A Guide to the Supreme Court’s Review of the 2010 Health Care Reform Law, January 12, 2012
CRS - Border Security: Immigration Enforcement Between Ports of Entry, Marc R. Rosenblum, Specialist in Immigration Policy, January 6, 2012
Wired Campus by Josh Fischman: "Elsevier, the global publishing company, is responsible for The Lancet, Cell, and about 2,000 other important journals; the iconic reference work Gray’s Anatomy, along with 20,000 other books—and one fed-up, award-winning mathematician. Timothy Gowers of the University of Cambridge, who won the Fields Medal for his research, has organized a boycott of Elsevier because, he says, its pricing and policies restrict access to work that should be much more easily available. He asked for a boycott in a blog post on January 21, and as of Monday evening, on the boycott’s Web site The Cost of Knowledge, nearly 1,900 scientists have signed up, pledging not to publish, referee, or do editorial work for any Elsevier journal. The company has sinned in three areas, according to the boycotters: It charges too much for its journals; it bundles subscriptions to lesser journals together with valuable ones, forcing libraries to spend money to buy things they don’t want in order to get a few things they do want; and, most recently, it has supported a proposed federal law (called the Research Works Act) that would prevent agencies like the National Institutes of Health from making all articles written by its grant recipients freely available."
Implementation of the Consumer Credit Directive: "The study examines the state and the main difficulties of the implementation of Directive 2008/48/EC on credit agreements for consumers using the examples of fourteen Member States of the
European Union. The analysis focuses on fully harmonised aspects of the Directive as well as on the provisions for which the Member States were given a wide margin of appreciation in achieving the objective of the Directive and options provided by the Directive. Furthermore, new regulations and regulations requiring interpretation are dealt with. Finally, the study analyses the regulation of credit agreements which fall outside the scope of the Directive."
Jurors’ Use of Social Media During Trials and Deliberations - A Report to the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, Meghan Dunn, Federal Judicial Center November 22, 2011
"The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announces the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries 2012, a clear and easy-to-use statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use developed by and for librarians who support academic inquiry and higher education. The Code was developed in partnership with the Center for Social Media and the Washington College of Law at American University. Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins University Dean of University Libraries and Museums and President of ARL, said, “This document is a testament to the collective wisdom of academic and research librarians, who have asserted careful and considered approaches to some very difficult situations that we all face every day.”
International Trade: Rules of Origin. Vivian C. Jones, Specialist in International Trade and Finance; Michael F. Martin, Analyst in Asian Trade and Finance, January 5, 2012
TRAC: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during October 2011 the Department of Homeland Security's efforts to enforce immigration and customs laws accounted for 59% of all federal criminal prosecutions. The government reported 8,038 new prosecutions for these DHS matters as compared with a total of 13,628 from all sources. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up 9.3 percent over the previous month. These comparisons of the number of defendants charged are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys."
Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline: Legal Issues, January 23, 2012
News release: "The majority of law firms in the United States and Canada expect to increase their reliance on electronic forms of lawyer development in the next 24 months, although associates in those firms say they prefer mentoring and on-the-job training to hone their skills. Details regarding this important disconnect, along with other key findings about the landscape of professional development inside law firms, are available in a first-of-its-kind research report published by the NALP Foundation in partnership with West LegalEdcenter, a Thomson Reuters business. The report, “Leading Law Firm Professional Development: A Comprehensive Study of Professional Development Staffing, Resources and Program Delivery Modes,” examines the perspectives of more than 200 law firm administrators responsible for professional development functions and nearly 1,500 associates from firms ranging in size from less than 10 lawyers to more than 1,000 lawyers. The data for this study was collected in late 2010 and early 2011 from online questionnaires."
Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications - Todd Garvey, Legislative Attorney. January 4, 2012
Serious Economic Crime - A boardroom guide to prevention and compliance, January 2012 [312 pages, UK government]
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have signed an agreement to coordinate efforts to protect consumers and avoid duplication of federal law enforcement and regulatory efforts. “The FTC has always been committed to protecting consumers and legitimate companies from bad actors in the financial marketplace,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “Now we have another cop on the beat, and this agreement ensures that businesses will not be double-teamed by the two agencies.” “Entering this agreement with the FTC is important to making sure markets for consumer financial products are getting efficient and effective federal government oversight,” said Richard Cordray, Director of the CFPB. “We are both motivated by the same thing: To do right by consumers. We look forward to this partnership.” The two agencies signed a memorandum of understanding. It is available here."
"Today the Supreme Court unanimously held in U.S. v. Jones that the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device by the police violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court said that a warrant is required "[w]here, as here, the government obtains information by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area," like a car. Concurring opinions by Justices Sotomayor and Alito urged the court to focus on the reasonableness of the suspect's expectation of privacy because physical intrusion is unnecessary to surveillance in the digital age. EPIC, joined by 30 legal and technical experts,filed a "friend of the court" brief. EPIC warned that, "it is critical that police access to GPS tracking be subject to a warrant requirement." For more information, see EPIC: US v. Jones, and EPIC: Location Privacy"
Lawless, Robert M. and Cohen, Dov, Less Forgiven? Race and the Bankruptcy System (January 21, 2011). BROKE: HOW DEBT BANKRUPTS THE MIDDLE CLASS, Katherine Porter, ed., 2012. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1745138
"The 2012 Taxonomy contains updates for accounting standards and other improvements since the 2011 Taxonomy as used by issuers filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued proposed improvements to the taxonomy in the fall of 2011, allowing users of the taxonomy to provide feedback on the updates and the opportunity to become familiar with and to incorporate new element names for their filings. We encourage users to read the release notes and other provided guidance and supporting documents, which contain the details of these changes."
Sunlight Foundation: "Making good on part of the House of Representative's commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk's office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity. The Clerk is hosting the site, and the information will primarily come from the leadership, the Committee on House Administration, the Rules Committee, and the Clerk's office. The project has been driven by House Republican leaders as part of an push for transparency. Important milestones include the adoption of the new House Rules in January 2011 that gave the Committee on House Administration the power to establish standards for publishing documents online, an April 2011 letter from the Speaker and Majority Leader to the Clerk calling for better public access to House information, a Committee on House Administration hearing in June 2011 on modernizing information delivery in the House, a December 2011 public meeting on public access to congressional information, and finally the late December adoption of online publication standards."
Forensic Bibliometrics: Information Quality Assurance in Scientific Literature: Everyone is familiar with the "corrections" columns in newspapers and the errata pages in the backs of books. But those corrigenda are a far cry from identifying the problems created when authors deliberately offer for publication fraudulent results. Research misconduct and the publication of fraudulent results in scholarly publications and news media has become a growing concern in many disciplines. Ken Strutin has researched, annotated and compiled core documents that address the causes of misconduct, spotting faked data, and repairing the damage to the information stream.
Authentication of Primary Legal Materials and Pricing Options, December 2011
The Iraq War, the Next War, and the Future of the Fat Man, by Stephen L. Carter, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, Yale Law School. January 16, 2012 - 64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 46 - Essays
"As the result of EPIC v. DHS, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, EPIC has obtained nearly thee hundred pages of documents detailing a Department of Homeland Security's surveillance program. The documents include contracts and statements of work with General Dynamics for 24/7 media and social network monitoring and periodic reports to DHS. The documents reveal that the agency is tracking media stories that "reflect adversely" on DHS or the U.S. government. One tracking report -- "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" -- summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking cites, quoting commenters. EPIC sent a request for these documents in April 2004 and filed suit against the agency in December. For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. Department of Homeland Security: Media Monitoring."
EPIC: "Bloomberg News has reported that the Federal Trade Commission has expanded its antitrust investigation of Google to include Google's social networking service, Google+. The report comes after Google announced that it would include personal data gathered from Google+ in the results of users' searches, a move that led EPIC to urge the FTC to investigate the company. EPIC said that "Google's business practices raise concerns related to both competition and the implementation of the Commission’s consent order," referring to a settlement that the FTC reached with Google that establishes new privacy safeguards for users of all Google products and services and subjects the company to regular privacy audits. Google first confirmed the FTC’s antitrust investigation in June 2011. Recently, the Senate held a hearing on Google's use of its dominance in the search market to suppress competition, and EPIC urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's use of Youtube search rankings to give preferential treatment to its own video content over non-Google content. For more information, see EPIC: Google/DoubleClick and EPIC: Federal Trade Commission."
EPIC: In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC has called for an investigation of recent changes by Google to Google Search, the dominant search algorithm on the Internet. EPIC cited Google's decision to include personal data, such as photos, posts, and contact details, gathered from Google+ in Google Search results. “Google’s business practices raise concerns related to both competition and the implementation of the Commission’s consent order,” EPIC said, referring to a settlement that the FTC reached with Google that establishes new privacy safeguards for users of Google products and services and subjects the company to regular privacy audits. Recently, the Senate held a hearing on Google’s use of its dominance in the search market to suppress competition, and EPIC urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google’s acquisition of Youtube, which allowed Google to give preferential treatment to Google's own video content. For more information, see EPIC: Google/DoubleClick and EPIC: Federal Trade."
Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries Over the Decade Ending 2009, Dev Kar and Sarah Freitas1, December 2011
Spotlight on Speech Codes 2012: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
"The Fraud of the Day is a forum dedicated to educating government about how fraud is perpetrated and the solutions to stop it. When you visit the “Fraud of the Day,” you’ll find Larry Brnson's commentary; links to other news, events, and resources pertaining to government fraud; and video commentary from tax fraud expert, Andy Bucholz, and social services fraud expert, Ron Rigores."
Maldives: Detailed Assessment Report on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, January 2012 - IMF Country Report No. 12/1
News release: "A payment processor and two of its principals are now banned from using a new payment method to process electronic payments under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which resolves charges that they debited consumers' bank accounts without their consent. The settlement furthers the FTC's ongoing efforts to protect financially-strapped consumers during the economic downturn by scrutinizing not only merchants, but all parties who participate in defrauding consumers."
Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide - Completely Updated - December 2011: Sabrina I. Pacifici's comprehensive, current awareness guide focuses on leveraging a wide but selected range of reliable, focused, predominantly free websites and resources to effectively track, monitor, analyze, background and review current and historical data, news, reports, and profiles on companies, markets, countries, people, and issues, from a global perspective. Sabrina's guide is a "best of" web resource that encompasses search engines, databases, alerts, publisher specific services and tools, along with links to content targeted sources produced by leading media organizations, governments, academia, NGOs and independent researchers.
"The Southern California Association of Law Libraries (SCALL) Public Access to Legal Information (PALI) Committee has just posted the updated edition of Locating the Law: A Handbook for Non-law Librarians. We've corrected links, added a few more sources, and moved the "Common Abbreviations in the Law" from the end of Chapter 2 to Appendix B. You can view individual chapters or the entire publication in one large PDF (274 pages)." [June Kim, Senior Reference Librarian, UCLA Law Library]
Guidance on Live, Text-Based Communications from Court: "This Practice Guidance (the Guidance) applies to court proceedings which are open to the public and to those parts of the proceedings which are not subject to reporting restrictions. It is issued (as Guidance and not a Practice Direction) following a consultation relating to the use of live, text-based communications. Those consulted included the Judiciary, the Secretary of State for Justice, the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Bar Council, the Law Society, the Press Complaints Commission, and the Society of Editors in addition to interested members of the public via the Judiciary website.
2) The Guidance clarifies the use which may be made of live text-based communications, such as mobile email, social media (including Twitter) and internet enabled laptops in and from courts throughout England and Wales. For the purposes of this Guidance these means of communication are referred to, compendiously, as live, text-based communications."
Chief Justice's Year-End Reports on the Federal Judiciary, 2011: "Some observers have recently questioned whether the Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct for United States Judges should apply to the Supreme Court. I would like to use my annual report this year to address
that issue, as well as some other related issues that have recently drawn public attention. The space constraints of the annual report prevent me from setting out a detailed dissertation on judicial ethics. And my judicial responsibilities preclude me from commenting on any ongoing debates about particular issues or the constitutionality of any enacted legislation or pending proposals. But I can provide some clarification on how the Justices address ethical issues and dispel some common misconceptions."
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, 2011 Annual Report to Congress, Report Period CY 2010, December 2011 - Issued December 2011
"This application allows public access to court electronic records for Federal District Courts across the United States. Users MUST be registered, have a valid PACER account, to use this application. New users may register here PACER. This application is 'CASE SEARCH' only, therefore documents CANNOT be filed using this applciation, users can only view documents and information that is currently filed. It is important to note that a PACER account is separate from any filing account. A PACER account is required for document access in all federal courts."
Children and Justice During and in the Aftermath of Armed Conflict, September 2011. Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
U.S. Nuclear Cooperation with India: Issues for Congress, Paul K. Kerr, Analyst in Nonproliferation, December 15, 2011
"Model Laws for a Safer America is designed for use by activists and elected officials nationwide seeking to close dangerous loopholes in our federal regulatory system. This unique publication provides sample language for state and local laws to: 1) require background checks on all gun purchasers; 2) license firearm owners; 3) register all firearms; 4) regulate firearms dealers and ammunition sellers; 5) require the reporting of lost or stolen firearms; 6) impose a waiting period before the sale of a firearm; and 7) limit firearm purchases to one per person every 90 days. The publication also includes a discussion of common opposition arguments and legal issues. Model Laws for a Safer America is the latest publication from Legal Community Against Violence. Other LCAV [Legal Community Against Violence] publications include:
Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008 - Annual Rates for 2009 and 2010. Alexia Cooper and Erica L. Smith, BJS Statisticians
News release, December 21, 2011: "The Department of Justice today filed its largest residential fair lending settlement in history to resolve allegations that Countrywide Financial Corporation and its subsidiaries engaged in a widespread pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in their mortgage lending from 2004 through 2008. The settlement provides $335 million in compensation for victims of Countrywide’s discrimination during a period when Countrywide originated millions of residential mortgage loans as one of the nation’s largest single-family mortgage lenders. The settlement, which is subject to court approval, was filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in conjunction with the department’s complaint which alleges that Countrywide discriminated by charging more than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and interest rates than non-Hispanic white borrowers in both its retail and wholesale lending. The complaint alleges that these borrowers were charged higher fees and interest rates because of their race or national origin, and not because of the borrowers’ creditworthiness or other objective criteria related to borrower risk."
What Can We Learn from Law School? Legal Education Reflects Issues Found in All of Higher Education, Julie Margetta Morgan, Center for American Progress, December 2011
News release: "As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples...
CRS — Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law. Richard M. Thompson, Law Clerk. December 1, 2011
News release: "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and OpenTheGovernment.org released a joint report, Measuring Transparency Under the FOIA: The Real Story Behind the Numbers, analyzing the government’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data for 2010 and how it compares to the previous administration’s data...The results paint a very mixed picture on the FOIA front, with agencies generally processing more requests more quickly, but also increasing their reliance on the FOIA’s nine exemptions to withhold more information from the public. Our analysis revealed an even more alarming truth: the government’s FOIA data is flawed, making it impossible to assess key areas of progress and casting doubt on its overall reliability. As a result, what started as a statistical report on agencies’ handling of FOIA requests ended as an expose of the problems with the data and tools the government has developed to measure its progress in implementing the FOIA."
Kaiser - Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later - A Report on the States’ Allocation of the Tobacco Settlement Dollars
News release: "The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported today in Prisoners in 2010 that the number of offenders under adult correctional supervision in the U.S. declined 1.3 percent in 2010, the second consecutive year of decline since BJS began reporting on this population in 1980. At yearend 2010, about 7.1 million people, or 1 in 33 adults, were under the supervision of adult correctional authorities in the U.S. In addition, the total U.S. prison population fell to 1.6 million at yearend 2010, a decline of 0.6 percent during the year, the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades. This decline was due to a decrease of 10,881 in the number of state prisoners, which fell to just under 1.4 million persons and was the largest yearly decrease since 1977. The federal prison population grew by 0.8 percent (1,653 prisoners) to reach 209,771, the smallest percentage increase since 1980. Most offenders under correctional supervision (about 7 in 10 persons or nearly 4.9 million people) were supervised in the community on probation or parole at yearend 2010. About 3 in 10 (or nearly 2.3 million people) were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails. The decline in the total correctional population during 2010 was mainly due to a decrease in the number of probationers during the year (down 69,500 persons) and a decrease in the number of inmates incarcerated in local jails (down 18,700 persons)."
Jeff Lamicela: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that federal health care fraud prosecutions reached an historic high last year. During the twelve months of fiscal year 2011, the government reported 1,235 new health care fraud prosecutions - the largest number reported since separate tracking of this offense began twenty years ago. This number is up 68.9% over the past fiscal year when the number of criminal prosecutions totaled 731...The Southern District of Florida (Miami) led the nation in activity, accounting for nearly one out of every nine health care fraud prosecutions, followed by the Southern District of Texas (Houston). Together, these two districts accounted for over one out of every five health care fraud prosecutions."
The Dodd-Frank Act and Housing Finance, Levitin, Adam J., Pavlov, Andrey D. and Wachter, Susan M., (November 17, 2011). Yale Journal on Regulation, Forthcoming; U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper No. 11-35.
News release: "Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its annual enforcement and compliance results. EPA’s enforcement and compliance program enforces environmental laws that protect our nation’s air, land and water by taking action to cut illegal pollution and protect people’s health and communities. In fiscal year Fiscal Year 2011, EPA enforcement actions led to more than 1.8 billion pounds in pollution reduced, an estimated $19 billion in required pollution controls and approximately $168 million in civil penalties."
News release: "The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) today issued a second set of regulatory violations arising from operations conducted in connection with the Macondo well. The violations were issued as Incidents of Non-Compliance (INC). A total of five INCs were issued by faxed letter to BP; four of the INCs were violations of one regulation in different sections of the well...The following is a listing of the federal regulations and INCs issued today to BP: One violation of 30 CFR 250.427 – BP failed to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test at the 13-5/8” liner shoe. Four violations of 30 CFR 250.427(b) – BP failed to suspend drilling operations at the Macondo well when the safe drilling margin identified in the approved application for permit to drill was not maintained...More information regarding the initial INCs issued to BP, Transocean and Halliburton can be found here."
CRS - Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective On Secrecy and Transparency - Walter J. Oleszek, Senior Specialist in American National Government, November 30, 2011
"Amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence took effect December 1, 2011. Congress took no action after the changes were approved by Supreme Court more than seven months earlier. That means new amendments to these rules are now in effect:
News release: "The social networking service Facebook has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The proposed settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining consumers' express consent before their information is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. The FTC's eight-count complaint against Facebook is part of the agency's ongoing effort to make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to American consumers. It charges that the claims that Facebook made were unfair and deceptive, and violated federal law."
What’s So Hard About Regulating Supreme Court Justices’ Ethics? - A Lot, Russell Wheeler, Visiting Fellow, Governance Studies, The Brookings Institution
"On March 21, 2011, AT&T Inc. ("AT&T") and Deutsche Telekom AG ("Deutsche Telekom") announced an agreement under which AT&T will acquire T-Mobile USA, Inc. ("T-Mobile USA") from Deutsche Telekom. On April 21, 2011, the parties filed applications seeking the Commission's consent to the transfer of control of the licenses and authorizations held by T-Mobile USA and its wholly-owned and controlled subsidiaries from Deutsche Telekom to AT&T (the "Applications"). Now that the Applications have been filed, this proceeding is governed by permit-but-disclose ex parte procedures that are applicable to non-restricted proceedings under section 1.1206 of the Commission's rules."
Behind Closed Doors at the White House: How Politics Trumps Protection of Public Health, Worker Safety, and the Environment, by Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) Member Scholar Rena Steinzor, CPR Intern Michael Patoka, and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin
NYT DealBook: "Jed S. Rakoff, a judge for the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan, has rejected the proposed $285 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup related to the sale of mortgage securities. Here is the judge’s 15-page opinion, which concluded that the pact was “neither reasonable, nor fair, nor adequate, nor in the public interest.” Judge Rakoff has in the past expressed concern with the S.E.C.’s custom of not forcing a defendant to “neither admit nor deny the allegations” when settling a case. In his ruling Monday, the judge said he couldn’t approve a settlement that was based on “mere allegations.”
2011 Peer-to-Peer Violence and Bullying: Examining the Federal Response, September 2011, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
News release [Note; scroll down to locate links to the documents obtained via FOIA]: "President Ronald Reagan was briefed in advance about every weapons shipment in the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985-86, and Vice President George H. W. Bush chaired a committee that recommended the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua in 1983, according to previously secret Independent Counsel assessments of "criminal liability" on the part of the two former leaders posted today by the National Security Archive. Twenty-Five years after the advent of the "Iran-Contra affair," the two comprehensive "Memoranda on Criminal Liability of Former President Reagan and of President Bush" provide a roadmap of historical, though not legal, culpability of the nation's two top elected officials during the scandal from the perspective of a senior attorney in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. The documents were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the National Security Archive for the files compiled during Walsh's six-year investigation from 1987-1993."
Commission Staff Working Paper - Anti-money laundering supervision of and reporting by payment institutions in various cross-border situations, October 7, 2011
Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, presented in Manama, Bahrain, on 23 November 2011 [501 pages, PDF].."The Commission‘s mandate...is to report on the events in question on the basis of international human rights norms..occurring in Bahrain in February/March 2011, and any subsequent consequences arising out of the aforementioned events, and to make such recommendations as it may deem appropriate."
News release: "FindLaw.com is introducing FindLaw Legal Pulse, a new content area that offers continuously updated legal headlines from around the world, along with news, photo feeds and analysis from such sources as Reuters, the Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post. The content covers a broad range of law-related topics -- everything from Supreme Court decisions to legislative updates, everyday legal issues and even sports and celebrity news. FindLaw Legal Pulse offers tangible user benefits -- the news is up-to-date, comes from a rich variety of sources, and is tailored to audiences with legal interests."
The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics - Eoghan Caseya, Geoff Fellowsb, Matthew Geigerc, Gerasimos Stellatosd
News release: "The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finished fiscal year 2011 with a ten percent decrease in its pending charge inventory—the first such reduction since 2002, achieved the highest ever monetary amounts through administrative enforcement, and received a record number of charges of discrimination, the agency reported in its annual Performance and Accountability Report (PAR) filed today. The EEOC received a record 99,947 charges of discrimination in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, the highest number of charges in the agency’s 46-year history. EEOC staff also delivered historic relief through administrative enforcement—more than $364.6 million in monetary benefits for victims of workplace discrimination. This is also the highest level obtained in the Commission’s history. The fiscal year ended with 78,136 pending charges—a decrease of 8,202 charges, or ten percent. In previous years, the pending inventory had increased as staffing declined 30 percent between fiscal years 2000 and 2008."
A Year Later, Little Progress on Digitizing Legislative Documents, Daniel Schuman: "A year ago today, Congress' Joint Committee on Printing directed that three sets of vital legislative and legal documents be published online "as quickly as possible." We've reviewed how well that order was implemented, and the results are not encouraging. Of the three documents, there's only apparent progress on one. The vital documents are the Constitution Annotated, the Congressional Record, and the Statutes at Large. The Government Printing Office is responsible for publishing them, and shares that responsibility to a certain extent with the Library of Congress and its subsidiary agencies, the Congressional Research Service and the Law Library of Congress. These agencies are custodians of America's heritage, and have an important obligation to make it available to every citizen. Here's how they've performed..."
"Federal criminal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have continued their downward slide despite the financial troubles reported in this sector. TRAC's analysis of timely Justice Department data show that during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago."
ABA Directory for Disability Rights: "This first of its kind directory helps lawyers find information regarding disability rights and disability law from state and local associations across the U.S."
Scholars’ Briefs and the Vocation of a Law Professor, by Richard H. Fallon, Jr.
Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance, 2011: "This updated edition of the Attorney General Guidelines for Victim and Witness Assistance reflects current statutory provisions, recognizes the technological and legal changes that have taken place since the previous Guidelines were promulgated, and incorporates best practices that will benefit victims and enhance investigations and prosecutions."
"Northwest Government Information Network Handouts: Fall 2011, updated November 3, 2011. Fall 2011 featured Linda Clark, Seattle Regional Office, U.S. Census Bureau as our main speaker. She came to provide us with some training on how to use the newly revamped American Factfinder 2. Below are the handouts she used for her presentation.
Atlantic Wire - Adam Clark Estes: "When a federal judge ruled that Twitter must reveal the private data of three WikiLeaks associates on Thursday, privacy advocates died a little inside. The two organizations that had defended the three users, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundations (EFF), immediately filed mournful blog posts that respectively raised doubts about the United States government's secretive handling of the case and highlighted grave message the ruling sends about the future of privacy on the internet. But Wall Street Journal reporter Jennifer Valentine-DeVries sums up the implications of the case best with a leading question: "Should the government be able to collect information related to your Internet use without a warrant?" We now know that the federal court's answer is, "Yes."
"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has publicly released the transcripts of President Richard Nixon's Watergate grand jury testimony. In collaboration with the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), the collection has been released on FDsys. This collection has been made public as a result of the July 29, 2011 order by Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Royce C. Lamberth that the June 1975 transcript of Nixon's testimony and the "Associated Materials" to that testimony be released to the public following the review of these documents for any information that must be redacted as required by law. It is rare for any grand jury testimony to be made public." These documents are available on three websites as follows:
"The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is pleased to share a new paper published in First Monday, Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,’ authored by Berkman community members danah boyd, Eszter Hargittai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey.
Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, see the following
'Thinking' in a Deweyan Perspective: The Law School Exam as a Case Study for Thinking in Lawyering, Donald J. Kochan, Chapman University School of Law, November 4, 2011, Nevada Law Journal, Forthcoming
Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, the 2011 Guidelines Manual (effective November 1, 2011) is available in HTML and Adobe PDF formats (large file and broken into chapters), which can be viewed, downloaded or printed via the website. Individual Chapters 1-8 and Guidelines in HTML or PDF Format
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "Despite the Social Security Administration's longstanding goal of reducing the number of pending disability cases, very recent SSA data show that these matters continue to head in the opposite direction, reaching 771,318 by the end of September. The increase -- up 9.3% from what it was a year ago -- marked the fifth straight quarter that the number of these cases has increased. These disturbing trends regarding SSA's faltering efforts, noted by TRAC in two previous reports, thus appear to be continuing. In testimony to Congress on July 11, Commissioner Michael J. Astrue reemphasized that "[e]liminating our hearings backlog and preventing its recurrence remains our number one priority." Since these new cases are only beginning to reach the decision stage, it is too early to determine their ultimate impact on decision times. But nationally, average processing times rose for the first time for cases disposed of during September. In addition, almost half (46 percent) of all hearing offices saw their average hearing times increase as compared with the previous month, and nearly one in four have had rising processing times for at least a year. More details on pending SSA disability cases and processing times nationally and for each region and hearing office can be found in the TRAC report and accompanying free user app are here."
Report of Investigation, United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of Inspector General. Case No. OIG-511. Allegations of Enforcement Staff Misconduct in Insider Trading Investigation, August 22, 2011 [Redacted]
Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Quarterly Report to Congress October 27, 2011
via LLRX.com - The Digital Death of Copyright's First Sale Doctrine: An important copyright case won't be argued in the Supreme Court, which on October 3, 2011 declined to review Vernor v. Autodesk, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision involving the applicability of copyright's first sale doctrine to transactions involving software and other digital information goods. Law professor Annmarie Bridy discusses the wide reaching impact of the first sale doctrine, without which there would be no free market for used books, CDs, or DVDs, because the copyright owner's right of distribution would reach beyond the first sale, all the way down the stream of commerce.
"In 2011, the New York Law School Law Review launched its Law Review Diversity research project examining gender and minority diversity among law review membership and leadership at ABA law schools nationwide. This research builds upon the 2010 survey conducted by Ms. JD, an organization dedicated to the success of women in law school and the legal profession. In its 2010-2011 Law Review Diversity Report NYLS found, based on self-reported data collected from law reviews in two samples, that law reviews at schools having a high percentage of female full-time faculty and at law schools having a high percentage of minority full-time faculty on average had significantly greater gender diversity among their 2010-2011 student membership and leadership, as well as a higher rate of female EICs, than law reviews at schools ranked in the Top 50 by U.S. News & World Report, which were surveyed by Ms. JD in 2010. Ms. JD reported in 2010 that the representation of women in editor-in-chief positions at law reviews at schools ranked in the Top 50 by U.S. News was “disproportionately low” as compared to those law reviews’ female membership. In each of the three measures used in Ms. JD’s 2010 survey (i.e., rates of female law review membership and leadership, and gender of the EIC), law reviews in the two NYLS samples significantly outperformed those in the Top 50 sample."
LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: DOJ FOIA Regulations - Scott A. Hodes addresses the proposed new Department of Justice ("DOJ") FOIA regulations which call for DOJ components to "respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist." This response should not differ in wording from any other response given by the component" when applying an exclusion to the FOIA. The purpose of this article is to clear up some of the confusion around FOIA exclusions and these proposed regulations. He is giving no opinion on whether or not the proposed regulations should be adopted.
Judicial Ethics and Social Networking Sites: "Michael Crowell
UNC School of Government, September 2011 (Revised)
Privacy and Security in the Implementation of Health Information Technology (Electronic Health Records): U.S. and EU Compared, B.U. J. SCI. & TECH. L., Vol. 17, Winter 2011.
Law Periodical Publishing Practices and Trends - Law librarian, criminal defense attorney and prolific author Ken Strutin brings into focus how electronic access to scholarly information is impacting library collection policies as well as professional publication formats, and as a result, how a new legal research environment is developing. Ken's article provides a selected collection of resources about the law review publishing process, emerging trends in the information cycle, and practical guides for developing an article and getting it to press.
News release: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) today for answers about "secret interpretations" of the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law ten years ago today. Several senators have warned that the DOJ is using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to support what government attorneys call a "sensitive collection program" that may be targeting large numbers of Americans. Section 215 allows for secret court orders to obtain "tangible things" when the FBI certifies they are relevant to a government investigation. The list of possible "tangible things" the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver's license records to Internet browsing patterns. Section 215 also limits the court's discretion to deny the order and prevents the recipient of an order from disclosing its existence."
Google Transparency Report - Government Requests: "Like other technology and communications companies, Google regularly receives requests from government agencies and courts around the world to remove content from our services and hand over user data. Our Government Requests tool discloses the number of requests we receive from each government in six-month reporting periods with certain limitations. Governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or pornography. Laws surrounding these issues vary by country, and the requests reflect the legal context of a given jurisdiction. We hope this tool will be helpful in discussions about the appropriate scope and authority of government requests. These observations on content removal requests highlight some trends that we've seen in the data during each reporting period, and are by no means exhaustive."
Jeff Lamicela/TRAC: "During the first ten months of FY 2011, federal prosecutions credited to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have fallen almost 7 percent from the previous fiscal year. This continues a downward slide that began six years ago, according to TRAC's analysis of timely Justice Department data. So far this fiscal year, the number of ATF-led investigations that resulted in prosecution have totaled 7,282. If the same pace continues for the remaining two months, criminal filings should reach 8,738. This is 18 percent fewer than the peak in FY 2005 of 10,715 ATF prosecutions during the Bush Administration.For the complete report go here. In addition to the ATF, TRAC continues to offer free reports on the enforcement activities of selected government agencies such as DHS, the FBI and the IRS. In addition, TRAC's reports cover program categories such as immigration, drugs, weapons, white collar crime, terrorism and civil rights. For the latest information on prosecutions and convictions through the first ten months of fiscal year 2011, go here.
News release: "Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission has accepted as final a settlement with Google, and authorized the staff to provide responses to the commenters of record. The settlement resolves charges that Google used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers when it launched its social network, Google Buzz, in 2010. The agency alleged that the practices violate the FTC Act. The settlement bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. The Commission vote approving the final settlement was 4-0.
The Puppet Masters -How the Corrupt Use Legal Structures to Hide Stolen Assets and What to Do About It. Emile van der Does de Willebois, Emily M. Halter, Robert A. Harrison, Ji Won Park. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank
The Costs of Reproduction: History and the Legal Construction of Sex Equality, Deborah Dinner, Washington University in Saint Louis - School of Law. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review (CR-CL), Vol. 46, 2011
Jeff Lamicela: "TRAC has launched a bundle of new report series, with accompanying data tools and regular updates, which allow the public to monitor Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the Immigration Courts, as spelled out in Director John Morton's June 17, 2011 memorandum. TRAC's new tools allow tracking by charge, nationality, and location (state, court or specific hearing location). The most recent data, current through July 2011, show that there has not as yet been any meaningful upturn in cases where the person charged has been allowed to remain in this country. Indeed, during the three most recent quarters, the proportion of individuals allowed to remain in the country is now below 30 per cent, down from levels in 2010. However, Immigration Courts varied widely in the proportion of cases in which deportation orders were granted -- from a low of 28.8 percent in the New York City Immigration Court, up to 98.8 percent in the Lumpkin, Georgia Immigration Court. Among nationalities, cases resulting in deportation orders ranged from highs of 86.8 percent for individuals from Mexico and 84.4 percent for those from Honduras, down to 13.1 for individuals from Eritrea and 20.7 percent for those from Ethiopia.
News release: "By exploiting loopholes in the law, the chemical industry for decades has systematically subverted Environmental Protection Agency efforts to protect public health, a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found. As a result, the industry has made enormous profits while delaying restrictions on unsafe chemicals, largely by ginning up scientific uncertainties, according to the NRDC study, released today. "These industry tactics have prolonged the exposure of millions of people to toxic chemicals such as TCE, formaldehyde and styrene, which can cause serious harm," said Jennifer Sass, senior scientist with NRDC's Health Program. Trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent used for metal degreasing; formaldehyde is a cancer-causing agent used to manufacture plywood, particle boards and glues; and styrene is a toxic substance found in plastics, latex paint, synthetic rubbers and polyesters....The NRDC report, The Delay Game: How the Chemical Industry Ducks Regulation of the Most Toxic Substances, is a case-study of how the chemical industry has stymied government action that would protect the public from exposure to TCE, formaldehyde and styrene. The study highlights the need to update the 35-year old Toxic Substances Control Act, so that the EPA can test, assess and regulate chemicals in a timely manner in order to protect public health. Because the law has never been updated, the public has been exposed to thousands of chemicals in consumer products that have never been tested for safety by EPA."
Peggy Twohig and Steve Antonakes: "...the CFPB released the CFPB Supervision and Examination Manual, the guide for our examiners to use in overseeing companies that provide consumer financial products and services. Federal government regulators usually have manuals for their examiners. Our manual provides our examiners with direction on how to determine if providers of consumer financial products and services are complying with consumer protection laws – and how to determine if the providers have adequate policies and procedures in place to comply with those laws. For example, it incorporates examination procedures long used by other federal regulators to check for compliance with laws like the Truth in Lending Act. The manual also helps ensure that we are applying the law consistently across everyone that we supervise."
"Protesters of all political persuasions are increasingly documenting their protests -- and encounters with the police -- using electronic devices like cameras and cell phones. The following tips apply to protesters in the United States who are concerned about protecting their electronic devices when questioned, detained, or arrested by police. These are general guidelines; individuals with specific concerns should talk to an attorney."
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, and the European Commission today issued an updated set of “best practices” that they use to coordinate their merger reviews. The agencies also celebrated the 20th anniversary of the United States-European Union bilateral antitrust agreement...The agencies reaffirmed their commitment to cooperation and coordination in order to benefit consumers and business."
Kuttner, Ran, Conflict-Specialists-As-Leaders: Revisiting the Role of the Conflict Specialist from a Leadership Perspective (September 9, 2011). Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2011.
United States Courts Opinions - BETA
News release: "The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday requested public comment on a proposed regulation implementing the so-called "Volcker Rule" requirements of section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Section 619 generally contains two prohibitions. First, it prohibits insured depository institutions, bank holding companies, and their subsidiaries or affiliates (banking entities) from engaging in short-term proprietary trading of any security, derivative, and certain other financial instruments for a banking entity's own account, subject to certain exemptions. Second, it prohibits owning, sponsoring, or having certain relationships with, a hedge fund or private equity fund, subject to certain exemptions. The act also prohibits banking entities from engaging in an exempted transaction or activity if it would involve or result in a material conflict of interest between the banking entity and its clients, customers, or counterparties, or that would result in a material exposure to high-risk assets or trading strategies, in each case as defined by the rule. The act similarly prohibits banking entities from engaging in an exempted transaction or activity if it would pose a threat to the safety and soundness of the banking entity or to the financial stability of the United States. The proposal, which was developed jointly with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, clarifies the scope of the act's prohibitions and, consistent with statutory authority, provides certain exemptions to these prohibitions. It is anticipated these agencies will issue a comparable proposal today or in the near future."
The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls, Bessen, James E., Meurer, Michael J. and Ford, Jennifer Laurissa, (September 19, 2011). Boston Univ. School of Law, Law and Economics Research Paper No. 11-45.
Treatment of Conflict Related Detainees in Afghan Custody - United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan [UNAMA], UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. October 2011 Kabul, Afghanistan
Citizen Media Law Project - A Citizen's Guide to Reporting on #OccupyWallStreet: "We at the Citizen Media Law Project have taken great interest in the ongoing "Occupy Wall Street" protest in New York. Much of what we know about the protest has come from independent reporters and citizen journalists covering the story from the ground. Knowing this, we are alarmed to hear reports of police arresting reporters during the protest. This, of course, could greatly discourage press coverage of this story. In order to encourage citizen reporting from the ground in New York, and to dispel the uncertainties as to the rights of those covering the protest, we have created this special question-and-answer guide regarding covering the protest in New York as a special addendum to our CMLP Legal Guide. For more general information, you can also refer to our guide's section on New York law. Note: This guide specifically addresses the law as it pertains to New York City and the protests currently occurring in Zuccotti Park. The information provided below will not apply with respect to the other #occupy protests throughout the country. While we tried our best to present the law as it generally applies in New York, specific facts and circumstances often alter outcomes in specific cases. Also, this post provides the law as it exists in October of 2011. We do not intend to update this post as the law changes, so if you find yourself returning to this at a later time please note that the law may have changed."
The Song of the Sirens: Google Book's Project and Copyright in a Digital Age, Clarice Castro and Ruy De Queiroz, September 1, 2011
Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability Publications, by Elizabeth Goitein and David M. Shapiro, October 5,2011
Governors Highway Safety Administration, Cell Phone Laws and Texting, October 2011 - "This chart outlines all state cell phone and text messaging laws. Some local jurisdictions may have additional regulations. Enforcement type is shown in parenthesis.
News release: "As part of the Federal Trade Commission’s systematic review of all of the agency’s rules and guides, the FTC is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Mail or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. The Rule, issued in 1975, requires that marketers who solicit buyers to order merchandise through mail or telephone must have a reasonable basis to expect that they can ship ordered merchandise within the time frame they advertise, or, if no time frame is specified, within 30 days. The Rule also requires that, when a seller cannot ship within the promised time, the seller must obtain the buyer’s consent to a delay in shipping or refund payment for the unshipped merchandise. In 2007, the FTC sought public comment on how the Rule could be amended to address changes in technology and commercial practices. Based on a review of comments received, the FTC has concluded that the Rule continues to benefit consumers and will be retained."
FHFA’s Oversight of Fannie Mae’s Default-Related Legal Services. Audit Report AUD-2011-004, Dated: September 30, 2011
News release: "In a massive coordinated information-seeking campaign, 35 ACLU affiliates are filing over 381 requests in 32 states across the country with local law enforcement agencies large and small that seek to uncover when, why and how they are using cell phone location data to track Americans. The requests seek information from local law enforcement agencies, including:
Roberts, Anna, (Re)Forming the Jury: Detection and Disinfection of Implicit Juror Bias (September 29, 2011). Connecticut Law Review, Vol. 44, 2012.
"The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Third Edition assists judges in managing cases involving complex scientific and technical evidence by describing the basic tenets of key scientific fields from which legal evidence is typically derived and by providing examples of cases in which that evidence has been used. First published in 1994 by the Federal Judicial Center, the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence has been relied upon in the legal and academic communities and is often cited by various courts and others. Judges faced with disputes over the admissibility of scientific and technical evidence refer to the manual to help them better understand and evaluate the relevance, reliability and usefulness of the evidence being proffered. The manual is not intended to tell judges what is good science and what is not. Instead, it serves to help judges identify issues on which experts are likely to differ and to guide the inquiry of the court in seeking an informed resolution of the conflict. The core of the manual consists of a series of chapters (reference guides) on various scientific topics, each authored by an expert in that field. The topics have been chosen by an oversight committee because of their complexity and frequency in litigation. Each chapter is intended to provide a general overview of the topic in lay terms, identifying issues that will be useful to judges and others in the legal profession. They are written for a non-technical audience and are not intended as exhaustive presentations of the topic. Rather, the chapters seek to provide judges with the basic information in an area of science, to allow them to have an informed conversation with the experts and attorneys."
News release: "Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, together with 19 Members of Congress, today sent a letter to the Judicial Conference, requesting that the Conference follow the law and refer the matter of Justice Clarence Thomas's non-compliance with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to the Department of Justice. Throughout his entire tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas has checked a box titled "none" on his annual financial disclosure forms, indicating that his wife had received no income, despite the fact that his wife had in fact earned nearly $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation from 2003-2007 alone."
News release: "The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation today issued its draft regulations for high-volume hydraulic fracturing which are based on the proposed requirements contained in the agency's revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement released earlier this month, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens announced today...The draft regulations create a legal framework for implementing the proposed mitigation measures in the revised dSGEIS. The public comment period on the draft regulations begins today and runs concurrently with the public comment period on the dSGEIS, which ends Dec. 12. DEC also released the proposed State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) General Permit (GP) for Stormwater Discharges associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing."
News release: An operator who allegedly sent millions of illegal spam text messages to consumers is banned from sending any unsolicited text messages, under a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission entered by a federal court. According to the FTC complaint filed in February 2011, the marketer sent a “mind-boggling” number of unsolicited commercial text messages pitching mortgage modification services to consumers, and misrepresented that he was affiliated with a government agency. The FTC alleged that many consumers had to pay fees to their mobile carriers to receive the unsolicited text messages. The FTC also alleged that the marketer advertised his text message blasting services by sending consumers illegal spam. The agency charged him with violating the FTC Act and the CAN-SPAM Act."
News release: "What do you think about when choosing a cell phone provider? Their prices? Their coverage area? Whether they have spiffy, high-tech phones? Whether their phones work overseas or in the subway? What about how long they retain information about you and under what circumstances they turn it over to law enforcement? All of the nation's major mobile carriers are retaining their customers' location data for at least a year, according to a chart the Department of Justice (DOJ) developed in 2010 — and that the ACLU of North Carolina received in response to our public records request about local law enforcement's use of cell phone location information. And location info's not all they hang onto. We gave a copy of this document to Wired.com, which has written about it here."
News release: "Last week, the FCC published its final Open Internet rules in the Federal Register, which means they will formally go into effect later this fall. The publication caps off a two-year process at the Commission to get the rules in place. While the rules won’t change much in terms of day-to-day use of the Internet, it is good news for consumers and innovators that they will at long last be enforceable. The rules essentially preserve the status quo online. They prevent cable, DSL, and fiber carriers from favoring or disfavoring certain sites or applications over others and prevent mobile carriers from blocking websites or competing voice and video applications – leaving consumers to decide which services they might prefer. The only significant change will be that now, if carriers engage in discriminatory routing or network management practices, those whose traffic is affected will have a place to go to demand recourse. The rules themselves reflect a light-touch and flexible approach to preserving the competitive environment that currently exists on the Internet. The rules do not, as some critics declare, amount to “regulating the Internet,” and there is ample evidence that in the absence of rules carriers might discriminate (as a few have done already) against some lawful traffic."
The FLARE Index to Treaties Extended - The FLARE Index to Treaties (FIT), launched in March 2009 on the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies web server has been extended to cover about a third more treaties and conventions. In the past two years the Index has established itself as a valuable finding tool for the international lawyer. It is a fully searchable database now indexing and listing over 2,000 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1353 onwards and a number of significant bilateral treaties signed between 1353 and 1815. This article, by Steven Whittle and Peter Clinch describes the background to the extension and technical aspects of the updated implementation employed to deliver new content and finding features.
Women, Business and the Law 2102 - Removing barriers to economic inclusion.
CRS - Criminal Prohibitions on the Publication of Classified Defense Information, Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney. September 8, 2011
News release: "The American Bar Association Commission on Ethics 20/20, in its release of initial proposals for comment, is recommending amendments to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and other association policies to take into account the proliferation of new technologies, including cross-border practice issues, lawyer mobility and differences in lawyer rules across jurisdictions."
Evaluating the Use of Public Surveillance Cameras for Crime Control and Prevention - A Summary. Nancy G. La Vigne, Samantha S. Lowry, Joshua Markman, Allison Dwyer. September 19, 2011
News release: "Symantec Corp. announced the findings of its 2011 Information Retention and eDiscovery Survey which examined how enterprises manage their ever-growing volumes of electronically stored information and prepare for the eventuality of an eDiscovery request. The survey of legal and IT personnel at 2,000 enterprises worldwide found email is not the primary source of records companies must produce, and more importantly, respondents who employ best practices for records and information management are significantly less at risk of court sanctions or fines."
The One Hundred Billion Dollar Problem in Small Claims Court: Robo-Signing and Lack of Proof in Debt Buyer Cases, Peter A. Holland, University of Maryland School of Law
House Committee on the Judiciary: Background on H.R. 1249, the America Invents Act: "On June 23 the House overwhelmingly approved HR 1249, the America Invents Act, by a vote of 304-117. H.R. 1249 updates our patent system to encourage innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The last major patent reform was nearly 60 years ago. Since then, U.S. innovators have developed cell phones and launched the Internet. And yet the laws protecting the technologies of today are stuck in the past. The current system is bogged down by frivolous lawsuits and uncertainty regarding patent ownership. America’s innovators spend years and millions of dollars defending their claims to patent ownership. Meanwhile, our competitors are busy developing new products that expand their businesses and grow their economies. This year, for the first time, China is expected to become the world’s number one patent publisher, surpassing the U.S. and Japan in the total and basic number of patents. Our outdated patent system has become a barrier to innovation. We cannot expect America’s innovators and job creators to keep pace with the global marketplace with the patent system of the past. We need a system that ensures patent certainty, approves good patents quickly and weeds out bad patents effectively."
Via Baker & McKenzie’s North American Compensation and Employment Law
Practice Group - 2011 edition of the U.S. Employment Law for Global Employers. "Companies operating in the United States today face an increasingly complex and ever-evolving maze of federal, state, and local labor and employment laws. This can be particularly daunting for companies new to the United States who are trying to familiarize themselves with these laws. As such, the goal of this guide is to provide an overview of U.S. labor and employment laws to global employers operating in the United States."
News release: "The official end today of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law reflects the American values that military members uphold, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said today [in a briefing]. “Thanks to this change, I believe we move closer to achieving the goal at the foundation of the values that America's all about -- equality, equal opportunity and dignity for all Americans,” he told reporters during a Pentagon news briefing. Panetta reaffirmed his dedication to all who are serving and ensuring everyone who wishes to serve has the opportunity to do so regardless of sexual preference. “As secretary of defense, I am committed to removing all of the barriers that would prevent Americans from serving their country and from rising to the highest level of responsibility that their talents and capabilities warrant,” he said. “These are men and women who put their lives on the line in the defense of this country, and that's what should matter the most.” Panetta credited several groups for helping prepare the Defense Department for the implementation of the repeal. “I want to thank the repeal implementation team and the service secretaries, along with the service chiefs, for all of their efforts to ensure that DOD is ready to make this change, consistent with standards of military readiness, with military effectiveness, with unit cohesion, and with the recruiting and retention of the armed forces,” he said."
CRS - Illegal Internet Streaming of Copyrighted Content: Legislation in the 112th Congress, Brian T. Yeh, Legislative Attorney, August 29, 2011
Future of the First Amendment 2011 Survey of High School Students and Teachers, Commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation - September 2011
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, which gives parents control over what personal information websites may collect from children under 13. The FTC proposes these amendments to ensure that the Rule continues to protect children’s privacy, as mandated by Congress, as online technologies evolve. The Commission proposes modifications to the Rule in five areas: definitions, including the definitions of “personal information” and “collection,” parental notice, parental consent mechanisms, confidentiality and security of children’s personal information, and the role of self-regulatory “safe harbor” programs."
Press release: "On September 12, 2011 the Authors' Guild and a number of other entities filed suit against HathiTrust and a number of its university partners. The issues in the suit are the orphan works project as well as the digitization effort that we have been engaged in for almost two decades. Digitization is a reflection of library prudence, rather than the reckless activity as characterized by the Authors' Guild complaint and accompanying statement. From its inception, the primary motive driving our digitization effort has been, and remains, preservation. Preserving the scholarly and cultural record is at the core of the Library's mission. Digitization offers a means of preserving the intellectual content of books whose lives as objects are subject to the vagaries of storage conditions and their own composition; for example, the vast majority of the volumes in our collection are printed on acid paper. Many of these volumes are protected by copyright, but if we wait until they enter the public domain they will be too brittle to circulate or digitize, and of no use to anyone. The Orphan Works Project is an example of library prudence in other ways. Digitized collections offer other obvious benefits. They can be more readily shared with our community, who increasingly expect their research materials to be available in digital form, and they can also provide a trove of data, both humanistic and scientific, that will help scholars and researchers discover and create new knowledge. And in many cases, they can also be made available to anyone in the world with a connection to the Internet. The way in which the HathiTrust partners share this particular collection is guided by a deep and abiding respect for intellectual property and US copyright law, particularly Sections 107 and 108, which help define how libraries may lawfully share their collections. While the law does not specifically address orphan works, we are certain that our scholarly purpose, along with our careful methodology in determining whether these works have a market or an extant copyright holder who can be contacted, make this sharing legal. Sharing, by the way, which is limited to online reading by our faculty and students in the United States, and one-page-at-a-time downloads; not, as the Guild complaint states, worldwide availability and full PDF downloads."
Life in Limbo - An Examination of Parole Release for Prisoners Serving Life Sentences with the Possibility of Parole in California, Robert Weisberg, Debbie A. Mukamal and Jordan D. Segall. September 2011. Stanford Criminal Justice Center
News release: "The Conference also authorized an increase in the Judiciary's electronic public access fee in response to increasing costs for maintaining and enhancing the electronic public access system. The increase in the electronic public access (EPA) fee, from $.08 to $.10 per page, is needed to continue to support and improve the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, and to develop and implement the next generation of the Judiciary's Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system. The EPA fee has not been increased since 2005. As mandated by Congress, the EPA program is funded entirely through user fees set by the Conference. Implementation of the two-cent per page increase will take a minimum of six months."
"The Tracking Protection Working Group is chartered to improve user privacy and user control by defining mechanisms for expressing user preferences around Web tracking and for blocking or allowing Web tracking elements. The group seeks to standardize the technology and meaning of Do Not Track, and of Tracking Selection Lists." See in Input Documents as follows
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse - Rising Immigration Backlog At All-time High Yet Criminal, National Security, and Terrorism Cases Fall
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission issued a final report, Authorized Generic Drugs: Short-Term Effects and Long-Term Impact, that concludes when pharmaceutical companies introduce an authorized generic version of their brand-name drug, it can reduce both retail and wholesale drug prices. The report also found that authorized generics have a substantial effect on the revenues of competing generic firms. Over the longer term, by lowering expected profits for generic competitors, the introduction of an authorized generic could affect a generic drug company’s decision to challenge patents on branded drug products with low sales. However, the report concludes that in spite of this, patent challenges by generic competitors remain robust. Finally, the report finds that some brand companies may have used agreements not to launch an authorized generic as a way to compensate would-be generic competitors for delaying entry into the market. The FTC has for years opposed pay-for-delay patent litigation settlements, in which a brand-name drug manufacturer compensates its generic competitor to delay entering the market and offering consumers a lower-cost alternative. With this report, the agency has found that promises by a branded firm not to market competing authorized generics are frequently present in pharmaceutical patent settlements."
Blog of the Legal Times: "Responding to a lawsuit filed by five of the nation's largest cigarette manufacturers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration filed Friday to block any delay to new regulations requiring graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. The tobacco companies are suing the agency in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming that the new labels cross the line from factual warnings to unconstitutionally compelled speech. The companies want a preliminary injunction postponing the date the new rules go into effect. In its opposition brief, the FDA is pushing back against the companies’ claim that they would suffer “economic harm” by spending several million dollars to produce the new labels in the meantime. The new regulations are set to go into effect in September 2012."
News release: "LexisNexis® Risk Solutions today unveiled the HPCC Systems Alliance Program, which is a collaboration of partners to stimulate innovation and accelerate market adoption of the newly open sourced HPCC Systems, an enterprise-proven, open source solution to help large organizations process “Big Data”. Built on a high performing computer cluster technology, HPCC Systems is an alternative to Hadoop. Interest in processing and managing Big Data is growing rapidly among enterprise and service provider customers. LexisNexis collaboration with innovative leaders will help customers navigate options for addressing large data sets, reduce overall infrastructure costs, and improve business agility and data insight. Products and solutions from these partners will help deliver fully integrated, turnkey solutions."
The Library of Congress - THOMAS: "This site was begun in September 2001 as a way of keeping the public readily apprised of legislation related to the terrorist attack on the United States that month. The selection, made by hand, is necessarily subjective, as the September 11th attack had a ripple effect on legislation in the second session of the 107th Congress, making boundaries difficult to draw. The site will not be updated after the conclusion of the 107th. Not included here are appropriations and authorization bills, which may include provisions relevant to our response to terrorism, but included are some bills related to bio-terrorism and not September 11th."
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Immigration Enforcement Since 9/11: A Reality Check - "An examination of millions of case-by-case records show that the overall number of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deportation proceedings in the Immigration Courts in the decade after 9/11 were up by almost one half (45%) -- from 1.6 million in the ten years before the attack to 2.3 million in the ten years since. But the data also show that DHS requests for removal orders on terrorism and national security charges -- always a very small part of the total -- have declined from what they were before the attacks. Likewise, in the decade after 9/11 the number of deportation proceedings on those charged with criminal activity has also fallen."
worldAtWork: Tracking Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Updated September 8, 2011: "On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Act calls for sweeping reforms, not just for the financial services industry, but for all publicly-traded companies. With many of the provisions in this bill subject to forthcoming regulations and guidance, this page is dedicated to bringing you the most up-to-date information about regulations and guidance that have been issued that will affect the implementation of this bill."
News release: "Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today announced its findings that the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) has engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct that violates the Constitution and federal law. The investigation, launched in July 2008, was conducted in accordance with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that a pattern and practice of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including: Use of excessive force; Use of unreasonable force and other misconduct designed to suppress the exercise of protected First Unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests."
"The Circuit Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Department of Justice must release information regarding government surveillance of cell phone location data. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information regarding current and past cases where the Department of Justice had accessed cell phone location data without a warrant. The agency sought to keep this information secret, claiming that releasing cell phone tracking data could implicate privacy of investigation subjects. The court, however, disagreed, stating, "The disclosure sought by the plaintiffs would inform this ongoing public policy discussion by shedding light on the scope and effectiveness of cell phone tracking as a law enforcement tool." For more information, see EPIC: Wiretapping and EPIC: Electronic Surveillance 1968-2010."
Obama Administration Fulfills Some Open Gov Goals, National Security Bureaucracy Hinders Progress - "The Obama Administration has made some positive changes towards an open government this year, but the national security bureaucracy continues to hinder progress, according to a report released today. The 2011 Secrecy Report was released by OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of more than 80 groups (including POGO) advocating for a more open and accountable government. According to the report, some of the Obama Administration’s promises of transparency are paying off—but certain national security agencies are ignoring the open government agenda. Some of the good news highlighted in the report centers on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The Administration has been “rebuilding openness” and FOIA performance has improved from previous years. Compared to 2009, FOIA backlogs in 2010 were reduced by 10 percent.Other moves the Obama Administration has made towards transparency include releasing newly declassified details about the U.S. nuclear stockpile, updating sites like FederalReporting.gov and USAspending.gov, and refusing to assert Executive Privilege to deny congressional requests for information (Obama is the first president in OpenTheGovernment.org’s records not to do so.)...The report points to an Associated Press study that found that the Central Intelligence Agency and Securities and Exchange Commission rejected information requests more than half the time during 2010."
News release: "The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), as conservator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises), today filed lawsuits against 17 financial institutions, certain of their officers and various unaffiliated lead underwriters. The suits allege violations of federal securities laws and common law in the sale of residential private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) to the Enterprises. These complaints were filed in federal or state court in New York or the federal court in Connecticut. The complaints seek damages and civil penalties under the Securities Act of 1933, similar in content to the complaint FHFA filed against UBS Americas, Inc. on July 27, 2011. In addition, each complaint seeks compensatory damages for negligent misrepresentation. Certain complaints also allege state securities law violations or common law fraud."
International Journal of Central Banking - Volume 7, Number 3 September 2011
Shadowy Figures: Tracking Illicit Financial Transactions in the Murky World of Digital Currencies, Peer-to-Peer Networks, and Mobile Device Payments - John Villasenor, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Governance Studies, Center for Technology Innovation Cody Monk, Instructor/Lecturer, National Intelligence University and the Naval Postgraduate School
"Creating a judicial pool for the 21st Century, one with intellect, fair-mindedness and integrity that resembles the nation that it serves, is a top priority for President Obama and his administration. In fact, the President’s nominations for federal judges embody an unprecedented commitment to expanding the racial, gender and experiential diversity of the men and women who enforce our laws and deliver justice...To better understand how the Senate delays are impacting American families and businesses, take a look at our infographic that explains the confirmation process and highlights the bottleneck."
The Impact of Economics Blogs, David McKenzie and Berk Özler, August 2011
The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information (July 8, 2011). New York University Law Review, Vol. 86, 2011. Paul M. Schwartz and Daniel J. Solove.
"A Federal judge has ruled that law enforcement officers must have a warrant to access cell phone locational data. Courts are divided regarding whether or not this type of data should be protected by a warrant requirement. Judge Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York, found that "The fiction that the vast majority of the American population consents to warrantless government access to the records of a significant share of their movements by 'choosing' to carry a cell phone must be rejected…In light of drastic developments in technology, the Fourth Amendment doctrine must evolve to preserve cell-phone user's reasonable expectation of privacy in cumulative cell-site-location records." EPIC has filed amicus briefs in several related cases. For more information see: EPIC: Commonwealth v. Connolly, EPIC: US v. Jones, and EPIC: Locational Privacy."
Federal Agency Use of Electronic Media in the Rulemaking Process, by Cary Coglianese - University of Pennsylvania [via Michael Ravnitzky]
"According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, bankruptcy petitions filed in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2011 totaled 1,529,560, down 2.7 percent from the 1,572,597 bankruptcy petitions filed in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2010. Despite the slight drop in overall filings nationwide, the number of bankruptcy filings increased in 19 of the 94 districts. The largest percentage increases in bankruptcy filings were in the Southern District of Florida, with a 15 percent increase over 2010, and the Districts of Utah and the Central District of California, where filings for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2011 increased 13 percent over 2010. Additional statistics released include business and non-business filings for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2011; a comparison of June 2010 and 2011 filings, 3rd quarter filings; monthly filings for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2011; and filings per capita."
CRS — Brazil-U.S. Relations, Peter J. Meyer, Analyst in Latin American Affairs, July 29, 2011
"The number of disability cases awaiting a hearing and decision by the Social Security Administration (SSA) continued to climb during the most recent quarter, from April 1 to June 30, 2011. Pending cases rose to 746,712 at the end of this period, up 7.5 percent from 694,417 one year ago. According to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, this is the fourth straight quarter when cases awaiting a hearing before the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review of the SSA have increased despite the agency's long standing objective to reduce the overall number of pending cases.
Mark Rockwell: "Union Pacific railroad, the largest rail carrier in the U.S. has agreed to spend $50 million to improve the security of its supply chain between the U.S. and Mexico, and establish a joint security fusion center with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The CBP agreement with Omaha, NE-based Union Pacific railroad requires the expenditures to soften $500 million in U.S. Government penalties against it for drugs discovered on its rail cars, said the agency and the railroad on Aug. 19. Union Pacific is the largest the largest transporter of goods by rail to and from the U.S. – Mexico border. The government had filed lawsuits in 2009 against the rail carrier for allegedly failing to prevent the use of its rail cars by smugglers to bring marijuana and cocaine into U.S. In complaints filed in San Diego and Houston, CBP sought more than $37 million in penalties from the company. The government alleged the rail cars were brought across the border at the ports of entry at Calexico, CA, and Brownsville, TX, carrying the illicit cargo."
News release: "The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver today launches a unique, national initiative to change the way law schools educate students. Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers provides a platform to encourage law schools in the U.S. to showcase innovative teaching to produce more practice-ready lawyers who can better meet the needs of an evolving profession."
Update, November 30, 2011: Seeking Synchronicity Webinar Recording Now Available
OCLC - "A new membership report from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Seeking Synchronicity distills more than five years of virtual reference (VR) research into a readable summary that features memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multi-phase research project that included focus group interviews, surveys, transcript analysis, and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users, and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the "R" in "VR" needs to emphasize virtual "Relationships" as well as "Reference". Among the topics addressed are:
"The government apps and mobile sites allow you to access official information on various topics from the palm of your hand. Learn more about apps."
"The United States Code is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is prepared by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives." [Richard McKinney]
A Good Quarrel. America's Top Legal Reporters Share Stories from Inside the Supreme Court — Timothy R. Johnson and Jerry Goldman (eds.) - Reviewed by Molly Selvin. Association of American Law Schools Journal of Legal Education, Volume 60, May 2011, Number 4
"There is now a website listing the 40 members of the Free Access to Law Movement, with links to their websites and links to the Declaration on Free Access to Law in 17 languages or scripts." [Graham Greenleaf AM, Professor of Law & Information Systems, University of New South Wales (UNSW)]
New York Environmental Legal Research Guide [Taryn L. Rucinski]: "A legal resource guide for information relating to New York State and New York City environmental law including primary and secondary source materials, quick links, and database resources."
"In the first half of 2011, state legislators introduced 1,592 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The number of bill introductions is an increase of 16 percent compared to the first half of 2010, when 46 states considered 1,374 bills and resolutions pertaining to immigrants. As of June 30, 2011, 40 state legislatures enacted 151 laws and adopted 95 resolutions for a total of 246. 44 state legislatures passed 191 laws and adopted 128 resolutions, for a total of 314. An additional five bills were vetoed. The 2011 total of laws and resolutions is a decrease of 22 percent. Twelve additional bills passed but were vetoed by governors. As of June 30, an additional 10 bills were pending governors’ approval – these bills are not included in this report of enacted laws. For the same period in 2010, As in previous years, law enforcement, identification/driver’s licenses and employment remained the top issues addressed in state legislation related to immigrants. Several states – Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota and Utah – enacted sex offender registries that include a requirement of proof of citizenship or immigration documents. Montana required that the DMV use the SAVE program to verify a driver's license or an ID applicant's lawful presence. E-Verify legislation was enacted in 9 states: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia. Florida added an E-Verify requirement by executive order. Eighteen states now have an E-Verify requirement."
"The United States Code is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is prepared by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives."
Principles of Effective State Sentencing and Corrections Policy - A Report of the NCSL Sentencing and Corrections Work Group, August 2011
News release: "Today, President Obama [met] with industry officials to discuss the first-of-their-kind fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas pollution standards for work trucks, buses, and other heavy duty vehicles and to thank them for their leadership in finalizing a successful national program for these vehicles. This meeting marked the administration’s announcement of the standards, which will save American businesses that operate and own these commercial vehicles approximately $50 billion in fuel costs over the life of the program. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed the standards in close coordination with the companies that met with the president today as well as other stakeholders, following requests from companies to develop this program. The cost savings for American businesses are on top of the $1.7 trillion that American families will save at the pump from the historic fuel-efficiency standards announced by the Obama Administration for cars and light duty trucks, including the model year 2017-2025 agreement announced by the president last month...Under the comprehensive new national program, trucks and buses built in 2014 through 2018 will reduce oil consumption by a projected 530 million barrels and greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution by approximately 270 million metric tons. Like the administration’s historic car standards, this program – which relies heavily on off-the-shelf technologies – was developed in coordination with truck and engine manufacturers, fleet owners, the State of California, environmental groups and other stakeholders."
"This week, President Obama directed a comprehensive review to strengthen the United States’ ability to prevent mass atrocities. The President’s directive states plainly that: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.” The directive creates an important new tool in this effort, establishing a standing interagency Atrocities Prevention Board with the authority to develop prevention strategies and to ensure that concerns are elevated for senior decision-making so that we are better able to work with our allies and partners to be responsive to early warning signs and prevent potential atrocities. The directive recognizes that preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that all nations share and that other countries must also be enlisted to respond to particular crises. Therefore, the directive calls for a strategy [see the Fact Sheet] for engaging key regional allies and partners so that they are prepared to accept greater responsibility for preventing and responding to crimes against humanity."
Sunlight Foundation: "The House Ethics Committee is responsible for investigating and making recommendations on the enforcement of House ethics rules. In an nod towards transparency, its reports and statements are published online -- but they are virtually unusable. The Committee publishes documents in an unsearchable PDF format, spreads them out over of 24 pages, and gives them impenetrable titles like "Statement of the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member." Search engines (like Google) cannot see the documents, and only the most patient will click on each link to see what's inside. We've taken all 120+ documents, made them searchable, and published them online in a database. Now every document from December 1998 until July 2011 can be searched -- at once. It's easy to find the 20 documents that refer to Rep. Rangel, or the 15 documents that refer to (former) Rep. DeLay, or anything else that you're looking for. The web tool DocumentCloud has made this all possible."
News release: "Pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive on the 50th anniversary of the infamous CIA-led invasion of Cuba, the CIA has released four volumes of its Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation. The Archive today posted volume 2, "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy" (Part 1 | Part 2), classified top secret, which contains detailed information on the CIA's negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama on support for the invasion. "These are among the last remaining secret records of this act of U.S. aggression against Cuba," noted Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the Archive. "The CIA has finally seen the wisdom of letting the public scrutinize this major debacle in the covert history of U.S. foreign policy." Kornbluh noted that the agency was "still refusing to release volume 5 of its official history." Volume 5 is a rebuttal to the stinging CIA Inspector General's report, done in the immediate aftermath of the paramilitary assault, which held CIA officials accountable for a wide variety of mistakes, miscalculations and deceptions that characterized the failed invasion. The National Security Archive obtained the declassification of the ultra-secret Inspector General's report in 1998."
Follow up to House Bill - No Money for GPO's Federal Digital System, Sharply Cuts Other Information Resources - Government Information in Peril, by Bernadine Abbott Hoduski: "The House-passed bill cuts funding for the Superintendent of Documents program from nearly $40 million to less than $34 million, making it very difficult for GPO to support the Federal Depository Library Program; the acquisition, cataloging, and dissemination of government documents; the LC International Exchange Program; and mandated distribution of publications to the three branches of government. Congress is about to break its promise that if libraries and the public give up paper, they will still have permanent no-fee access to electronic government information. The House proposes that GPO fund FDsys by renting GPO’s unused space in its big red brick building to federal agencies. There is no guarantee that even if GPO is able to find renters by October 1 that it will collect enough money to keep FDsys in operation and allow the inclusion of new publications. Members of Congress may think they can turn to LC’s THOMAS database for legislative information, but they probably do not realize that much of THOMAS’s content is provided by GPO."
Via Jeff Lamicela: "During the first six months of FY 2011, decision times continued to climb in cases disposed of by the Immigration Courts, according to timely government enforcement data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The increasingly long average wait reached 302 days -- up 7.5 percent in the last six months, and almost 30 percent higher than the average disposition time during FY 2009. Average times varied, depending upon the nature of the court's decision, from 141 days for removal orders up to 714 days for grants of relief."
ACLU news release: "Today, we’re releasing a report, Drastic Measures Required: Congress needs to Overhaul U.S. Secrecy Laws and Increase Oversight of the Secret Security Establishment...we lay out the scope of the problem and analyze its unfortunate consequences for the operation of our government, for our national security, and for our democracy at large. The report asserts that Congress must overhaul U.S secrecy laws and increase its oversight of the secret security establishment in order to rein in the out-of-control secrecy that is poisoning our democracy. We present a number of detailed recommendations for how, exactly, Congress should act to reform the “state secrets privilege,” strengthen Congressional oversight of national security programs, and regulate the use of classification by the executive branch."
Library Journal: "On July 22, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2551, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2012 by a vote of 252 - 159. Unless the Senate acts, the bill would reduce GPO's budget for FY12 by 20 percent to $108.1 million. Within the GPO budget is the appropriation for the Office of Superintendent of Documents' Salaries and Expenses, which funds the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). This appropriation would be reduced 16 percent, to $33.5 million, eliminating funding for the Federal Digital System (FDsys)."
Eric H. Holder, Jr. the Attorney General of the United States:
"Why would a company rent an office in a tiny town in East Texas, put a nameplate on the door, and leave it completely empty for a year? The answer involves a controversial billionaire physicist in Seattle, a 40 pound cookbook, and a war waging right now, all across the software and tech industries." This American Life, Episode 441 - "When Patents Attack!" July 22, 2011, Produced by Chicago Public Media. Distributed by Public Radio International. This episode was produced in collaboration with NPR’s Planet Money. © 2011 Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass.
News release: "A ground-breaking membership report from OCLC Research suggests that by transforming virtual reference (VR) service encounters into relationship-building opportunities, librarians can better leverage the positive feelings people have for libraries. This is critically important in a crowded online space where the biggest players often don’t have the unique experience and specific strengths offered by librarians. The report — Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference — demonstrates that today’s students, scholars and citizens are not just looking to libraries for answers to specific questions—they want partners and guides in a lifelong information-seeking journey. Seeking Synchronicity: Revelations and Recommendations for Virtual Reference, from OCLC Research, in partnership with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and additionally funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), distills more than five years of VR research into a readable summary featuring memorable quotes that vividly illustrate very specific and actionable suggestions. Taken from a multiphase research project that included focus group interviews, online surveys, transcript analysis and phone interviews, with VR librarians, users and non-users, these findings are meant to help practitioners develop and sustain VR services and systems. The report asserts that the “R” in “VR” needs to emphasize virtual “Relationships” as well as “Reference.”
Study on the Resolution of Financial Companies under the Bankruptcy Code, July 2011
News release: "The Federal Reserve Board is seeking comment on a notice that outlines the regulations previously issued by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) that the Federal Reserve will continue to enforce after assuming supervisory responsibility for savings and loan holding companies (SLHCs). Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, supervisory and rule-writing authority for SLHCs and their non-depository subsidiaries will transfer from the OTS to the Board on July 21, 2011. The Board requests comments on the notice by August 31, 2011. The Board intends to issue an interim final rule soon that will include technical, nomenclature, and other changes to certain OTS regulations to accommodate the transfer of supervisory authority to the Board and to address modifications made by the Dodd-Frank Act."
Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act Drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform Law - approved and recommended for enactment, July 18, 2011
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is mailing 450,177 refund checks worth almost $108 million to homeowners who were allegedly overcharged by Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. As part of the FTC’s efforts to protect financially distressed homeowners, the FTC reached a settlement with Countrywide last year over allegations that the company collected excessive fees from borrowers who were struggling to keep their homes...The FTC’s June 2010 settlement order required Countrywide, which is now owned by Bank of America, to pay $108 million to be used for refunds and barred the company from taking advantage of borrowers who have fallen behind on their payments. The refunds are being distributed to consumers whose loans were serviced by Countrywide between January 1, 2005, and July 1, 2008, and who were subject to the company’s allegedly unlawful practices."
"A total of 15,173 Federal criminal prosecutions were recorded as being filed during April 2011, according to the most recent data released by the Department of Justice. Immigration charges again took the top two spots for the most frequent lead charges brought. Illegal entry -- with 4,782 defendants charged, up sharply in April -- was the charge most commonly recorded, followed by illegal reentry with 3,047 prosecutions. The judicial district with the most federal prosecutions in April was Arizona with 3,216, down slightly from 3,428 prosecutions in that state recorded during March. In addition to immigration, TRAC offers free reports on convictions and prosecutions for program categories such as white collar crime, terrorism, weapons and drugs. TRAC also reports on the enforcement activities of selected government agencies such as DHS, FBI, IRS and ATF."
Commentary: "Britain is now enmeshed in a gigantic scandal around privacy invasions by the press and police. It began with revelations about reporters for Rupert Murdoch's British tabloid newspaper News of the World hacking into the voicemail of a murdered young girl, and has expanded as other privacy invasions have come to light."
"The Federal Trade Commission today issued a statement announcing that it will forbear from enforcing most provisions of its Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (MARS) Rule against real estate brokers and their agents who assist financially distressed consumers in obtaining short sales from their lenders or servicers. As a result of the stay on enforcement, these real estate professionals will not have to make several disclosures required by the Rule that, in the context of assisting with short sales, could be misleading or confuse consumers. As more and more American homeowners seek short sales, it is especially important that the Rule not inadvertently discourage real estate professionals from helping consumers with these types of transactions. The MARS Rule was issued pursuant to authority granted by Congress in 2009. The issuance of the Rule followed numerous FTC and state enforcement actions against companies that claimed to be able to obtain from consumers’ mortgage lenders or servicers a loan modification or other relief to avoid foreclosure. The Rule covers companies or individuals, among others, who assist consumers in obtaining approval of a short sale from their lender or servicer."
"The Social Security Administration's (SSA) critical response to a July 4 report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) ignored the body of evidence presented by TRAC about systematic and hard-to-explain disparities within the SSA's court system. A point-by-point refutation of the agency's sweeping statement regarding TRAC's report can be found here. Read TRAC's original report, here. Embedded in the report is a special interactive table giving the public access to extensive counts and rates that further document the degree of the disparities among individual judges in a Social Security hearing office as well as disparity measures for each office as a whole."
"The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act established the federal premerger notification program, which provides the FTC and the Department of Justice with information about large mergers and acquisitions before they occur. The parties to certain proposed transactions must submit premerger notification to the FTC and DOJ. Premerger notification involves completing an HSR Form, also called a “Notification and Report Form for Certain Mergers and Acquisitions,” with information about each company’s business. The parties may not close their deal until the waiting period outlined in the HSR Act has passed, or the government has granted early termination of the waiting period. For more information about the program, read our Introductory Guides. The FTC administers the premerger notification program, and the staff of the Premerger Notification Office is available to answer questions about how and when to file."
Follow up to previous postings on whole body scanning at airports, via EPIC: The European Parliament has adopted a resolution that sets out strict safeguards for airport body scanners. The resolution requires that Member States only "deploy technology which is the least harmful for human health" and establish substantial privacy protection. The resolution prohibits the use of body scanners that use ionizing radiation. New guidelines also state that airport body scanners "must not have the capabilities to store or save data." EPIC currently is pursuing a lawsuit to suspend the use of body scanners in the United States, citing several federal laws and the US Constitution. EPIC has called the US airport body scanner program "invasive, ineffective, and unlawful." For more information, see EPIC: EPIC v. DHS (Suspension of Body Scanner Program) and EPIC: Whole Body Imaging Technology."
"The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal court in Colorado today to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing in an amicus brief that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. A defendant in this case, Ramona Fricosu, is accused of fraudulent real estate transactions. During the investigation, the government seized an encrypted laptop from the home she shares with her family, and then asked the court to compel Fricosu to type the password into the computer or turn over a decrypted version of her data. But EFF told the court today that the demand is contrary to the Constitution, forcing Fricosu to become a witness against herself. "Decrypting the data on the laptop can be, in and of itself, a testimonial act -- revealing control over a computer and the files on it," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "Ordering the defendant to enter an encryption password puts her in the situation the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent: having to choose between incriminating herself, lying under oath, or risking contempt of court."
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today told Congress it is taking steps to enhance the agency’s longstanding program to review rules and guides, which will promote greater efficiency, transparency, and public participation. The FTC announced several initiatives to ensure its regulations are up-to-date, effective, and not overly burdensome, including: updating its schedule of rule and guide reviews for the next decade; seeking public comments to improve its regulatory review process; launching a new regulatory review web page; and streamlining the form and information that companies must submit when seeking antitrust clearance for proposed mergers or acquisitions."
"The Prime Minister has today committed to publishing key data on the National Health Service, schools, criminal courts and transport. This represents the most ambitious open data agenda of any government anywhere in the world. The new data [see data.go.uk] will reveal clinical achievements and prescribing data by individual GP practices, the performance of hospital teams in treating lung cancer and other key healthcare conditions, the effectiveness of schools at teaching pupils across a range of subjects, criminal sentencing by each court, and data on rail timetables, rail service performance, roadworks, current road conditions, car parks and cycle routes in an open format for use by all. The new commitments, set out in a letter from the Prime Minister to Cabinet colleagues, aim to provide the public with more information about the performance of services they use every day, and to help to drive modern, personalised and sustainable public services. The new data are also expected to drive economic growth as they promote the creation of new services and applications."
Resolution policies and frameworks – progress so far, July 2011
News release: "Bayer CropScience will pay up to $750 million to U.S. rice farmers to resolve claims that the company's experimental LibertyLink rice contaminated crops, making them unfit for export. The agreement ends several lawsuits representing more than 11,000 long grain rice farmers in Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi. The LibertyLink rice traits were originally developed by AgrEvo, which was bought by Aventis CropScience. Bayer acquired Aventis CropScience in 2001. The rice was genetically modified to be tolerant to glufosinate, the active ingredient in Liberty herbicide. Tests of the rice were conducted at Louisiana State University. In 2006, Bayer CropScience alerted USDA that LibertyLink rice had contaminated the U.S. rice supply. At the time, there were no genetically modified rice varieties being grown commercially in the U.S. In response to the contamination, Japan and Russia banned imports of long grain rice from the U.S., while Mexico and the European Union required that U.S.-grown rice be tested and proven free of genetically-modified traits."
News release: "The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has expanded the range of public information offered on its website by adding a Legal Filings and Decisions section to the Resources page. This innovation, part of a recent major upgrade of the PBGC website, presents significant legal filings recently submitted by PBGC in its efforts to preserve and safeguard pensions, as well as court decisions issued in response to PBGC filings. The new section also will offer noteworthy filings and decisions from the recent past."
Jamie S. Gorelick and Michael Traynor, Co-Chairs - ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 - Re: For Comment: Initial Draft Proposals on Lawyers' Use of Technology and Client Development. Date: June 29, 2011
Via LLRX.com: Pretrial Detention, Bail and Due Process - Ken Strutin's guide comprises recent publications and other notable resources concerning the relationship between the administration of bail and the requirements of due process. Pretrial detention of suspects directly impacts the presumption of innocence. The cornerstone of the justice system is that no one will be punished without the benefit of due process. Incarceration before trial, when the outcome of the case is yet to be determined, cuts against this principle. The Founders were aware of the dangers inherent in indiscriminate imprisonment, which is one of the main reasons behind the inclusion of the Eighth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, prohibiting excessive bail.
The Freedom of Information Act on its 45th anniversary | Commentary - July 01, 2011: "Lyndon Johnson opposed FOIA — said it was a plot against his administration — but a tenacious backbencher from California, John Moss, had pursued it for 12 years and LBJ finally relented, signing the legislation on July 4th, 1966. Here Michael Lemov, author of a new book on Moss and FOIA, recounts events leading to the enactment."
"Federal and state applications for orders authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications increased 34 percent in 2010, compared to the number reported in 2009. The interceptions are reported in the 2010 Wiretap Report, released today by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AOUSC). The current report covers intercepts concluded between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2010. A total of 3,194 intercept applications by federal and state courts were authorized in 2010, with 1,207 applications by federal authorities authorized and 1,987 applications by 25 states authorized. One application was denied. Installed intercepts totaled 2,311."
Follow up to previous postings on sentencing guidelines, this ews release: "The United States Sentencing Commission voted unanimously today to give retroactive effect to its proposed permanent amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines that implements the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Retroactivity of the amendment will become effective on November 1, 2011 - the same day that the proposed permanent amendment would take effect; unless Congress acts to disapprove the amendment...Not every federal crack cocaine offender in federal prison will be eligible for a lower sentence as a result of this decision. The Commission estimates, based on Fiscal Year 2010 sentencing data, that approximately 12,000 offenders may be eligible to seek a sentence reduction. The average sentence reduction for eligible offenders will be approximately 37 months, and the overall impact on the eligible offender population will occur incrementally over decades. The average sentence for these offenders, even after reduction, will remain about 10 years. The Bureau of Prisons estimates that retroactivity of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 amendment could result in a savings of over $200 million within the first five years after retroactivity takes effect."
News release: "The authoritarian countries of the former Soviet Union have built governance systems that are resistant to reform and therefore increasingly vulnerable to unpredictable crises of the sort recently seen in the Middle East and North Africa, according to a new study released by Freedom House. Nations in Transit 2011, the latest edition of Freedom House’s annual assessment of democratic development in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, also finds that the ever-growing tenures of authoritarian leaders in the former Soviet Union have contributed to a number of looming governance problems, including the inability to develop law-based systems, tackle corruption, and—especially in the case of energy-dependent states such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia—diversify their economies."
Know Your Rights! by Hanni Fakhoury, EFF Staff Attorney, June 2011
Follow up to posting, WSJ: FTC Plans to Serve Google With Subpoenas, from the Official Google Blog: "At Google, we’ve always focused on putting the user first. We aim to provide relevant answers as quickly as possible—and our product innovation and engineering talent have delivered results that users seem to like, in a world where the competition is only one click away. Still, we recognize that our success has led to greater scrutiny. Yesterday, we received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it has begun a review of our business. We respect the FTC’s process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services. It’s still unclear exactly what the FTC’s concerns are, but we’re clear about where we stand...To learn more about our business, please visit google.com/press/competition."
WSJ: "Federal regulators are poised to hit Google Inc. with subpoenas, launching a broad, formal investigation into whether the Internet giant has abused its dominance in Web-search advertising, people familiar with the matter said. The civil probe, which has the potential to reshape how companies compete on the Internet, is the most serious legal threat yet to the 12-year-old company, though it wouldn't necessarily lead to any federal allegations of wrongdoing against Google. While Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, the U.S. has limited its investigations largely to reviews of the company's mergers and acquisitions. The new inquiry, by contrast, will examine fundamental issues relating to Google's core search-advertising business, its biggest money maker, said the people familiar with the matter."
News release: "As explained in the amicus brief, the proposed settlement raises concerns in three areas in which the FTC has significant expertise: FDCPA and debt collection, privacy and data collection, and class action fairness. First, the FTC is the chief federal enforcer of the FDCPA and has conducted comprehensive assessments of debt collection activities, including its 2009 report, Collecting Consumer Debts: The Challenges of Change and its 2010 report, Repairing a Broken System: Protecting Consumers in Debt Collection Litigation and Arbitration. Second, the FTC safeguards consumers’ privacy and the security of their personal information under Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Finally, in connection with its Class Action Fairness Project, the FTC has studied how best to protect consumer interests and promote fairness in the class action context and has filed amicus briefs commenting on potentially unfair class settlements."
"In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down Vermont's prescription privacy law. IMS Health, Inc. v. Sorrell held that the Vermont statute, which bars disclosure of prescription data for marketing purposes, violates data mining firms' free speech rights. Vermont "burdened a form of protected expression that it found too persuasive. At the same time, the State has left unburdened those speakers whose messages are in accord with its own views. This the State cannot do." the Court wrote. The Court suggested that a more privacy-protective statute might have withstood Constitutional scrutiny, writing "the State might have advanced its asserted privacy interest by allowing the information’s sale or disclosure in only a few narrow and well-justified circumstances. A statute of that type would present quite a different case than the one presented here." EPIC filed an amicus brief on behalf of 27 technical experts and legal scholars, as well as nine consumer and privacy groups, arguing that the privacy interest in safeguarding medical records is substantial and that the "de-identification" techniques adopted by data-mining firms do not protect patient privacy. For more information, see EPIC: IMS Health v. Sorrell."
The Orderly Liquidation of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. under the Dodd-Frank Act, FDIC Quarterly, Early release for the upcoming 2011, Volume 5, No. 2
CBO: Preemptions in Federal Legislation in the 111th and Previous Congresses, June 21, 2011
Via LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: The Most Transparent Administration in History? - Scott A. Hodes argues that we have no real benchmark to determine executive branch success in fulfilling Presidential promises about openness and transparency. Rather he contends that the measure is not each time the administration doesn’t release something in a timely fashion to say it has failed the test.
CRS - EPA Regulations: Too Much, Too Little, or On Track? - James E. McCarthy - Specialist in Environmental Policy, Claudia Copeland, Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy - March 21, 2011
News release: "The Department of Justice released an updated version of the Antitrust Division’s Policy Guide to Merger Remedies. The policy guide is a tool for Antitrust Division staff to use in analyzing proposed remedies in its merger matters. It also provides transparency into the division’s approach to merger remedies for the business community, the antitrust bar and the broader public."
The FTC provides antitrust approval [link to notice here] - Microsoft news release: Microsoft Corp. and Skype Global announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype, the leading Internet communications company, for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services. With 170 million connected users and over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010, Skype has been a pioneer in creating rich, meaningful connections among friends, families and business colleagues globally."
A Brief Guide to the European Union and Its Legislative Processes, June 2011 - "The EU, created by the Treaty of Maastricht1, is a union of 27 independent states. It was founded to enhance political, economic and social cooperation. Its origins date back to the 1950s and the establishment of three organisations:
"The U.S. Government Printing Office published its last official history 50 years ago, marking its centennial anniversary.
100 GPO Years 1861–1961 has proven to be a remarkably valuable resource and deserves to stand alone as an enduring
contribution to the historical record of this great agency. Instead of trying to improve on it, with the approach of our
150th anniversary we decided to recreate the telling of GPO’s story. Keeping America Informed: The U.S. Government
Printing Office: 150 Years of Service to the Nation recasts our history in a fresh light, with new contributions and emphases,
and provides the reader with a greater exposure to GPO’s rich photographic record, with many of the images in this book
published for the first time. Most important of all, Keeping America Informed describes how the agency has transformed itself through the years by continually adapting to the most efficient technologies available to get its work done. In the ink-on-paper era, this meant moving from handset to machine-set type, from slower to high-speed presses, and from hand to automated bookbinding. These changes enabled GPO to keep up with the demands of a growing Nation and helped keep costs down, and they were significant for their time. Yet they pale by comparison with the transformation that accompanied GPO’s incorporation of electronic information technologies, the single most dominant trend at the agency of the past 50 years, and the generator of unprecedented improvements in productivity and hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer savings that continue into the present. Today, GPO is fundamentally different from what it was as recently as a generation ago: smaller, leaner, and equipped with digital production capabilities that are the bedrock of the information systems relied upon daily by Congress, Federal agencies, and the public to ensure open and transparent Government in the digital era."
Follow up to postings on WikiLeaks, via the Legal Times: "Stephen Elliot of the Civil Division’s federal programs branch said in the guidance, provided Friday to lawyers in pending detainee cases in Washington federal district court, that attorneys for detainees are allowed to cite to WikiLeaks documents."
NYT: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention. The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity. The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing."
News release: [On May 31, 2011] New York "Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced he was filing a lawsuit against the federal government for its failure to commit to a full environmental review of proposed regulations that would allow natural gas drilling – including the potentially harmful fracking technique – in the Delaware River Basin. Last month, the Attorney General notified the federal government that if it did not commit to conducting an environmental review before the regulations authorizing gas drilling are finalized, he would take legal action to compel such a study...In April, just one day before a blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas drilling site caused gallons of chemical-laced water to spill over neighboring land and into a stream, the Attorney General demanded that the federal government comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The law requires federal agencies to conduct a full review of actions that may cause significant environmental impacts. Despite the legal requirement, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) – with the approval of its supporting federal agencies – proposed regulations allowing natural gas development in the Basin without undertaking any such review. Represented by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Brigadier General Peter A. DeLuca, the involved federal agencies include the Army Corps, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Environmental Protection Agency."
Implementing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act: "This law creates a new, more effective regulatory structure, fills a host of regulatory gaps, brings greater public transparency and market accountability to the financial system and gives investors important protections and greater input into corporate governance." — SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro
News release: "U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, released a Committee Minority analysis, Physician Owned Distributors (PODs): An Overview of Key Issues and Potential Areas for Congressional Oversight, detailing a spike in the utilization of medical procedures by physicians invested in these entities. Citing these concerns, Hatch spearheaded two separate bipartisan letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General calling for an investigation. This analysis, conducted by the Senate Finance Committee Minority staff, examines the structure and activities of physician owned distributorships (PODs) within the medical device supply chain. In recent years, there has been an uptick in these arrangements, which allow physician investors to purchase ownership shares in an entity that, in turn, purchases or serves as a medical device distributor for the products the physician utilizes in surgery. Hatch’s analysis, which identifies the rapid proliferation of PODs in at least 20 states, exposes the lack of specific legal guidance issued by the Office of Inspector General for HHS to govern the structure and establishment of PODs and brings into question the utilization and appropriateness of services provided by doctors participating in some of the PODs, particularly with respect to Medicare, which is funded by taxpayers. The Senate Finance Committee has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid."
News release: "In order to ensure the public has as much information as possible about the health and the environmental impacts of chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made public the identities of more than 150 chemicals contained in 104 health and safety studies that had been claimed confidential by industry. Today’s announcement is another in a series of unprecedented actions that EPA is taking to provide the public with greater access to information on the chemicals that are manufactured and used in the United States. For these 104 studies, the chemical identity will no longer be redacted, or kept from view. The chemicals involved are used in dispersant formulations and consumer products such as air fresheners, non-stick and stain resistant materials, fire resistant materials, nonylphenol compounds, perfluorinated compounds, and lead."
HM Treasury Review of the Money Laundering Regulations 2007: the Government response, June 2011
"The number of cases awaiting resolution before the Immigration Courts reached a new all-time high of 275,316 by the beginning of May 2011, according to very timely government enforcement data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The case backlog has continued to grow — up 2.8 percent — since TRAC's previous report four months ago, and 48 percent higher than levels at the end of FY 2008. Wait times have increased since our previous report. The average time these pending cases have been waiting in the Immigration Courts of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is now 482 days, compared with 467 days at the end of last year."
News release: "U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), co-chairs of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control released a report outlining key steps and initiatives to combat Mexico’s brutal drug trafficking organizations and reduce violence in the country. The report, U.S. and Mexican Responses to Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations, is endorsed by all seven Members of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control and makes several recommendations for the U.S. government. The report synthesizes information gathered through a country visit, briefings, interviews, and a review of documents from both government and non-government subject matter experts."
The World Top Incomes Database (Select Countries, Select Years, Select Variables - populated as choices are made):
Regulating Systemically Important Financial Firms, Governor Daniel K. Tarullo At the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, D.C., June 3, 2011: "As the one-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act approaches, there will be much discussion about the progress that has been made in reforming financial regulation. Today I would like to get a head start on this exercise, concentrating on Dodd-Frank's requirement that the Federal Reserve Board establish special prudential standards for systemically important financial institutions or, as they are now generally known, "SIFIs." My focus will be on the requirement for more stringent capital standards, which has generated particular interest."
Dodd-Frank Rulemaking Progress Report - Progress as of June 1, 2011: "This Davis Polk Dodd-Frank Rulemaking Progress Report is the third in a series of reports that use empirical data to help market participants and policymakers assess the progress of the rulemaking and other work that has been done by regulators under the Dodd-Frank Act. Previous reports can be found here.
SEC: "This page allows you to search the full text of EDGAR filings from the last four years. The full text of a filing includes all data in the filing as well as all attachments to the filing. To find the information you need and make your search easy and enjoyable, please visit our FAQ page. We are still developing this feature, and we plan to enhance it based on user feedback."
Truth in Lending Act and Amendments Legislative History: Links on Westlaw (WL - GAO Histories) and the Library of Congress (LC - THOMAS CRS Histories) with Public Law links on GPO's FDsys from 1995, Compiled and Maintained by Rick McKinney, Assistant Law Librarian, Federal Reserve Board Law Library, June 3, 2011
American Constitution Society (ACS): "Have you ever thought about becoming a judge? Even most lawyers and law students don’t know much about how to approach the process, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Tina Matsuoka pointed out during an event on the topic yesterday. ACS and seven other legal groups have launched a publication, The Path to the Federal Bench, intended to help demystify the process and encourage people from diverse backgrounds to pursue federal judgeships. The booklet includes tips on everything from assessing your candidacy to navigating the increasingly difficult nomination and confirmation process, and features the stories of several judges. This coalition of groups has already held a number of panel discussions around the country about the process of pursuing judgeships, and video of some of those events, as well as a short one-on-one interview with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Judge Andre M. Davis, is available at a new ACS web page focused on the path to the bench."
EUROPA press release: "Intellectual property rights (IPR), which comprise patents, trademarks, designs and geographical indications, as well as copyright (authors' rights) and rights related to copyright (for performers, producers and broadcasters), have been around for centuries. Often, without our even realising, they affect our daily lives: they protect the technology we use (cars, mobile phones, trains), the food we eat and the music we listen to or the films we watch. But in the last few years, technological change and, in particular, the growing importance of online activities, have completely changed the world in which IPR operate. The existing mix of European and national rules are no longer adapted and need to be modernised. That is why the Commission has adopted today a comprehensive strategy to revamp the legal framework in which IPR operate. Our objective is to enable inventors, creators, users and consumers to adapt to the new circumstances and to enhance new business opportunities. The new rules will strike the right balance between promoting creation and innovation, in part by ensuring reward and investment for creators and, on the other hand, promoting the widest possible access to goods and services protected by IPR. Getting this balance right will make a real difference to businesses (from the individual artist working alone to the big pharmaceutical companies) by encouraging investment in innovation. This will benefit the EU's growth and competitiveness which is delivered through the single market. Consumers will benefit from wider and easier access to information and cultural content, for example online music. The strategy deals with many issues to ensure IPR are covered comprehensively - from the patent a business needs to protect an invention to tackling the misuse of such inventions via a proposal also adopted today which will strengthen action on counterfeiting and piracy. Among the first deliverables of this IPR overall strategy are today's proposals for an easier licensing system for so-called "orphan works" that will allow many cultural works to be accessible online, and for a new regulation to reinforce customs actions in fighting trade of IPR infringing goods."
Privacy Protections for Personal Information Online, Gina Stevens, Legislative Attorney, April 6, 2011
Fact Sheet: "The Securities and Exchange Commission [May 18, 2011] voted unanimously to propose new rules and amendments intended to increase transparency and improve the integrity of credit ratings. The proposed rules would implement certain provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and enhance the SEC’s existing rules governing credit ratings and Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs). “In passing the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress noted that credit ratings applied to structured financial products proved inaccurate and contributed significantly to the mismanagement of risks by financial institutions and investors,” said SEC Chairman Mary L. Schapiro. “Our proposed rules are intended to strengthen the integrity and improve the transparency of credit ratings.” Under the SEC’s proposal, NRSROs would be required to:
Via LLRX: "Link Rot" and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2011 Analysis by the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group - Sarah Rhodes describes and documents the work of the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group's fourth annual investigation of link rot among the original URLs for online law and policy-related materials archived though the group's efforts. Link rot" is used to describe a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL. The Chesapeake Group focuses primarily on the preservation of Web-published legal materials, which often disappear as Web site content is rearranged or deleted over time. In the four years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 7,400 digital items and 3,200 titles, all of which were originally posted to the Web.
Via LLRX - Postcard from Vienna: The Vis Moot and the Triumph of Foreign and International Law - Nicholas Pengelley vibrantly documents, with accompanying photos, his latest experiences as evaluator of written memoranda, arbitrator at oral arguments, and sometime team coach at the Vis Moot, in which he has participated for a decade. The moot, which always takes place in the week leading up to Easter, is held in Vienna because of its associations with the Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ("CISG"). This is the law of the contract for all of the moot problems, which always involve a contractual sale of goods dispute between parties from two different countries.
"ABA Home Front features: a national directory of legal programs and organizations providing in-person consultation and representation for military families in need of legal help; an Information Center with publications and resources on a variety of legal topics that military families may encounter; and the Pro Bono Center connects civilian attorneys to pro bono legal opportunities on behalf of military families and features resources for military legal assistance."
The Appellate Body, on 18 May 2011, issued its report in the case “European Communities and Certain Member States — Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft” (WT/DS316/AB/R).
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "Federal criminal prosecutions totaled 13,092 for the month of February according to the most recent data released by the Department of Justice. This was an increase of 18 percent from the previous month. Among the program categories, the largest number of prosecutions was seen in immigration, accounting for 49 percent of the filings. Drug trafficking crimes accounted for 12 percent of the total."
News release: "The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) today announced the launch of the FINRA Disciplinary Actions Online database, a web-based searchable system that makes its disciplinary actions accessible via its website. The database enables users to perform searches for FINRA actions free of charge, seven days a week. Users may search for actions by case number, document text, document type, action date (by date range), a combination of document text and action date, individual name and Central Registration Depository (CRD®) number, or firm name and CRD number. The documents can be viewed online, printed, or downloaded as text-searchable PDF files. [See also Online Search Help]. Previously, the public had to contact FINRA to obtain copies of disciplinary actions. The new database makes available disciplinary action documents including Letters of Acceptance, Waivers and Consent (AWCs), settlements, National Adjudicatory Council decisions, Office of Hearing Officers decisions and complaints."
Consumer Protection, Legal Services, and Financial Stability: An Exchange, Melissa B. Jacoby - University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill - School of Law; Anna Gelpern, American University Washington College of Law. Fordham Urban Law Journal, Vol. 38, 2011, UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 1829686
Building a Collaborative Digital Collection, a Necessary Evolution in Libraries, Michelle M. Wu, Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 11-47, Law Library Journal, Forthcoming
Via Pogo's Nick Schwellenbach, see the "..Project On Government Oversight's (POGO) new Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revolving door database. It is based on post-government employment statements that former SEC employees are required to file 2 years after they leave the SEC if they plan on representing clients before the Commission. Right now, the database has nearly 800 statements from 219 employees covering the statements filed from 2006 through 2010."
Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR): "If you have a financial interest in or signature authority over a foreign financial account, including a bank account, brokerage account, mutual fund, trust, or other type of foreign financial account, the Bank Secrecy Act may require you to report the account yearly to the Internal Revenue Service by filing Form TD F 90-22.1, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR). The FBAR is required because foreign financial institutions may not be subject to the same reporting requirements as domestic financial institutions. The FBAR is a tool to help the United States government identify persons who may be using foreign financial accounts to circumvent United States law. Investigators use FBARs to help identify or trace funds used for illicit purposes or to identify unreported income maintained or generated abroad."
Follow up to Senate Investigations Subcommittee Releases Levin-Coburn Report On the Financial Crisis, via Rolling Stone, The People vs. Goldman Sachs - A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges, by Matt Tabbai.
Poverty Guidelines for 2011 Posted - May 10, 2011
The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security. (May 1, 2011). Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security, Chapter 1, Yale University Press, 2011.
Google Announces First Quarter 2011 Results: "In May 2011, in connection with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the use of Google advertising by certain advertisers, we accrued $500 million for the three month period ended March 31, 2011. Although we cannot predict the ultimate outcome of this matter, we believe it will not have a material adverse effect on our business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows. As a result, we have updated the affected financial data in this release, as noted, as well as the accompanying financial tables."
"CourtListener (Beta) was created by Michael Lissner as part of a masters thesis at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information. Michael was advised by Assistant Professor, Brian Carver. The goal of the site is to create a free and competitive real time alert tool for the U.S. judicial system. At present, the site has daily information regarding all precedential opinions issued by the 13 federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. Each day, we also have the non-precedential opinions from all of the Circuit courts except the D.C. Circuit. This means that by 5:10pm PST, the database will be updated with the opinions of the day, with custom alerts going out shortly thereafter. The coverage of our corpus for a given court varies, but it is growing on a daily basis. We are working to integrate the documents from other online sites that provide free public access to court documents. To see a detailed overview of our corpus (updated daily), visit our coverage page." [Carolyn Edds]
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today told Congress that “the Commission is committed to protecting consumers’ privacy in the mobile sphere” by bringing enforcement actions where appropriate and “by working with industry and consumer groups to develop workable solutions that protect consumers while allowing innovation in this growing marketplace.” In Commission testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee for Privacy, Technology and the Law, Jessica Rich, Deputy Director in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said the FTC has been examining mobile and wireless issues since 2000, when the agency hosted a workshop on emerging wireless Internet and data technologies and the privacy, security, and consumer protection issues they raise. The FTC also hosted a technology forum in 2006 that featured mobile issues, two Town Halls to explore the use of radio frequency identification technology and its integration into mobile devices, and a forum in 2008 examining consumer protection issues in the mobile sphere. In addition, the FTC has taken law enforcement actions against companies that fail to protect the privacy and security of consumer information. The testimony highlighted four recent cases that illustrate how the FTC’s authority applies to the mobile arena. The FTC’s case against Google alleges that the company deceived consumers by using information collected from Gmail users to generate and populate a new social network, Google Buzz, without users’ consent. As part of the proposed settlement order, Google must protect the privacy of all of its customers – including mobile users."
The President’s Blueprint for Building a 21st Century Immigration System, May 2011
Science and the Reasonable Development of Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Resources in Pennsylvania and New York, Lynn Kerr McKay, Ralph H. Johnson, and Laurie Alberts Salita. Energy Law Journal, Vol. 32:125.
FDLP Listserv: "On March 17, Public Printer Bill Boarman testified before the Senate appropriations subcommittee on the costs of producing Federal publications, such as the Congressional Record. Subsequently, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) made a YouTube video on the production of the Congressional Record to illustrate the production process for this important publication. With origins in the requirement of Article I of the Constitution that "Congress shall keep a journal of its proceedings...and from time to time publish the same," the Congressional Record contains the proceedings and debates of the Senate and House of Representatives. It has been called "a symbol of our democracy through which the people may observe the making of their laws and may hold their lawmakers accountable for their words and deeds."
Via Harvey Anderson...who works at Mozilla on legal and business affairs." Homeland Security Request to Take Down MafiaaFire Add-on, May 5, 2011 - "From time to time, we receive government requests for information, usually market information and occasionally subpoenas. Recently the US Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla and requested that we remove the MafiaaFire add-on. The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names. Mafiaafire, like several other similar add-ons already available through AMO, redirects the user from one domain name to another similar to a mail forwarding service. In this case, Mafiaafire redirects traffic from seized domains to other domains. Here the seized domain names allegedly were used to stream content protected by copyrights of professional sports franchises and other media concerns. Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order. Thus, to evaluate Homeland Security’s request, we asked them several questions similar to those below to understand the legal justification..."
Larsson, Stefan, The Path Dependence of European Copyright (April 15, 2011). SCRIPT-ed, Vol. 8, No. 1, April 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1824228
Core Documents of U.S. Democracy: "To provide American citizens direct online access to the basic Federal Government documents that define our democratic society, a core group of current and historical Government publications was made available via GPO Access. These titles contain information which is vital to the democratic process and critical to an informed electorate. Because this page is mainly a collection of links from various web sites it will not migrate to FDsys and is recreated here." [Carolyn Ottoson, West Texas A&M University]
Via LLRX.com - The Age of Innocence: Actual, Legal and Presumed: Ken Strutin reasons that any accounting of the justice system would put the presumption of innocence at the top of the ledger. The premise underlying this evidentiary rule is that no one should be found guilty of a crime unless the state has convinced a jury with proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The materials Ken has researched and documented for this guide focus on the drift from unitary innocence, which encompasses all possible claims to a wrongful conviction, to factual innocence rooted in exoneration jurisprudence. According to some scholars, factual exonerations may have confounded the wisdom behind the Blackstone Ratio and its overarching message, i.e., criminal law and procedure ought to be weighted in favor of innocence to avoid wrongful conviction, even if there is a chance that the guilty will benefit as well. In other words, a system of justice that is fair to all and seeks to protect the innocent from wrongful prosecutions must apply safeguards that will be over inclusive. The calculations of truth and fairness are rooted in a system of justice based on due process (or a presumption of due process). The scholarship collected here attempts to address questions of whether the concept of innocence is selective or categorical.
News release: "The United States has filed a civil mortgage fraud lawsuit against Deutsche Bank AG and its wholly owned subsidiary, MortgageIT Inc. The government’s complaint seeks damages and civil penalties under the False Claims Act for repeated false certifications made to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in connection with the residential mortgage origination and sponsorship practices of MortgageIT. To date, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has paid insurance claims on more than 3,100 mortgages, totaling $386 million, for mortgages endorsed by MortgageIT."
"Today EPIC submitted detailed comments on a landmark privacy agreement that requires Google to adopt a "Comprehensive Privacy Plan" to safeguard the privacy and personal information of Internet users. In comments to the Federal Trade Commission, EPIC recommended that the FTC require Google to adopt and implement comprehensive Fair Information Practices complaint EPIC: In re Google Buzz ..."
Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Set to Expire, May 27, 2011
"The International Research Portal is a collaboration of national and other archival institutions with records that pertain to Nazi-Era cultural property. These archival institutions, along with expert national and international organizations, are working together to extend public access to the widely-dispersed records through a single internet portal. The portal will enable families to research their losses, provenance researchers to locate important documentation, and historians to study newly accessible materials on the history of this period. This collaborative project was established to fulfill the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, the 2000 Vilnius Forum Declaration and the 2009 Terezin Declaration, in particular on the importance of making all such records publicly accessible. The portal links researchers to archival materials consisting of descriptions of records and, in many cases, digital images of the records that relate to cultural property that was stolen, looted, seized, forcibly sold, or otherwise lost during the Nazi-era. Cultural property documented in these records covers a broad range from artworks to books and libraries, religious objects, antiquities, archival documents, carvings, silver and more."
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, James Sherley v. Kathleen Sebelius, April 29, 2011: "GINSBURG, Circuit Judge - Two scientists brought this suit to enjoin the National Institutes of Health from funding research using human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) pursuant to the NIH’s 2009 Guidelines. The district court granted their motion for a preliminary injunction, concluding they were likely to succeed in showing the Guidelines violated the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, an appropriations rider that bars federal funding for research in which a human embryo is destroyed. We conclude the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an ESC from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an ESC will be used. We therefore vacate the preliminary injunction."
Fact sheet: "The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously to propose rules further defining the terms “swap,” “security-based swap,” and “security-based swap agreement.” The Commission also proposed rules regarding “mixed swaps” and books and records for “security-based swap agreements.” The rules were proposed jointly with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and stem from the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act."
"The projections in the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook 2011 (AEO2011) focus on the factors that shape the U.S. energy system over the long term. Under the assumption that current laws and regulations remain unchanged throughout the projections, the AEO2011 Reference case provides the basis for examination and discussion of energy production, consumption, technology, and market trends and the direction they may take in the future. It also serves as a starting point for analysis of potential changes in energy policies. But AEO2011 is not limited to the Reference case. It also includes 57 sensitivity cases which explore important areas of uncertainty for markets, technologies, and policies in the U.S. energy economy."
IUCN/NRDC Workshop to Identify Areas of Ecological and Biological Significance or Vulnerability in the Arctic Marine Environment - Workshop Report Prepared by Lisa Speer and Thomas L. Laughlin, April 7, 2011
A trade group raises concerns about the FTC settlement with Google over Buzz, by Grant Gross
Rethinking Music: A Briefing Book Compiled and Presented By The Berkman Center for Internet & Society At Harvard University, April 2011.
Schneider, Andrea Kupfer and Fleury, Natalie, There's No Place Like Home: Applying Dispute System Design Theory to Create a Foreclosure Mediation System (April 21, 2011). Nevada Law Review, Forthcoming.
News release: "[April 19, 2011], the Dutch Data Protection Authority (College bescherming persoonsgegevens, CBP) has issued several administrative orders against Google for incremental penalty payments. Investigations by the CBP show that Google has, for a period of two years, systematically, and without the data subjects’ knowledge, collected MAC addresses of more than 3,6 million WiFi routers, in combination with the calculated location of those routers. This was done by using the so called ‘Street View cars’. MAC addresses in combination with their calculated locations, qualify, in this context, as personal data, because the collected data provide information about the WiFi router’s owners. The Dutch DPA also concludes that Google, using the same Street View cars, collected so called payload data, the contents of internet communication. This information contains personal data such as e-mail addresses, medical data and information concerning financial transactions.
Google has been ordered to, within three months, inform the data subjects – off line as well as on line – about the collection of data originating from WiFi routers by the Street View cars. Within the same period of three months, Google must also offer an on line possibility to opt-out from the database in order to enable people to object to the processing of the data concerning their WiFi routers. In case Google does not comply with the administrative order within the time period granted, the penalty amount can increase to a maximum of one million euros. Furthermore, Google is obliged to destroy the payload data it has collected in the Netherlands within four weeks. Read the Dutch press release and the relevant documents (only in Dutch)."
Follow up to previous postings on the Deepwater oil spill, via FindLaw:
Another invaluable service for researchers that facilitates free access to court opinions - from the innovative experts at Justia - who are now "providing FREE Daily & Weekly Opinion Summaries for all Federal Courts, and selected State Supreme Courts. See an example daily email for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or a weekly practice area email for Environmental Law."
Follow up to previous postings on the Deepwater oil spill,
this news release from NOAA:
Privacy Protections for Personal Information Online, Gina Stevens, Legislative Attorney, April 6, 2011
"The Solicitor General filed a petition with the Supreme Court about the growing dispute in the federal courts over warrantless locational tracking. There is a split among the appellate court about GPS tracking by police agencies. The petition appeals a decision from the DC Circuit which held that the warrantless tracking of a motor vehicle violates the Constitutional right against unlawful searches. Earlier, EPIC filed an amicus brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case that also held that a warrant is required for the use of a GPS tracking device. For more information, see EPIC - Commonwealth v. Connolly and EPIC - Locational Privacy."
Famous poet's writings as a Federal employee shed new light on his life and work: "The National Archives today announced the identification of nearly 3,000 Walt Whitman documents written during his service as a Federal government employee. This trove of information--conclusively identified as Whitman's papers for the first time by University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) scholar Kenneth Price--sheds light on the legendary poet's post-war thinking, as well as Whitman's published reflections on the state of the nation that soon followed. Price discusses the significance of this discovery in the National Archives Inside the Vaults video short."
News release: "As part of their ongoing efforts to keep markets that they oversee open and fair for American consumers, the Federal Trade Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced that they signed an agreement to foster further cooperation between the two agencies by helping them share nonpublic information. The FTC and CFTC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that will facilitate sharing of non-public information on investigations being conducted by the agencies, including investigations into the oil and gasoline markets. The agreement will help the FTC enforce its petroleum market manipulation rule, which prohibits fraudulent manipulation of U.S. petroleum markets. Information-sharing also will help the CFTC in exercising its authority to pursue manipulation in the oil markets."
A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement - "On March 22, 2011, Judge Denny Chin rejected the proposed settlement in copyright infringement litigation over the Google Library Project. Judge Chin found that the settlement was not "fair, reasonable, and adequate" as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Judge Chin issued the decision over a year after the fairness hearing he conducted. His opinion agrees in large measure with the objections to the settlement asserted by the U.S. Department of Justice at the hearing and in its written submissions. This paper by Jonathan Band continues the series in which he discusses the opinion and where it leaves Google Books Search."
The Sedona Conference® Database Principles - Addressing the Preservation & Production of Databases & Database Information in Civil Litigation. A Project of The Sedona Conference®Working Group on Electronic Document Retention & Production (WG1), March 2011 Public Comment Verson, by the The Sedona Conference®. Editor-in-Chief: Conrad J. Jacoby
The Speedy Trial Rights of Military Detainees, Walter E. Kuhn, United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights - Syracuse Law Review, Vol. 62, 2011
The State Secrets Privilege: Preventing the Disclosure of Sensitive National Security Information During Civil Litigation, Todd Garvey
Legislative Attorney, Edward C. Liu, Legislative Attorney, March 28, 2011
"This short essay will be part of an issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter devoted to recommended action for the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The present essay calls attention to the relevance of therapeutic jurisprudence to the sentencing function. It looks at some legal rules and guidelines that do not effectively motivate convicted persons to focus on the future, and it also shows how judges need guidance not only on what sentences to impose but also on the manner and process of sentence imposition."
IDG News Service - "Pandora and possibly other makers of popular smartphone applications are being questioned by a federal grand jury about their privacy practices. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Pandora said that early this year it was served with a subpoena to produce documents in connection with a federal grand jury "which we believe was convened to investigate the information sharing processes of certain popular applications that run on the Apple and Android mobile platforms," it said. The company also wrote that it believes similar subpoenas were issued to publishers of numerous other smartphone applications. Pandora was informed that it is not a specific target of the investigation, it said. Pandora has been the subject of class-action lawsuits charging it with violating computer privacy laws."
Disclosure’s Effects: Wikileaks and Transparency, Mark Fenster
University of Florida - Fredric G. Levin College of Law
State Trends: Legislative Victories from 2005 to 2010 - Removing Youth from the Adult Criminal Justice System, March 2011.
A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement, by Jonathan Band
"This is the official YouTube Channel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In addition to these video recordings, you may find audio recordings of our hearings on our internet site at http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov."
Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of the Inspector General - Evaluation Report: Evaluation of Federal Housing Finance Agency's Oversight of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's Executive Compensation Programs (EVL-2011-002, March 31, 2011)
Poor, Pregnant, and Fired: Caregiver Discrimination Against Low-Wage Workers - by Stephanie Bornstein, Center for WorkLife Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
"Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz today issued the FTC’s 2011 Annual Report at the American Bar Association’s Section of Antitrust Law Spring Meeting in Washington, DC, highlighting the agency’s continued efforts to protect financially distressed consumers and promote competition during the economic downturn.
News release: "Google Inc. has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers when it launched its social network, Google Buzz, in 2010. The agency alleges the practices violate the FTC Act. The proposed settlement bars the company from future privacy misrepresentations, requires it to implement a comprehensive privacy program, and calls for regular, independent privacy audits for the next 20 years. This is the first time an FTC settlement order has required a company to implement a comprehensive privacy program to protect the privacy of consumers’ information. In addition, this is the first time the FTC has alleged violations of the substantive privacy requirements of the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework, which provides a method for U.S. companies to transfer personal data lawfully from the European Union to the United States."
News release: "Countries which continue to use the death penalty are being left increasingly isolated following a decade of progress towards abolition, Amnesty International has said today in its new report Death Sentences and Executions in 2010. A total of 31 countries abolished the death penalty in law or in practice during the last 10 years but China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen remain amongst the most frequent executioners, some in direct contradiction of international human rights law."
The Office of Special Investigations: Striving for Accountability in the Aftermarth of the Holocaust, by Judy Feigin, Edited by Mark M Richard, Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice Criminal Division, December 2008
"EPIC asked a federal court in Washington, DC to reconsider its earlier decision allowing the Department of Homeland Security to keep secret 2,000 airport body scanner images in EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The Court relied on a legal theory in its decision, "Exemption High b(2)," that was recently struck down by the Supreme Court in Navy v. Milner. In Milner, the Court held that FOIA exemption 2 only applies to records concerning employee relations and human resources issues. Milner overturns previous lower court decisions that applied the exemption to broader categories of records, allowing federal agencies to block disclosure of documents to the public. EPIC argues in its motion that the Department of Homeland Security is unlawfully withholding information about the airport scanners from the public. For more information, see EPIC-Milner v. Dept. of Navy and EPIC v. DHS - Body Scanners."
News release: "The Federal Reserve Board on Friday adopted two rules that would expand the coverage of consumer protection regulations to credit transactions and leases of higher dollar amounts. The final rules amend Regulation Z (Truth in Lending) and Regulation M (Consumer Leasing) to implement a provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Effective July 21, 2011, the Dodd-Frank Act requires that the protections of the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the Consumer Leasing Act (CLA) apply to consumer credit transactions and consumer leases up to $50,000, compared with $25,000 currently. This amount will be adjusted annually to reflect any increase in the consumer price index."
24/7 Wall St.: "Twitter has, by most estimates, 175 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million Twitter users. It raises the question of whether there is wisdom in crowds. 24/7 Wall St. will look at the Twitter posts at Reuters Biz, WSJ, Financial Times, CNN Money, MarketWatch, CNBC, and 24/7 Wall St. each day to see which stocks are most frequently mentioned. It is clear that in this area of social media these tweets are a sign of which companies the Twitter universe is interested in. Together, these financial sites are followed by nearly 1,000,000 Twitter users, which makes them a sizeable sample of Wall St.’s interests. In some cases, we will publish the actual tweets from the sites."
EPIC: "Judge Denny Chin struck down a proposed settlement between Google and copyright holders that would have imposed significant privacy risks on e-book consumers. Google's proposal would have entitled the company to collect each users' search queries as well as the titles and page numbers of the books they read. In a February 2010 hearing before the Court, EPIC President Marc Rotenberg explained EPIC Press Release: EPIC Urges Court To Reject Google Books Settlement; EPIC: Google Books Settlement and Privacy."
Via LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: Funding FOIA: Scott A. Hodes contends that reducing FOIA Operations any further is the wrong way to go if the objectives of increasing government transparency are to be pursued. The actual process of searching for records in response to FOIA requests and processing those requests requires human interaction - in other words, while the documents themselves can be digitized, a person will always be required to search for and process responsive records.
Judicial Caseload Indicators 12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2010: "In fiscal year 2010, the federal district courts saw continued growth in civil, criminal, and bankruptcy filings, as well as the number of pretrial services cases and persons under supervision. This continues a decade-long trend of growth in these filings. Only the total number of appeals filed declined, pulled down by slight drops in criminal and administrative agency appeals. The number of civil appeals filed remained relatively unchanged. Federal court caseload statistics for fiscal year 2010 were released today by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Complete statistics for FY 2010, which ran from October 1, 2009, to September 30, 2010, are now available in Judicial Business of the United States Courts, here."
News release: "The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today is publishing its Report on Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process. The report contains the conclusions of an investigation the IACHR carried out to ascertain whether policies and practices on immigrant-related detention in the United States were compatible with the country's international obligations in the area of human rights. The report also includes recommendations for ensuring that detention policies fulfill those obligations. One of the Inter-American Commission's main concerns is the increasing use of detention based on a presumption of its necessity, when in fact detention should be the exception. The IACHR is convinced that detention is a disproportionate measure in many if not most cases, and that programs that provide for alternatives to detention would be a more balanced means to serve the State's legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with immigration laws. For those cases in which detention is strictly necessary, the Inter-American Commission is troubled by the lack of a genuinely civil detention system with general conditions that are commensurate with human dignity and humane treatment, as well as special conditions called for in cases of non-punitive detention. The IACHR is also disturbed by the fact that the management and personal care of immigration detainees is frequently outsourced to private contractors, yet insufficient information is available concerning the mechanisms in place to supervise the contractors."
"The Legal Information Institute of India (LII of India) was officially launched in Delhi on 9th March, 2011, followed by the first regional launch in Hyderabad on 11 March. Further regional launches will take place in Bangalaru and Kolkota over the next fortnight. Each launch is hosted by a partner National Law University. The official launch in Delhi was by Dr (Shri) M Veerappa Moily, Union Minister of Law and Justice, Government of India. Other Guests of Honour to speak at the launch included Dr Lachlan Strahan, Australian Deputy High Commissioner, Chief Justice Dipak Misra of the Delhi High Court, the Justice V P Reddi, Chairman of the Law Commission of India, and Prof Ved Prakash, Chairman of the University Grants Commission, as well as representatives of LII of India and of AustLII. The Delhi launch, at the Vigyan Bhavan, was hosted by the National Law University, Delhi (NLUD)...LII of India now has 108 databases (plus 8 virtual databases), with the recent additional of 59 databases of State and Territory legislation. It currently provides free online access to Indian legislation (63 databases), treaties (2 databases), case law (41 databases), law reform (1 database) and legal scholarship (9 databases). Further databases are being added." [Graham Greenleaf AM Professor of Law & Information Systems, University of New South Wales (UNSW)]
"In anticipation of April 15, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) today posted updates to much of its data on the Internal Revenue Service. Included in this edition are the following features all of which can be reached from TRAC's IRS Data Tools and Applications page:
Closing the Guantanamo Detention Center: Legal Issues, February 11, 2011
News release: "...the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics released the first in a series of data analysis tools that will enable the public to explore the recidivism patterns of persons involved with the criminal justice system. The new Prisoner Recidivism Analysis Tool allows users to conduct customized analyses of a large database describing the recidivism of prisoners released in 1994 and followed for a three-year period after release. In 2012, BJS plans to update the tool with new recidivism data on prisoners released in 2005. The public can use this online tool to analyze a large research database and verify statistics found in government publications, media reports or other sources that use these data. The tool allows users to move beyond the published statistics to explore in more detail the recidivism patterns of released prisoners. Users may examine the recidivism patterns of released prisoners based on one or more attributes, such as gender, age at release, race, commitment offense, sentence length, prior arrests and prior commitments."
Via LLRX.com, Knowledge Discovery Resources 2011 - An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation: This new guide by Marcus P. Zillman focuses on the most current and reliable resources for knowledge discovery available on the Internet. With the constant addition of new and pertinent information to the web, it is very easy to experience information overload. A critical requirement for researchers is finding the best knowledge discovery resources and sites in both the visible and invisible World Wide Web. These carefully selected knowledge and information discovery sources will help you accomplish your research goals.
News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a proposed settlement that it announced in June 2010 with social networking site Twitter, which resolved charges that Twitter deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information. The FTC alleged that serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including both access to non-public user information and tweets that consumers had designated as private, and the ability to send out phony tweets from any account. The privacy policy posted on Twitter’s website stated that “Twitter is very concerned about safeguarding the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information. We employ administrative, physical, and electronic measures designed to protect your information from unauthorized access.” In addition, Twitter offered its users privacy settings that enabled them to designate their tweets as private."
EPIC: "In Navy v. Milner, the Supreme Court held that the Freedom of Information Act’s “Exemption 2” is limited to employee relations and human resources issues. The decision overturns previous decisions by lower courts that applied the exemption to broader categories of records, allowing federal agencies to block disclosure of documents to the public. The Court stated that this practice contravened Congress’s intent. The Court emphasized that Congress intended all nine FOIA exemptions to be construed narrowly. EPIC is currently challenging the use of Exemption 2 in its lawsuit to force disclosure of records concerning full body scanners at airport checkpoints. The Court's decision in Navy v. Milner demonstrates that the Department of Homeland Security is improperly withholding information about the scanners from the public. For more information, see EPIC-Milner v. Dept. of Navy, and EPIC: OPEN Government."
News release: "A new Federal Trade Commission report recommends improvements to two areas of patent law policies affecting how well a patent gives notice to the public of what technology is protected and remedies for patent infringement. The report, The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice and Remedies with Competition, emphasizes that the patent system and competition policy share the goal of promoting innovation that benefits consumers."
More Than 90 Actions Brought By Commission and Its Law Enforcement Partners: "The Federal Trade Commission today stepped up its ongoing campaign against scammers who falsely promise guaranteed jobs and opportunities to “be your own boss” to consumers who are struggling with unemployment and diminished incomes as a consequence of the economic downturn. “Operation Empty Promises,” a multi-agency law enforcement initiative today announced more than 90 enforcement actions, including three new FTC cases and developments in seven other matters, 48 criminal actions by the Department of Justice (many of which involved the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service), seven additional civil actions by the Postal Inspection Service, and 28 actions by state law enforcement agencies in Alaska, California, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia."
Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability: "This guide for researches by Sarah Rhodes focuses on the highly significant impact of "link rot", which refers to the loss or removal of content at a particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over time. When an attempt is made to open a documented link, either different or irrelevant information has replaced the expected content, or else the link is found to be broken, typically expressed by a 404 or "not found" error message. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Web-based materials often disappear as URLs change and web sites are changed, updated, or deleted."
Via Capital.net, the guide - Congress by the Numbers, 112th Congress, 1st Session, includes the following resources: Congress Seating Charts - Congressional Schedule - Congressional leadership and committees - Leadership of the current Congress - with photos, and more.
Sealing Court Records and Proceedings: A Pocket Guide, Robert Timothy Reagan, Federal Judicial Center, 2010
The Sentencing Project - The State of Sentencing 2010 Developments in Policy and Practice, Nicole D. Porter, February 2011
"The Federal Reserve on Wednesday issued a Spanish version of the 2010 Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council's Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering Examination Manual. The Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, developed the Spanish version to make the regulatory expectations regarding Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money Laundering compliance programs accessible to a wider group of people. The manual provides current and consistent guidance on risk-based policies, procedures, and processes for banking organizations to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and safeguard operations from money laundering and terrorist financing."