forty years. Worse, officials have blocked access to the records, perhaps due to concerns over possible criticism of the agency.

Posted by Anne at 08:27 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The ACLU, EFF, and a coalition of plaintiffs achieved yet another victory for online free speech this week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a district court's decision granting a permanent injunction against enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 (COPA), a federal law that would violate the First Amendment by imposing civil and criminal penalties on commercial website operators that publish sexually explicit material without also using credit card authentication or other technological measures to verify viewer age and block access by minors.

Posted by Anne at 08:26 PM | Permalink

From the Hawaii Reporter:

. . . A natural follow up question is, shouldn’t the Congress that is approving the Smithsonian’s budget also be subject to greater disclosure laws under FOIA? Because the Congress writes the laws, they conveniently left themselves (and the courts) out of FOIA and this recent bill.

So if you want to find out what the research arm of Congress is digging up – tough luck. Or find out decision making records, congressional correspondence, accounting documents – no dice.

It took a lot of years (eleven) to get a FOIA bill passed in 1966. And it took a lot of public and media pressure to get President Johnson to sign the bill. Now the public needs to put that spotlight on Congress. . .

Posted by Anne at 08:25 PM | Permalink

From USA Today:

Congress is considering a bill that would bar children who use computers in public libraries from accessing Facebook and other social networking websites without parental permission.

Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, the Illinois Republican who sponsored the measure, says the proposal would keep sexual predators from contacting minors who are using a library computer.

But the American Library Association says Kirk's bill is yet another attempt by the federal government to interfere with library users' privacy and free speech.

Posted by Anne at 08:22 PM | Permalink

From OMB Watch:

In response to a federal arbitrator's decision in February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) recently signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) establishing procedures for the reopening of recently closed EPA libraries and bringing the union to the planning table for any future changes to the library network.

The agreement, which takes effect upon review by the head of EPA or within 31 days of its July 10 signing, addresses some of the concerns raised by Congress and watchdog groups over EPA's library plans. . .

. . . Although several of the concerns expressed by watchdog groups are mentioned in the agreement, many remain unaddressed or unclear. Beyond inclusion of the employee union, there is no mention of additional stakeholder input in the planning process for the library network. The exact amount of physical space and other resources that will be allotted to the libraries is not clear, and the plans for digitizing the library materials remain uncertain.

Posted by Anne at 08:31 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

A longtime critic of the Smithsonian Institution introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate this week that would wipe out the national museum complex's exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and the Sunshine Act.

The legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Finance Committee, and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, would require the Smithsonian to hold meetings in public and make records available to the public upon request.

‘‘Open and Transparent Smithsonian Act of 2008’’

Posted by Anne at 05:10 PM | Permalink

New GPO White Paper - Digital Preservation at the U.S. Government Printing Office:

This paper provides a non-technical introduction to digital preservation, particularly to the challenges for keeping digital content available and accessible into the future. Then the focus shifts to the digital preservation activities of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and highlights of GPO’s technological transformation, moving from Web access, to content authentication, and development of a trusted repository. The final section introduces GPO’s Federal Digital System, a content management system and digital repository designed to support GPO’s mission of keeping America informed.

Posted by Anne at 05:06 PM | Permalink

From the Google blog:

In this U.S. election year, what information could be more important than the candidates' own words to describe their views, actions and platforms? . . .

. . Today, the Google speech team (part of Google Research) is launching the Google Elections Video Search gadget, our modest contribution to the electoral process. With the help of our speech recognition technologies, videos from YouTube's Politicians channels are automatically transcribed from speech to text and indexed. Using the gadget you can search not only the titles and descriptions of the videos, but also their spoken content. Additionally, since speech recognition tells us exactly when words are spoken in the video, you can jump right to the most relevant parts of the videos you find.

Posted by Anne at 04:56 PM | Permalink

Thanks to Free Government Information for pointing out the new Government Executive magazine feature that allows you to easily track their stories about many individual government agencies.

Posted by Anne at 04:55 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

Government agencies may redesignate “controlled unclassified information” (CUI) as classified information in order to prevent its disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an agreement signed last week between the United States and the Czech Republic.

The July 8 agreement (pdf) on establishment of a U.S. missile defense radar in the Czech Republic devotes an entire section (Article XII) to “controlled unclassified information,” which is defined as “unclassified information to which access or distribution limitations have been applied in accordance with applicable national laws.”

Posted by Anne at 04:52 PM | Permalink

From Secrecy News:

The “Foreign Relations of the United States” (FRUS) series, which is the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy, remains unlikely to meet the legal requirement that it be published no later than 30 years after the events that it describes, an official advisory committee has told the Secretary of State.

“Despite many and repeated assurances that this problem would be addressed by 2010, the committee is now very skeptical that the Office of the Historian will succeed in meeting the 30-year requirement for the Foreign Relations series at any time within the next decade,” the State Department Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation wrote in its new annual report.

Posted by Anne at 04:49 PM | Permalink

From the Dallas Morning News:

Faced Monday with a report that a rogue lobbyist urged an exiled Central Asian leader to support the Bush library to curry favor in Washington, library officials promised that no foreign money will be accepted until President Bush leaves office. On Tuesday, it became clear the public will have to take them at their word.

The foundation isn't promising to identify all donors, or the dates and sums of their gifts.

"Current law only requires annual disclosure of the total sum raised," said Dan Bartlett, the former White House counselor, speaking for the foundation that will build the Bush library and research center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "We're working through all our decisions but ... at a minimum, we are not going to be accepting donations from non-U.S. residents before he's out of office."

Posted by Anne at 04:46 PM | Permalink

From the LA Times:

Laws in all but a handful of states give the public access to government e-mail. But what if that e-mail was intentionally deleted or routinely purged?In Hawaii, Gov. Linda Lingle's office allowed e-mails of her top aide to be purged. In North Carolina, Gov. Mike Easley's administration allegedly ordered state workers to delete their e-mail correspondence with his office. And in Missouri, lawsuits claim Gov. Matt Blunt's office deleted e-mails and ordered the destruction of backup e-mail tapes.

These and other cases raise concerns that millions of public records in the form of e-mails may be disappearing before anyone outside government can read them.

Experts say e-mail archiving systems and better training for state employees will help ensure e-mail is not lost.

Posted by Anne at 04:45 PM | Permalink

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Countries should change their laws and policies to encourage digital preservation of copyrighted works, according to a report released today by the Library of Congress. It drafted the report with organizations in Australia, Britain, and the Netherlands.

Full report: “International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation”

Posted by Anne at 04:41 PM | Permalink

From Information World Review:

Google and Viacom have reached an agreement to omit user information from a YouTube log which the search giant has been forced to hand over.

The agreement means that Viacom will not be able to see precisely which videos have been accessed by each viewer, nor will it be able to see a specific user's viewing history.

Additionally, all users' IP addresses and visitor ID information will be removed from the list.

Posted by Anne at 04:39 PM | Permalink

NARA Press Release:

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced today that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has become a founding partner in the World Digital Library (WDL).

NARA will contribute digital versions of important documents from its collections to the WDL, which will be launched for the international public in early 2009. These documents include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War photographs, naturalization and immigration records of famous Americans, and photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine. All of the images that NARA contributed to the World Digital Library are now available at www.archives.gov/research/arc/topics/world-digital-library.

Posted by Anne at 04:33 PM | Permalink

From the FOIA blog:

A three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has dismissed an appeal of a lower court ruling that the Secret Service must process visitor logs relating to the Vice-President for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

In the lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ("CREW"), [Ed. note-I do legal work for CREW, but have not done anything on this matter] the district court had ruled that the records sought were agency records pursuant to FOIA and that the Secret Service needed to process them. Rather than comply with the order, the government appealed the order. However, the appellate court decided that it had no subject matter jurisdiction as this wasn't a final order that could be appealed, nor did it fit any of the exceptions that would allow appeal at this time. Thus, the case was sent back to the district court for further action.

Posted by Anne at 04:31 PM | Permalink

From the Open House Project:

I’m ecstatic. All right, so this all goes back to late 2006, a bunch of people sitting at their computers writing some emails about what Congress should do with data. I distinctly remember Dan Newman and I both thinking that the Library of Congress should make its raw legislative database (that powers THOMAS) available directly to us to build applications off of, rather than the screen-scraping that I was doing. One thing leads to another, the Open House Project, the legislative databases section of the OHP report in May 2007 (which I principally wrote), then later that year with the support of Rep. Mike Honda, in November CHA asked the LOC to look into the issue (more), and then in the last month his office submitted text for the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Report, which made it through subcommittee markup of the bill, to give this request a little more teeth (like, ehm, the force of law).

Posted by Anne at 04:29 PM | Permalink

From the Guardian UK:

The information commissioner today expressed concern at a proposed government database recording the entire country's telephone and internet use, calling it "a step too far for the British way of life".

Richard Thomas, who heads the government's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), said there was a grave danger of the police and security services prying into "more and more aspects of our private lives".

Posted by Anne at 04:27 PM | Permalink

From the Times Online:

The rock dinosaurs of the 1960s are in line for a spectacular windfall after the EU announced plans yesterday to extend musicians’ entitlement to retrospective royalties from 50 to 95 years.

Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Cliff Richard and Roger Daltrey have all campaigned for what the record industry calls “the Beatles extension”, which will guarantee most artists royalties covering their entire careers.

Posted by Anne at 04:24 PM | Permalink

From the Washington Post:

Federal officials inconsistently preserve government e-mail, creating gaps in the public record and making it difficult for the public to understand the activities of the government, according to a report released by the Government Accountability Office yesterday.

The report came before a scheduled House vote today on a bill that would create standards for the electronic storage of e-mail by federal agencies.

As the use of e-mail has increased dramatically, federal agencies are struggling to determine which e-mails can be deleted, which must be preserved as public records and how those records should be stored.

Current law gives agencies broad discretion to determine how electronic records and communications are maintained. Quality varies widely, according to the GAO.

Read the GAO Report: Federal Records: National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management (GAO-08-742)

Posted by Anne at 03:42 PM | Permalink

From the Mercury News:

Microsoft and Google told lawmakers today that Congress should pass basic privacy legislation to protect information about consumers, such as the data being gathered about people's Web surfing habits in order to pinpoint Internet advertising.

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on online advertising, representatives of the two technology rivals said meaningful privacy rules should be based on three core principles: Consumers should be clearly notified what information is being collected about them; people should control how that information is used; and such data should be secured to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands.

Posted by Anne at 03:40 PM | Permalink

From The Public Record:

On Wednesday, just as the Senate passed sweeping new legislation (H.R. 5811) to modernize a 30 year old federal surveillance law, President Bush signaled that he would swiftly veto a bill approved by the House earlier in the day that would overhaul the Presidential and Federal Records Act to ensure emails and other government documents are preserved in the age of the Internet.

The measure was passed by a vote of 286-137, more than a year after several Senate and House investigations discovered that the Bush administration apparently purged millions of emails and that dozens of administration officials used email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee to conduct official White House business in what appeared to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act. . .

. . . The Bush administration, in threatening to veto the legislation, said that the bill is "an excessive and inappropriate intrusion" into the work of the executive branch and its staff.

In a statement, the White House said the Electronic Message Preservation Act would "upset the delicate separation of powers" created in the 1978 Presidential Records Act, a law drafted in response to the widespread abuse of federal records during the Nixon administration.

Posted by Anne at 08:50 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

The Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to a major expansion of the government’s surveillance powers, handing President Bush one more victory in a series of hard-fought clashes with Democrats over national security issues.

The measure, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, is the biggest revamping of federal surveillance law in 30 years. It includes a divisive element that Mr. Bush had deemed essential: legal immunity for the phone companies that cooperated in the National Security Agency wiretapping program he approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Posted by Anne at 08:48 PM | Permalink

From the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government:

A just completed study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows that federal departments and agencies made little progress in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, despite a two-year-old presidential directive to improve service. The report, “An Opportunity Lost”, says agencies cut staff and FOIA spending in 2007 and as a result failed to take advantage of a sharp fall off in FOIA requests to make significant reductions in the backlog of unprocessed requests.

Posted by Anne at 08:58 PM | Permalink

From NextGov.com:

The Census Bureau will receive $210 million in emergency funding to cover cost overruns for the 2010 decennial census, despite a vow by the head of the Commerce Department to transfer funds to pay for the shortfall.

Posted by Anne at 08:57 PM | Permalink

From the New York Times:

The photograph, in the archives of the Brooklyn Historical Society, showed a group of people having drinks at Whittaker’s Hotel, a long-disappeared way station in Canarsie that once served travelers bound for the Rockaways. It was just what Brian Merlis, who publishes books of historical Brooklyn photographs, wanted.

But in April, a few weeks after Mr. Merlis first saw the picture, the historical society, citing copyright concerns, rebuffed his request to use it and a second photograph — for a fee — for use in a forthcoming book on Canarsie, pending further research. Mr. Merlis’s objections became public when he wrote a letter criticizing the decision that was published on June 12 in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. What is the point of archiving old pictures, he argued, if people can’t use them?

But Deborah Schwartz, president of the historical society, in Brooklyn Heights, said Wednesday that the society was only trying to follow the letter of copyright law. The holders of the copyrights for the pictures — one taken around 1895 and the other in the early 20th century — are unknown, she said, and without permission from them or their estates, the photos cannot be reused for a commercial endeavor. Until, that is, they pass into the public domain, which is due to happen for the older picture in 2015, and for the newer as late as 2045.

Posted by Anne at 08:56 PM | Permalink

From the BBC:

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Posted by Anne at 08:55 PM | Permalink

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The U.S. Senate this afternoon passed the FISA Amendments Act, broadly expanding the president's warrantless surveillance authority and unconstitutionally granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the president's illegal domestic wiretapping program. The House of Representatives passed the same bill last month, and President Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly.

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From the National Journal: (Subscription required)

Ahead of a scheduled House vote today, the White House threatened to veto a bill aimed at forcing the president and federal agencies to improve preservation of e-mail records.

Posted by Anne at 08:54 PM | Permalink

From SLA's Public Policy Connections blog:

. . . SLA believes that the EPA still has not adequately addressed many of the necessary details to ensure that the libraries reopen successfully; specifically, that three important points, laid out in EPA’s National Library Network Report to Congress, need to be further examined.

Read letter.

Posted by Anne at 08:52 PM | Permalink

From SLA's Public Policy Connections blog:

SLA and others wrote a letter to Gene L. Dodaro, Acting Comptroller General of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), expressing serious concerns about the “exclusive” agreement between the GAO and Thomson West, a private legal information provider. The letter encourages that the agreement be revisited, keeping in mind the need to create partnerships that most benefit the public interest and urging that any future digitization initiatives build no-fee public access into the solicitation for bids.

Read letter.

Posted by Anne at 08:51 PM | Permalink

From SLA's Public Policy Connections blog:

On 20 June 2008, SLA received a letter from Elias A. Zerhouni, Director, National Institutes of Health (NIH), expressing appreciation for SLA's support of open and timely Internet access to NIH research articles.

Posted by Anne at 08:50 PM | Permalink

From the FOIA Blog:

Even though Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ("CREW") lost at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in its attempt to get e-mails from the White House Office of Administration ("OA") because the Court ruled that the OA was not subject to the FOIA, CREW has gained an order requiring the OA to preserve all material that would be subject to the FOIA if CREW prevails on appeal.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the OA must preserve the material until the resolution of CREW's appeal or January 5, 2009, whichever event is earlier.

Posted by Anne at 08:49 PM | Permalink

From Law.com:

Back-to-back rulings by federal appellate courts in Atlanta and New York favoring the National Geographic Society will allow magazine and newspaper publishers to transfer their published archives to computer discs and sell them commercially without infringing on freelance contributors' copyrights.

National Geographic won its dual victories after more than a decade of litigation in two federal circuits. The publisher of National Geographic has battled freelance writers and photographers over whether it must pay them additional royalties associated with the sale of "The Complete National Geographic" -- a digital version of the magazine's published archive.

On Monday, Judge Rosemary Barkett, writing the majority opinion for a sharply divided en banc court of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the claims of a freelance Florida photographer whose work has been published in National Geographic.

Posted by Anne at 07:23 PM | Permalink

From The Hill:

The bipartisan housing bill currently being debated in the Senate contains an unrelated amendment that will burden innovative Internet companies and threaten the civil liberties of every American. Without any discussion, Senators added a provision to H.R. 3221 (The American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008) requiring electronic payment services to collect, aggregate, and transmit details of every sale to the federal government.

Posted by Anne at 07:20 PM | Permalink

From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

In a closely watched copyright-infringement lawsuit, Georgia State University fired back this week at its accusers, three academic publishers that say the institution invites students to illegally download and print readings from thousands of works. The university asserts that its online distribution of course material is permitted under copyright law's fair-use exemption.

Posted by Anne at 08:43 PM | Permalink