California AG Sues Company For Sale of Cell Phone Records

Press release: California “Attorney General Bill Lockyer, in the first enforcement action resulting from his ongoing investigation into the sale of cell phone records, today filed a $10 million-plus lawsuit against Data Trace USA, Inc. (Data Trace) that alleges the firm unlawfully obtained and sold wireless customers’ confidential monthly call records.” Related documents, legislation and …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

Website Tracks Censorship in Search Results

“Welcome to CenSEARCHip! This is a tool developed by Mark Meiss and Filippo Menczer at the Indiana University School of Informatics in March of 2006 to allow you to explore the differences in the results returned by different countries’ versions of the major search engines. We currently work with the Web search and image search …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Freedom of Information, Internet, Search Engines

Online Archive of Historical Documents From Institutions Around the World

“ArchiveGrid is an important destination for searching through historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world. Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

Advocacy Groups Support Protections for Blogger’s Speech on the Net

Op-Ed in Roll Call by CDT Officials Supports Protecting Bloggers without Opening Soft Money Loopholes in the Campaign Finance Laws: “H.R. 4900 protects bloggers and small speakers far better than does H.R 1606, and by design, it does not create other loopholes in the campaign finance laws. Those who truly want to protect bloggers and …

Subjects: Blogs, Civil Liberties, Congress, E-Government, Free Speech, Government Documents, Legislation

Judicial Business of the United States Courts 2005

Legal Decisions, Legislation & Forces of Nature Influence Federal Court Caseload in FY 2005: “Caseload statistics of the federal courts are compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts…For the tenth consecutive record-breaking year, filings in the 12 regional courts of appeals rose 9 percent to an all-time high of 68,473…Civil filings fell 10 …

Subjects: Courts, Legal Research

The SAFE Port Act of 2006

Press release: “Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity, and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, introduced the Security and Accountability For Every (SAFE) Port Act today, March 14, 2006.” Fact Sheet, The SAFE Port Act of 2006 WSJ Free Feature: DP …

Subjects: Congress, Legislation

Offshoring of Computing and IT Jobs

Globalization and Offshoring of Software – A Report of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Job Migration Task Force, William Aspray, Frank Mayadas, Moshe Y. Vardi, Editors “This study reports on the findings of the Job Migration Task Force established by ACM to examine the issues surrounding the migration of jobs within the computing and …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

Agency Management of Sensitive Information Questioned by GAO

Managing Sensitive Information: Departments of Energy and Defense Policies and Oversight Could Be Improved, GAO-06-369, March 7, 2006. Full text | Highlights: “…the lack of training requirements and oversight of the Official Use Only (OUO) and For Official Use Only (FOUO) programs leave DOE and DOD officials unable to assure that OUO and FOUO documents …

Subjects: E-Government, Government Documents, Legal Research

Judge Backs DOJ In Google Info Release Case

Following up on recent postings about Google’s legal battle with the DOJ, today District Court Judge James Ware indicated he will require Google to provide user generated search data, but with the caveat that he was concerned about use of such data for surveillance purposes. In addition, the government has reportedly scaled back the scope …

Subjects: Privacy

70th Anniversary of the Federal Register

Press release, March 10, 2006, The National Archives and GPO Celebrate 70th Anniversary of the Federal Register: “…over the past two years, the public has downloaded almost 200 million Federal Register documents each year. During each of the past ten years, the Federal Register has published more than 70 thousand pages of rulemaking documents.”

Subjects: Legal Research