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From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, January 11, 2004: Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe – Perceptions of Partisan Bias Seen as Growing, Especially by Democrats From the Summary of Findings: “The 2004 presidential campaign is continuing the long-term shift in how the public gets its …
The Third Annual Report on The Home Pages of the UK’s Top 100 Companies’ Corporate Web Sites ($$) [Link]: “…around a third of Britain’s top companies have been consistently poor performers, over a number of years, and appear “not to get it” when it comes to their corporate Web sites.” The Reed Elsevier site ranking …
Internet Auction Con Artists Settle FTC Charges, Face Jail Time – Defendants Were Serial Identity Thieves: FTC v. James D. Thompson and Susan B. Germek (Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division), Case No. 0C3 2541; FTC File No. 032 3096
“The U.S. District Court in New Jersey yesterday joined the growing ranks of federal courts that require lawyers to file all civil case pleadings in electronic format, making it easier for the public and press to obtain copies of them…According to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, the District of New Jersey becomes the 36th …
The Open Thumbshots Project is a free resource used by a number of sites, now including the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), that uses the application to provide screen shot previews of over 3 million sites prior to visiting them. Example: Open Directory News – scroll down the screen to see the thumbnail screen shots.
GSA audit confirms misuse of funds: “Employees at General Services Administration offices in three regions of the country misused 8(a) sole-source contracting authority, authorized work outside the scope of contracts and spent more than $133 million in funding earmarked for information technology inappropriately, according to a report released [January 8] from GSA’s inspector general.” Audit …
Lieberman Unveils Plan To Protect Privacy, Break Down Bush’s Wall Of Secrecy: “Joe Lieberman became the first candidate to release a comprehensive plan for protecting people’s personal privacy and breaking down George Bush’s wall of secrecy around his Administration. Among other steps, Lieberman would double the penalties for identity theft, get tough on credit reporting …
IRS will track Free File taxpayers: Even as the IRS encourages taxpayers to take advantage of the ease and efficiency of e-filing, news that information gathered from these services will be monitored by the agency has resulted in negative responses from industry representatives and privacy advocates.
VeriSign to implement change to .com and .net: “Some networking experts fear the change could cause Internet traffic problems. VeriSign Inc. is planning a change to a Domain Name System component responsible for coordinating updates to the .com and .net domains throughout the DNS, according to a company spokesman.” VeriSign’s dead certificates ‘knocked out Norton’ …
Senators Lieberman and Corzine called for the Library of Congress to expand content and provide enhanced search features on Thomas, the free, searchable database of federal legislation. [Link]
From Secrecy News, a copy of a Congressional Research Service internal memo from December 2003 that addresses the escalating controversy on restrictions to public dissemination of CRS reports.
Treasury breaks word on e-mail anonymity: “The Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) plans to publish nearly 10,000 e-mail addresses on the Web, violating its privacy promise to Americans who used e-mail to comment on a government proceeding.”