Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
From a recent Dept. of Justice FOIA Post: “The total number of Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act access requests received by all federal departments and agencies during Fiscal Year 2002 was 2,402,938. This is 156,726 more than the number of requests received during Fiscal Year 2001, an increase of nearly 7%, and it marks the …
Illinois Strengthens Open Government Laws: “Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) recently signed two pieces of legislation into law that expand current open government laws. The first requires local government bodies to record closed meetings; the second allows attorneys fees and court costs to be awarded to plaintiffs in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases.”
Secrecy News reports on the names of the current eleven members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), along with the date each was appointed as well as when their respective appointments expire. The author of this report, Steven Aftergood, also states, “A full profile of the Court today — its members, their views of …
As noted by OMB Watch, on August 29, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), an agency within the Office of Management and Budget, (OMB) released a draft bulletin “proposing a standardized process by which all significant regulatory documents (of the most important science disseminated by the federal government) will be subject to peer …
From the GPO: Essential Titles for Public Use in Paper Format: The list comprises 48 titles, along with associated web links as available. “The dissemination of information products through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) includes a variety of formats. As directed by Congress, the primary method of making publications available to the FDLP is …
From the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, this news on the release of “nearly 2,000 pages of transcripts of emergency calls made on September 11, 2001, to Port Authority police command from civilians and officers…under an order by Bergen County, N.J., Superior Court…Judge Sylvia R. Moses…The Times (New York Times) had told the …
From ALA, a pdf version of a three page letter sent to Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, on August 27, concerning limitations on the public dissemination of “homeland security information” determined to be “sensitive but unclassified.” ALA was one of 75 organizations that signed the letter (including journalists, evironmental groups, scientists and privacy …
Chronology of the GAO’s Attempts to Obtain Information from the National Energy Policy Development Group, August 25, 2003. Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy. GAO-03-894, August 22. Highlights “The General Accounting Office said in a long-awaited report that Vice President Dick Cheney’s unwillingness to cooperate stymied efforts to find out …
From a posting on Lisnews.com written by Nancy Macomber: “The U.S. Department of Education has decided to shut down the 16 subject-specific ERIC Clearinghouses on December 31, 2003. The Department is running a competition to select a contractor to maintain the database portion of ERIC. This “new” ERIC is expected to begin operating in mid-October …
Press release from the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, announcing a new report: “State and local homeland security officials the first responders and preventers in the war on terror at home have not yet been fully integrated into the Bush Administrations national strategy on homeland security and continue to operate without critical information …
Report to Congress, Childrens Internet Protection Act, Pub. L. 106-554, Study of Technology Protection Measures in Section 1703, August 15, 2003, Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. From the report’s Conclusion: “In summary, existing technology protection measures have met many of the needs of educational institutions. While the education community has had success …
From the CIA press release, the announcement about the availability of The World Factbook 2003: “This reference work provides a snapshot, as of 1 January 2003, of wide-ranging, hard-to-locate information about the background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The nine primary information categories and …
