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U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth last week held the Environmental Protection Agency in contempt for destroying electronic documents in violation of a court order issued as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. [Link] Landmark Legal Foundation v. EPA, Civil Action No. 00-2338, Opinions issued July 24, 2003 by Judge Royce C. …
Unpatriotic Acts: The FBI’s Power to Rifle Through Your Records and Personal Belongings Without Telling You, July 2003, from the ACLU. The focus of this 26 page report (pdf) is an examination of, along with related resources and legal documents on, Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, “which gives the FBI unprecedented access to …
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) maintains a no-fly blacklist that may include thousands of names, to which the CIA, FBI, Immigration and Dept. of State contribute information. See also Airline passenger screening tested: “The Homeland Security Department will begin testing a program to classify all airline passengers according to their security risk.” CAPPS II Privacy …
Special Report: E-Gov under construction “A look at three prominent programs reveals how far government has come and how far it has to go.” “When the Office of Management and Budget two years ago unveiled its e-government program, e-gov became a buzzword, and OMBs 25 high-profile projects requiring extensive collaboration among agencies became synonymous with …
Privacy Act: OMB Leadership Needed to Improve Agency Compliance. GAO-03-304, June 30. Highlights “More than one in four federal agencies, or 29 percent of those surveyed by the GAO, did not have procedures to ensure that personal data about individual Americans that they disclosed to nonfederal groups was complete, accurate, relevant and timely, as required …
Today’s WSJ and Washington Post report that TIA Director John Poindexter will resign in the wake of the debacle over the proposed “FutureMAP research project…to explore the power of futures markets to predict and thereby prevent terrorist attacks.” See my posting on the background of, and Congressional response to, the FutureMAP research project here. In …
GSA Launches USA Services: “New Initiative Rapidly Connects Citizens with the Federal Government Service Answers Citizens’ Web, E-mail and Telephone Questions in 2 Days or Less.” “USA Services is built on the foundation of three successful information channels, each of which has been providing comprehensive access to federal information and services within its particular medium: …
From today’s Boston Globe editorial, which refers to yesterday’s debacle on the DARPA FutureMap Program : “The Defense Department should sever its ties with Poindexter (TIA Director John Poindexter) before he can humiliate Americans again. Indeed, President Bush should have dismissed him last year and owes the nation an explanation of how his administration nearly …
In the July 29 press release announcing the cancellation of the FutureMap program (see my July 28 posting on this subject here), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) stated: “The FutureMAP research project was meant to explore the power of futures markets to predict and thereby prevent terrorist attacks. Futures markets have proven themselves …
From the Center for Democracy and Technology: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is introducing legislation (S. 1484) requiring all government agencies that use commercial data for law enforcement and intelligence purposes to report to Congress about their activities and the potential privacy implications of those programs. Citizens’ Protection in Federal Databases Act (pdf), to require a …
From today’s WSJ: “As the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks approaches, Ready.gov, the Department of Homeland Security’s high profile Web site, provides information only in English. Meanwhile, advocates for non-English speakers say they’d like to see government sites become more accessible — but particularly emergency-information sources like Ready.gov.” According to the article, …
Talk about a fast resolution: This program, about which I posted very early this morning, has been cancelled due to the uproar on Capitol Hill. See below for details. According to AP, the Pentagon’s DARPA division has a website called FutureMap (Futures Markets Applied to Prediction), describing a progam for predicting the probably of terrorist …
