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Miriam Drake, Professor Emerita, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology has published part one of a two part article, Government Doublethink: Protection or Supression in Information, in which she reviews and addresses government efforts, through regulation and policy initiatives, to remove a range of documents from the public arena based on national security concerns.
From the FTC press release: Prepared Statement of the Federal Trade Commission on The Fair Credit Reporting Act, Presented by J. Howard Beales, III, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate: Text of Commission Testimony [PDF 64KB].
From a May 20 Judiciary Committee news advisory: “House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the answers received last week from the Justice Department regarding the USA PATRIOT Act and the war on terrorism. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Rep. Conyers wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft on …
Noah Shachtman’s Wired article reveals plans for a huge new database project, purportedly under development, called LifeLog (from DARPA, sponsors of the Total Information Awareness System, renamed the Terrorism Awareness Information Program), comprised of information compiled “by tracking where people go and what they see.” In an associated reference, on May 16 I posted information …
The NSA has proposed a FOIA exemption for “files that document the means by which foreign intelligence or counterintelligence is collected through technical systems.” Also via FAS, see the text of the proposed exemption, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, S. 747. From OMBWatch, “The Senate language, included in the proposed FY …
Big news day concerning DARPA’s Total Information Awareness Program, which according to this press release, is now called the Terrorism Awareness Information Program. This change coincides with the agency’s report to Congress delivered today, with links to associated documents as follows: Guide to the Report to Congress download Executive Summary (6 pages, 30Kb, pdf) download …
From Thomas R. Bruce, Co-Director, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School: “As part of some extensive (and ongoing) renovation of our Supreme Court collection, we’ve added RSS feeds that offer summaries of recent decisions. There are two: http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/rss/0.91/supct_today.rss Actually the less-useful of the two feeds, this one takes in decisions handed down “today” (that is, …
Released yesterday, an “itemized database of approximately 43,000 Einstein and Einstein-related archival items: writings, professional & personal correspondence, and digitized manuscripts of his scientific writings, non-scientific writing, travel diaries.” See http://www.alberteinstein.info/
“The city Department of Consumer Affairs has begun posting decisions on consumer protection and licensing issues at www.citylaw.org, the Web site of New York Law School’s Center for New York City Law. More than 600 administrative law judges decisions, from January 2003 to the present, are available on the site, and the department plans to …
Fact Sheet, Operation E-Con: Cracking Down on Internet Crime, released by the DOJ on May 16, 2003. “Since its inception, Operation E-Con has conducted over 90 investigations involving 89,000 victims and estimated losses of more than $176 million….To date Operation E-Con has executed over 70 search and seizure warrants that have led to 130 arrests …
From the American Libraries Association (ALA) DMCA Section 1201 Anti-Circumvention Rule site: “On May 9, the U.S. Copyright Office concluded a round of hearings in Washington, D.C. pursuant to its rulemaking, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), to determine potential exemptions to the Section 1201 prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that …
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), joined by “45 organizations (including the American Library Association) – 27 consumer and privacy groups and 18 ISPs and ISP associations,” filed a 35 page brief (pdf) on May 16 with the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, suporting Verizon’s continued refusal to reveal the name of a customer who …
