Author archives

Google Search Tip

From Microdoc News, this useful recommendation on improving your search results using Google. “If you can find a sentence in the Google database which you have just lifted from a website, you can find information you are looking for by writing a sentence in which the information you are seeking may be embedded.”

Subjects: Search Engines

Treasury Releases New Patriot Act Regs

From the press release: “The Department of the Treasury, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the seven federal financial regulators today issued final rules that require certain financial institutions to establish procedures to verify the identity of new accountholders.” 326 Final Rule Banks 326 Final Rule MFS Final Rule BDS 326 Final Rule FCM 326 …

Subjects: Patriot Act

VA Governor Signs Anti-Spam Legislation

On April 29, Governor Mark R. Warner of Virginia signed two bills constituting the Virginia Computer Crimes Act (SB 1139 – became ch. 1016 and HB 2290 -became ch. 987), which in this press release is lauded as the “toughest such law in the United States,”…as…”half the world’s Internet traffic passes through the Commonwealth of …

Subjects: E-Mail

Resource on International Space Law

United Nations Treaties and Principles on Space Law. “The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is the only international forum for the development of international space law. Since its inception, the Committee has concluded five international legal instruments and five sets of legal principles governing space-related activities.” Via Metalfilter.

Subjects: Legal Research

More News on Anti-Spam Efforts

Spammers obviously continue to irritate a very raw nerve, and Capitol Hill is piling on. Recent federal legislation from Senators Wyden and Burns, Senator Schumer, and now Senator Lofgren’s announcement of the introduction of the Restrict and Eliminate Delivery of Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (REDUCE) Spam Act, added to state legislative efforts, indicate that the battle …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Mail

DARPA Funds TIA Privacy Study

“The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a contract to examine privacy protection in the use of terrorist tracking applications, such as the DARPA-led Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.” From Federal Computer Week.

Subjects: Privacy

NY Senator Schumer Wages War Against Spam

Senator Charles E. Schumer announced the release of a new study (The Dark Side of E-Commerce: The EMail Spam Epidemic) indicating that “New York City residents receive 8.25 million junk emails a day and spend 4.2 million hours a year eliminating spam messages.” This announcement also stated the Senator plans to introduce new legislation to …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Mail

New FTC Study on False Claims and Spam

This new report from the FTC, False Claims in Spam (16 page pdf), states that is the first extensive review of deceptive and unfair practices that appear in unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). The study analyzed 1,000 spam e-mails drawn from a pool of 11,000 such messages, and concluded that at least one form of deception …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Mail

The Whereabouts of Iraqi National Library Collection

See In This Library’s Tale, Seeds Of Mistrust and Hope in Iraq, from today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription req’d) that provides new information concerning the whereabouts of much of the collection ransacked from Iraq’s National Library. “Now, a prime chunk of the library is sitting in Sheik Timimi’s mosque in a Baghdad slum, under the …

Subjects: Libraries