Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery With Daily Postings Since 2002
Via FAS: “The National Security Agency has 46 million pages of historically valuable classified records more than 25 years old that are subject to automatic declassification by the end of December 2006, according to a new NSA declassification plan….A copy of the new NSA declassification plan was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by …
Press release: “The internet and email expand and strengthen the social ties that people maintain in the offline world, according to a new report released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. One major payoff comes when people use the internet to press their social networks into action as they face major challenges. …
In advance of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary hearing on Wartime Executive Power and the NSA’s Surveillance Authority, February 6, 2006, the Committee’s Republican Chairman, Arlen Specter, sent a letter on January 24, 2006, to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, listing 15 questions for which he expected detailed responses. The following questions are in the …
A 39 page report from the Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center, titled: Fast Analysis Report (Update to Reflect Category 5 Status) to DHS 1P on Hurricane Katrina, Gulf Coast, dated August 28, 2005, provides detailed estimates of the tremendous potential consequences of the storm on civilians, public and private infrastructure, …
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, January 23, 2006: Ten Best Intranets of 2006. The full report is available for download ($), but the summary reviews highlights of the findings, including the global scope of the projects, the size of the companies implementing successful applications (averaging 80,000 employees), and trends in architectures, navigation, training and use of multimedia.
A Tangled Web woven: At the CIA, what gets put up online–and what doesn’t, by David E. Kaplan [via Secrecy News]: “The CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence is one of the agency’s most open branches. The in-house think tank sponsors studies on how to improve intelligence collection and analysis and publishes a respected …
Management of the DHS Wide Area Network Needs Improvement (PDF, 32 pages – 264 KB) Security Weaknesses Increase Risks to Critical DHS Databases (Redacted) (PDF, 36 pages) US-VISIT System Security Management Needs Strengthening (Redacted) (PDF, 47 pages)
“FirstGov.gov, in concert with private sector partners Vivísimo, Inc., and the Microsoft Corp., has launched the government’s most powerful search engine, one that: Vastly expands the search to include federal, state, local tribal and territorial documents; Increases the universe of government documents from 8 million to 40 million; Searches more efficiently and effectively by leveraging …
From CDT: “Less than a year after the Center for Democracy & Technology made Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports freely available to the public, members of the Internet community have responded by downloading more than 1 million of the informative documents from OpenCRS.com. CDT launched OpenCRS.com in June as a way to provide citizens access …
From askSam, a searchable version of the full text of all of the State of the Union Addresses from 1790-2005.
Additional information and commentary related to January 18, 2006 posting, Legislation Seeks to Prohibit Sale of Cell Phone Records. The legislation referenced, the Consumer Telephone Records Protection Act of 2006 is S. 2178 (PDF). Commentary on the legislation by Anita Ramastry, It’s Time for Congress to Prohibit and Criminally Punish the Sale of our Cell …
NASA: Implementing a Knowledge-Based Acquisition Framework Could Lead to Better Investment Decisions and Project Outcomes. GAO-06-218, December 21, 2005. Highlights. “A standardized, knowledge-based approach would prepare NASA to face competing budgetary priorities and better position the agency to make difficult decisions regarding the investment in and termination of projects.”