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CDT: “The Senate yesterday gave final congressional approval to legislation making “Do Not Call” listings permanent. Without the legislation, consumers’ phone numbers would have been automatically removed from the FTC controlled list after five years. CDT applauds the decision to eliminate the list’s current expiration policy, which would require consumers who want to remain on …
Monthly Budget Review, February 2008: “The federal government incurred a deficit of $90 billion in the first four months of fiscal year 2008, CBO estimates, about $48 billion more than the shortfall in the same period last year. Shifts in the timing of certain payments and receipts account for about one-third of that increase in …
Press release: “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who also sits on the panel, sent a letter Thursday urging Attorney General Michael Mukasey to clarify testimony given to the Committee during last weeks Department of Justice oversight hearing. In the letter, they ask the Attorney General to explain the …
All prior editions (1949-2006) and revisions of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) are now available in PDF on the MPEP webpage.
Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 7 February 2008, J. Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence (46 pages, PDF)
Press release: “More than 15 years after Congress required the federal government to set up a national database to allow car buyers to determine whether a vehicle has been stolen or rebuilt after a wreck, the system is still not in place, three consumers groups said Wednesday in a lawsuit filed against the Department of …
Central Intelligence Agency Freedom Of Information Act Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2007, Unclassified. “For those FOIA cases closed in FY 2007, 80% were closed in 175 days; median response time was 40 days; average response time was 223 days. For those Privacy Act cases closed in FY 2007, 80% were closed in 58 days; …
Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization, A White Paper by Oya Y. Rieger, February, 2008. 52 pp. Published by the Council on Library and Information Resources. Executive Summary: “The digitization of millions of books under programs such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Search Books is dramatically expanding our ability to search and …
Press release: “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced today a series of proposed rule modifications to provide employers with a streamlined hiring process for temporary and seasonal agricultural workers under the H-2A program…The proposed modifications to the rule reduce current limitations and certain delays faced by U.S.employers and relax the current limitations on their …
“A joint project of the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Progress & Freedom Foundation tracks more than 30 pieces of federal legislation that seek to protect children online, some of which pose serious threats to free speech. The reports released today summarize and categorize child online safety bills introduced in the 110th Congress, …
DOD Office of the Deputy Inspector General for Auditing, Contingency Planning for DoD Mission-Critical Information Systems, February 5, 2008 (117 pages, PDF). “The information in DoD Information Technology Portfolio Repository (DITPR) on contingency planning is not reliable on the basis of sample results. We projected that, of 436 mission-critical information systems requiring information assurance certification …
Information Economy Report 2007-2008 (386 pages, PDF): “The Information Economy Report 2008 – Science and technology for development: the new paradigm of ICT, analyses the current and potential contribution of information technology to knowledge creation and diffusion. It explores how ICTs help generate innovations that improve the livelihoods of the poor and support enterprise competitiveness. …