Although primarily a symbolic action, the Eugene City Council passed a resolution, with impetus from 2,000 citizen signatures on a petition, stating the city's opposition to the USA Patriot Act. See also my other posting on a growing movement by municipalities to oppose the Patriot Act.

This Forbes article addresses the changing landscape of ISP liability in regard to providing the government with access to personal data on subscribers, as well as to their IT infrastructures, to facilitate surveillance of customers. The legal issues inherent in such actions have shifted significantly with the passage of the Homeland Security Bill (H.R 5005), P.L. 107-296.

If you are interested in the President's e-government plan, this OPM site provides an overview of the E-Clearance, E-Payroll, Enterprise Human Resources Initiative, E-Training and Recruitment One-Stop projects, including objectives, current status and future milestones.

The ACLU and EPIC have secured an order from Judge Huvelle, U.S. District Court, D.C., in response to their FOIA complaint for Patriot Act related documents. A list of those documents the DOJ will release must be provided to the groups by January 15, 2003, however, the agency has indicated that documents will be withheld due to national security issues.

This FTC site on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act - Financial Privacy and Pretexting, is an excellent resource on the topic. It provides links to the code, rules and regs, press releases, business guidance documents, and official state documents.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a paper by Seth Finkelstein titled
How To Win (DMCA) Exemptions And Influence Policy, which includes key links concerning the act and carefully documents specific directions and references essential to apply for an exemption.

Data on health issues including abortions and contraception have been removed from government web sites, and complaints are escalating that such actions are motivated by the President's political agenda.

See my previous posting on this topic here, which includes references to Congressional concerns over this specific pattern of censoring health related data.

In 1997, then Senator Ashcroft of Missouri published a statement called, Keep Big Brother's Hands Off the Internet. Fast forward to the Patriot Act.

The Center for Democracy and Technology has published an E-Government Handbook, conceived as a global resource on how to implement technology applications to best serve the needs of citizens by making information easily and readily available online.

The Privacy Journal conducted a survey of state legislation related to privacy issues, and ranked California at the top of the list due to its pro-active institution of protections for its citizens, via legislation, but also through the courts and in its constitution.

This information comes from the organization's Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws, a 106 page book that costs $31.00.

Here is a link to the text of the Homeland Security Act from the November 22, 2002 Federal Register.

The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act ("ESIGN") went into effect on October 1, 2000. It provides that digital signatures are legally valid for use in commercial and government documents. However, compliance with the law has been slow at best, as courts and agencies such as the EPA continue to seek exemptions from implementing the technology.

The Center for Governmental Studies published the Electronic Filing and Disclosure Survey, 2002 Update, which is a 27 page report in PDF, encompassing answers to 23 questions. The document includes data from the federal government, 50 states, and six Canadian provinces. Virtually all of the jurisdictions surveyed provide online campaign finance, lobbyist and personal financial disclosure statements. About half of the surveyed group indicated filing this data online is mandatory. This is an example of e-gov that is well received by users overall.

This site is nothing to write home about in terms of the design and graphical interface, but it certainly merits your visit for the useful resources it provides. The National Freedom of Information Coalition, a non-profit that received funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation , has compiled an online guide to assist you in locating FOI data from the federal government, all the states, and Canada. They include the text of open meetings and open records law for each state, a range of contacts with website links, as well as related publications and a link to each state's constitution.

This site provides a flowchart of the TIA System objectives and strategy....very short on facts.
This Washington Post article offers more information on the new Pentagon project including links to other press coverage, both pro and con, mostly focused on privacy concerns associated with its goals and objectives. If you are interested in hearing about the TIA from its Director, John Poindexter, then you can read his description of the office and its role in ensuring our "security and privacy" here.

The Copenhagen press reported that the Chinese government has systematically censorsed access to the Danish search engine, Jubii. This is in no small measure due to the fact this engine provides access to sites banned by the Chinese government, including Amnesty International and the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Note: I was not familiar with Falun Gong, but on December 11, 2002 I watched an episode of Law & Order that focused on the Chinese government's alleged persecution of members of this group.

For related information, this commentary from ZDNet, How the U.S. can stop Internet censorship, addresses various software applications to counter state sponsored blocking of website content in the U.S. (via software filters in public libraries) and by countries such as China, North Korea and Vietnam, to name just a few.

The California state government learned the hard way the repercussions of not acting swiftly to respond to, secure and disclose that employee personal data was comprised by a wide scale database hacking operation in April 2002. Fast forward, and their legislature is now the first in the country to pass a law to prevent the fall-out of such future attacks. Their action comes in the form of passage of SB 1386, effective July 1, 2003. It requires that "a state agency, or a person or business that conducts business in California, that owns or licenses computerized data that includes personal information, as defined, to disclose in specified ways, any breach of the security of the data, as defined, to any resident of California whose unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person."

William Safire's Op-Ed piece, You Are a Suspect, generated considerable reaction from readers as he enumerated how each and every daily transaction that you consider innocuous and routine (purchases with credit cards, filling prescriptions, surfing the web) will become part of the DOJ's vast new, Total Information Awareness database. Needless to say, Safire condemns the project.

On October 24, 2002 the ACLU filed a FOI lawsuit to obtain DOJ documents pertaining to the government's various Patriot Act surveillance programs and initiatives. In a press release issued today, the ACLU is again demanding that the DOJ comply with their demand to release documents the government admits to having compiled, but to date, refuses to supply. The ACLU's Memorandum in Suport of a Preliminary Injunction is here.

The FTC has developed and initiated a joint effort among federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to protect consumers from fraudulent and deceptive actions perpetrated via the use of spam e-mail messages. As a result of their investigations, the FTC posted a useful web page here with facts on spam scams and advice for consumer protection.

The Federal Times chronicles the many challenges that have been posed to the successful implementation of e-government initiatives over the course of the past six years, in this article: E-Government Still Unplugged: Projects Short-Circuited by Infighting, Resistance.

The Software Information Industry Association (SIAA) issued a press release supporting the Department of Energy's (DOE) decision to remove the free PubSCIENCE database from the web. Users are now redirected to the DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) site to conduct journal searches.

The SIALL argued for the removal of PubSCIENCE due to the inequities that resulted from the government's provision of free access to scientific literature that publishers were competitively trying to market online via fee-based subscriptions.

This interesting commentary reviews the requirement for documents management in the post-Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley Act corporate environment. Destroying corporate documents, via shredding or other "digital" means can be a criminal act, so increased attention is warranted to how internal documents are stored, shared and deleted.

Medicare.gov is a useful new government sponsored resourse that provides data evaluating nursing homes that have been certified by Medicare and Medicaid. The site has a general search engine, as well as one that permits users to locate nursing homes by state. In addition, the site also provides links to state sponsored data on nursing homes.

See also this related site, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) which includes information on coverage, and laws and regulations.

Orbitz is no doubt pleased with the Department of Transportation's decision not to propose new regulations on the advertisement and sale of airline tickets on the Web. See my previous relating posting here.

Wired has an interesting article on a number of new applications now available that are used to track and monitor the range of non-work related activities that employees engage in while using corporate e-mail and Internet access.

The Supreme Court today agreed to review a challenge to the constitutionality of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) (United States v. American Library Association, 02-361), which stipulates that libraries receiving federal funds install filtering software on public access PCs. This law is vigorously opposed by the American Library Association (ALA) and the ACLU.

For background on this topic, see The Freedom Forum postings here and here. In addition, on May 31, 2002 Slashdot ran an informative piece on the controversy following the prior decision from the E.D Pennsylvania.

The Citizens Action Project is sponsored by the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. This organization has created a database detailing specifically what public records pertaining to sex offenders are made available by states via their respective Web portals. Information provided includes references to state statutes and case law, but no links directly to this data.

According to a GAO review, the Department of the Interior continues to have major administrative problems, including those that include their IT infrastructure. Federal Computer Week (FCW) has updated readers on the issues that continue to plague the agency some 11 months after U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's order to shut down all online systems. For some perspective on what certainly appears to be an e-gov debacle, see this December 21, 2001 article.

This case, State of Washington v. Donald Theodore Townsend, addresses the privacy of e-mail and instant message (IM) communication in a police sting operation involving an adult and a fictitious minor. Townsend's messages were stored on a police officer's PC, printed, and used as evidence. The court determined that Townsend's messages were not covered under the state's privacy statute on intercepting, recording, or divulging private communication, RCW 9.73.030(1)(a).

See the article article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer on this case here.

See ICANN's announcement on recommendations for new Top Level Domains (TLDs) as well as a comment period which will end December 10. According to this related Washington Post article, ICANN is in favor of creating three new top level domains that target specific users, rather than the current dot-com grab-bag approach.

According to this article in digitalMass, a father-son programming team is marketing a software application that allows users to copy DVDs onto CDs. Hollywood is none too pleased with consumers copying their films, and is commited to battling against the creation and distribution of applications that allow them to do so.

See also this related commentary from PCWorld's November 2002 issue.

As a profession, doctors have traditionally communicated with their patients in person or by telephone. However, the tide may be turning, as some doctors pioneer fee-based virtual medicine, by which they communicate and diagnose patients via secure e-mail.

In an effort to respond to consumer demand for movie downloads, five major studios launched a new fee-based service, called Movielink. See the WSJ article via Yahoo here.

The Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at Boalt Hall is actively involved in educational efforts focused on privacy law, digital rights management and copyright issues.

The site maintains a BriefBank, to which public interest groups and legal scholars contribute briefs on law, technology and public policy. The site has a basic search engine (parties to the case and court of jurisdiction), and briefs are available in HTML. In addition, the site hosts conference materials and links to related sites sponsored by UC Berkeley. See their press release on an "Enforcing Privacy Rights" conference, held Nov. 15 and 16.

The non-profit citizen advocacy group Public Citizen conducted a state-by-state survey of disciplinary data, and the information is current as of April 3, 2002. It may be viewed in an oveall quick chart format here. Specific information provided includes the direct, state sponsored e-gov address where doctor data is located, whether the state provides disciplinary data online, whether the specific offense is revealed, various doctor licensing information, and a grade (A-F) for the user interface.

The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers issued a press release on November 7 stating their adoption of a supplemental protocal to the Convention on Cybercrime. It is titled, Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime Concerning the Criminalisation of Acts of a Racist and Xenophobic Nature Committed Through Computer Systems. See also their Explanatory Report on the protocol.

The 44 member states will have the opportunity to become signatories to the protocal during the January 2003 EU Parlimentary session.

This New York Times article details plans for a Pentagon database currently under development that would be used to mine, collect and analyze personal data collected from the Web, e-mail, telecommunications, government documents and online transactions. The stated purpose of this unprecedented effort: homeland security.

This program has the support of the executive director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, whose group issued a report on October 7.

E-government information, reports and related documents are certainly in the news as of late. The Performance Institute released a new study on October 30, in PDF: Creating a Performance-Based Electronic Government, Fiscal Year 2002 Progress. The report is subtitled, "The State-of-the-Practice on How e-Government Initiatives in Federal Agencies are Progressing Toward Achieving Cost Efficiencies and Improved Program Performance."

UK government web sites have a poor track record with users, and the Prime Minister's site is at the top of the failure list of the 20 sites reviewed. This is according to "A Report Into Key Government Web Sites," which is reviewed here, but can only be obtained in full-text via purchase.

In a related story, see my posting on a recent Global E-Gov't Study.

On October 30, I posted about the terrible track record of most Fortune 100 companies in responding to customer emails. However DuPont has taken the opportunity to announce that their company was named third most responsive in the overall survey.

A new Gartner study indicates that corporate knowledge documents are overwhelmingly stored on employee hard drives, not shared via an enterprise-wide KM system. As a result, significant loss can result when employees leave and take their data with them.

The U.S. District Court for D.C. announced some changes to procedures for administering the court's subscriber e-mail update service, after their premature release of links to the Microsoft decision. See my previous posting for details.

There is also a question as to whether the release of the decision helped to spur a virtually simultaneous rally of Microsoft's stock.

Citing cybercrime as sufficient cause, the Australian government is planning to create a Hi-Tech Crime Centre whose power will include the ability to block web sites created to facilitate protests.

The battle between music CD publishers and consumers who are burning copies will continue unabated, due to quickly applied modifications in CD technology. This is according to Princeton University computer science student Alex Halderman, whose expertise on the subject has been widely acknowledged (check out his resume!) Alex will present his paper, Evaluating New Copy-Prevention Techniques for Audio CDs, at the Association for Computing Machinery Workshop on Security and Privacy in Digital Rights Management, November 18 in D.C.

Efforts to block spam, both at the ISP and user level, can result in the non-delivery of legitimate e-mail. Specific networks and domains were blocked in October by ISP heavywight EarthLink, who admitted some problems with their spam fighting effort.

The Memory Hole reports on the Sunshine Project's work to obtain access to non-classified government documents on the use of non-lethal biological weapons, formerly available on the Web.

Been to Washington, D.C. lately? Did you have a feeling that you were being watched?

About a month after colleges and universities were warned about file sharing and associated piracy issues by the RIAA, and in turn sounded the alarm, EPIC has chimed in with another warning. The non-profit privacy rights organization informs educational institutions that aggressive monitoring of online activity impacts students privacy and their right to academic freedom.

On November 6, Microsoft released an essay, An Agenda for Innovation, that focuses on hot button issues such as cybercrime and protecting copyrights.

This is an excellent example of how the power of Microsoft's marketing power can thrust a new application into the limelight way in advance of its actual final release, which may be some time to come. EPeriodicals technology will supposedly revolutionize the entire process of publishing and distributing digital documents, via handhelds and tablet devices.

Not exactly technology related, but certainly worth noting in light of important SEC related activity overshadowed by the press coverage of the election;
SEC Proposes Rules to Implement Sarbanes-Oxley Act Provisions Concerning Standards of Professional Conduct for Attorneys.

The IRS is mobilizing to migrate 80% of tax filing from paper to online by 2007. To accomplish this goal, the agency is working with private enterprise to provide links to free e-filing services via a new IRS web site, by January 2003.

For related information, see also this GAO Report, Tax Administration, Electronic Filing's Past Present and Future Impact on Processing Costs Dependent on Several Factors, January, 2002.

Taylor Nelson Sofres, a UK-based global marketing company, has published a new report that benchmarks the impact and use of e-gov services worldwide. Their 55 page (in PDF) Government Online Study, uses data collected from 29,000 interviews conducted with individuals in 31 counties, including the UK, Canada, and the U.S. The study provides a important perspective on the growth of e-gov systems and services around the world, as well as identifying impediments to usage due to issues that include privacy and access.

Declan McCullagh reports that the election will have a big impact on key tech legislation as committee chairs change and support for the tech industry is bolstered. See the Information Technology Council High Tech Voting Guide for the 107th Congress, referenced in the second article.

The BBC reports on Singapore's eCitizen Portal, winner of the Stockholm Challenge 2002 Award for e-government.

Winnie the Pooh is at the heart of a 20 year legal battle with a potentially huge payout in terms of online royalties. Disney and Stephen Slesinger, Inc. both claim copyright control over the commercial rights to the characters that would generate $1 billion in online merchandizing revenues.

In a follow-up to my 10/22/02 posting on trusted computing, globetechnology.com addresses the issue of how PC users will increasingly be forced to comply with industry imposed digital rights management solutions if they want to use most of the applications on the PCs.

Project Vote Smart is a non-profit, non partisan campaign information resource on candidates and issues throughout the country, on the Congressional, state, local and city level. The site is very easy to use, and provides links to candidate bios, campaign finance data, party and issue related web sites, as well as legislative tracking data by subject/topic.

See also Vote Watch , "A Repository for Voter Complaints."

The Register published an interesting article on how the Supreme Court's techies sent out e-mail messages with PDF attachments of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly's rulings on Microsoft, two hours prior to the announcement of their availability.

The Planet PDF weblog was actually a recipient of one of the e-mail messages, and posted a copy of the message indicating the date, time and attachments that were included. Also noted by Planet PDF is the fact that the court uses Corel Word Perfect rather than Microsoft Word to create its documents.

Five travel agencies want to establish a class action in federal court in L.A. against online web travel giant Orbitz. The agencies claim they cannot compete with the site due to unfair practices, and also name three of the site's backers in the suit: American, United and Delta.

American Online has launched AIM Enterprise Services. Using this technology, companies can now monitor all instant messages sent by employees. In addition, AOL hopes to realize some increased revenue as well, with a per seat cost of $35. See this Washington Post for more information.

Blogwise is a project under development, with a topical and subject index that now includes 244 sites worldwide. There is an eclectic mix of links here, and the site promises to grow rapidly so check-in again to see what else in new and may be of interest.

EPIC has published The Privacy Law Sourcebook 2002, is a good choice for researchers who want to have the full text of major privacy laws and directives in one easy to use source, as well as associated links to privacy resources on the web.

The Progress and Freedom Foundation published their Digital State 2002 report. The 62 page report (in PDF) is based on responses to 50 questions used as benchmarks for the study, and document the evolution and growing importance of e-government web sites. States increasingly use them to collect and manage data on intranets for administrative purposes, and to disseminate information and services to their citizens via portals.

If you are interested in e-mail press releases, updates, and related resources on the 2004 Presidential campaign, sponsored by the non-profit, non-partisan Minnesota-based group E-Democracy, you may subscribe via this link.

From Salon, Money talks, Microsoft walks; from CBSMarketWatch, Microsoft foes find fault, vow to fight; Washington Post Special Report on the Microsoft Case; from the New York Times, Life With Microsoft Still Stifling for Rivals; from SFGate, Microsoft wins antitrust battle; from the Seattle Times, How Microsoft strategy paid off; and from SiliconValley.com, Microsoft gets its way.

From the November 4 New York Times, Microsoft's New Set of Hurdles.

The Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights indicated their support for the Global Internet Freedom Act via this letter to Reps. Hyde and Lantos.

For more details and background about this bill, H.R. 5524, please see my previous postings here, here, and here.

Law.com's Supreme Court Monitor has a number of useful resources that include: links to topical news and commentary from the American Lawyer Media family of publications; cases from the 2000 term to current (fee-based for full-text access), abstracts of cases by subject (fee-based for full-text of the decisions), and cases in which cert. was granted, arranged by date and subject (with free case summaries).

The controversial Child Online Protection Act which specifies the "requirement to restrict access by minors to materials commercially distributed by means of the World Wide Web that are harmful to minors," is currently under review again by U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. In May 2002, the Supreme Court remanded the case, Ashcroft v. ACLU, back to this court to once again consider the constitutionality of creating barriers to Internet access. The 3rd Circuit had granted a preliminary injunction in the case, ACLU v. Reno, in June 2002.

EPIC maintains a resource center with links to court and legislative documents from these cases.

Via Slashdot: Final Decree, Memorandum Opinion, Public Interest Order, Opinion on the State Settlement, and the State Settlement Order.

See Microsoft's PressPass for the company's official response to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.'s decision, along with links to an extensive library of documents on the case.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that they received 52% of their filings for the month of September electronically. This marks a milestone in the agency's e-government initiative to migrate filings from paper to online format.

The Supreme Court will review a number of cases this week, including United States v. American Library Association, No. 02-361, requiring the use of filtering software by all libraries receiving federal funds. For up-to-date information on this case, see the American Library Association web site on CIPA.

An August 2002 GAO report on Internet Cigarette Sales recommends "giving ATF investigative authority... to improve reporting and enforcement." According to this TechTV article, states have lost $1.5 billion in revenues from such web sales.

It would appear that the RIAA and their industry colleagues made a quick and deep impression on university presidents with their warning letter on piracy, about which I previously posted here. TechTV reports that the huge volume of P2P traffic, which has stressed the IT infrastructure at UC Berkeley, has resulted in the implementation of a bandwidth management application called PacketShaper.

The NASD issued a press release stating their intention to create a public portal for easier and more direct public access to broker-dealer data, as well as to broaded the content of the information provided. With their proposal, for which they seek comments by December 2, the NASD indicates that they are trying to strike the proper balance between investors desire for full disclosure with their member's right to privacy.

Outlook 11, from Microsoft, will offer a whole range of new applications, but the one that is receiving special notice is a "back to the future" function that will purportedly help to kill spam. In version 11, preview mode will no longer provide access to imbedded images and HTML formatted text, which can actually be spam and may also carry with them web beacons.

Political Web, launched on July 30, is a useful site for research studies on the growing use of the Internet by Congressional and gubernatorial candidates. Funded by the The Pew Charitable Trusts, researchers from the Washington State University issue regular short press releases on their findings, as well as longer, topical reports, such as this one from October 30, "People with Disabilities Overlooked on Candidate Sites."

Corporations have for some time expressed their concern to the government that their identities and losses not be revealed when their IT infrastructures are maliciously attacked and compromised.

According to Government Technology (via AP), FBI Director Mueller has promised that agents will use discretion to protect the reputation of companies that report such crimes, as a means of encouraging them to do so.

Amazon's new apparel store is available here. See this Internetnews.com article for details.

Denise Howell, the legal blogging wizard over at Bag and Baggage, alerted me to this Wired article about the growing recognition and importance of blogs in the legal arena.