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“Nearly 20 years after Congress passed the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA), only 40 percent of agencies have followed the law’s instruction for systematic posting of records released through FOIA in their electronic reading rooms, according to a new FOIA Audit released today by the National Security Archive at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB505/ to mark Sunshine Week. …
“The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires that we study arbitration agreements and provide a report to Congress of our findings. Companies provide almost all consumer financial products and services under written contracts. Arbitration agreements, in those contracts, can require that parties resolve any subsequent disputes through privately-appointed individuals (arbitrators), rather than …
Via Darlene Fichter [who notes a key difference between Canadian and US legislation is no oversight body] postings by Canadian law professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach – [Note – Prof. Forcese also posts on national security issues here.] “Parliamentary committee hearings on bill C-51 begin next week. We have created a table consolidating recommended …
CRS Report – Freedom of Information Act Legislation in the 114th Congress: Issue Summary and Side-by-Side Analysis. Daniel J. Richardson, Research Assistant, Wendy Ginsberg, Analyst in American National Government. February 26, 2015. “Both the House and Senate are currently considering legislation that would make substantive changes to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA was …
“The largest U.S.-based bank holding companies continue to build their capital levels and to strengthen their ability to lend to households and businesses during a period marked by severe recession and financial market volatility, according to the results of supervisory stress tests announced by the Federal Reserve on Thursday. The most severe hypothetical scenario projects …
“Consumer Watchdog today joined 13 other public interest groups in a letter to President Obama outlining the shortcomings of the draft Consumer Privacy Bill Of Rights Act and pledging to work with the Administration and Congress to strengthen the “In 2 2012, you released your vision of the founding principles of consumer privacy — the …
Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons, Amy F. Woolf, Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy. February 23, 2015. “The FY2013 Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4310, Section 1037) indicated that it is the sense of Congress that “the United States should pursue negotiations with the Russian Federation aimed at the reduction of Russian deployed and nondeployed nonstrategic nuclear forces.” The …
Legislation to Facilitate Cybersecurity Information Sharing: Economic Analysis. N. Eric Weiss, Specialist in Financial Economics. February 23, 2015. “Data breaches, such as those at Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, JPMorgan Chase, and Anthem, have affected financial records of tens of millions of households and seem to occur regularly. Companies typically respond by trying to increase …
States of Change – The Demographic Evolution of the American Electorate, 1974–2060, Ruy Teixeira, William H. Frey, and Robert Griffin. February 2015. 10 big trends that are transforming America – “Trend 1 of 10: The rise of majority-minority and near-majority-minority states – The scale of race-ethnic transformation in the United States is stunning. In 1980, …
The State of Congressional History – “Periodic assessments of the state of congressional history and the work of federal and archival offices that promote it are of great value to scholars and their work. Fortunately, a panel on this topic at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for History in the Federal Government on …
Kaiser Family Foundation – “On March 4, 2015, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in King v. Burwell, a case challenging the availability of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) premium subsidies in states with a Federally-run Marketplace (including states with a Federally-facilitated Marketplace (FFM) and states with a Partnership Marketplace). In addition to expanding …
“EPIC has filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about Samsung’s SmartTvs. “Samsung routinely intercepts and records the private communications of consumers in their homes,” EPIC wrote. EPIC detailed widespread consumer objections and charged that “privacy notices” do not diminish the harm to American consumers. In setting out the privacy violations, EPIC cited the …
