Historical Congressional Docs Now Online

Via Research Buzz news that a treasure trove of searchable, historical Congressional documents and debates (with many imaged texts) from 1774-1875 are now available to researchers from the American Memory Project, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation. Included are House bills from the first forty-three sessions of Congress, Senate bills and resolutions beginning …

Subjects: Legal Research, Libraries

Cybercrime and the Courts

Appellate courts around the country are attempting to craft procedures that apply to the use of technology by cybercrime offenders once they leave incarceration. Disparate determinations are being made in regard to such offenders, allowing some to return to regular use of the Internet and e-mail, while others, such as notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, was …

Subjects: Courts, Cybercrime, E-Mail, Internet

New Cyber Security Bill

Senator John Edwards introduced the National Cyber Security Leadership Act of 2003, S. 187, “A bill to provide for the elimination of significant vulnerabilities in the information technology of the Federal Government, and for other purposes.” For more information, see this Government Computer News article.

Subjects: Congress, Legislation

Privacy Groups Press For Surveillance Docs from DOJ

As a result of their October 2002 FOI lawsuit, EPIC and the ACLU obtained over 200 documents related to DOJ surveillance activities undertaken subsequent to the Patriot Act. However, this ACLU press release indicates that the documents were so heavily redacted as to provide little if any relevant information. Examples of these documents are available …

Subjects: Patriot Act, Privacy

Politicians and Spam

The current issue of the Duke Law and Technology Report (2003 Duke L. & Tech. Rev. 0001), has an article by Mark Sweet, Political E-mail: Protected Speech or Unwelcome Spam? This link comes via politechbot.com, where Declan McCullagh has been discussing Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s use of bulk e-mail to promote his recently announced 2004 Presidential …

Subjects: E-Mail, Internet, Privacy

Law Firm's Innovative Use of E-Mail

Tech-savvy Australian law firm Phillips Fox is exploring the use of e-mailing their attorney’s audio dictation files, using smart card technology, to typists in their New Zealand offices, according to their IT Manager. Due to the time zone difference, documents e-mailed in the evening would be ready first thing the next morning.

Subjects: E-Mail

Lessig Continues Eldred Copyright Fight

Lawrence Lessig has not laid down the gauntlet in his crusade to amend the term of copyright protections despite last week’s Supreme Court decision. See his Op-Ed, Protecting Mickey Mouse at Art’s Expense, in the January 18 New York Times, as well as his announcement about a new effort to tackle the issue on the …

Subjects: Copyright

Hollywood v. PlanetReplay TV and SonicBlue

Chad Little, owner of Planet Replay, a P2P service that allows users to share TV shows they have digitally recorded using SonicBlue’s ReplayTV, has issued a press release indicating the discontinuation of part of his website’s service. This was done to protect the privacy of site users as a result of the entertainment industry’s copyright …

Subjects: Copyright, Digital Rights

MIT Spam Conference

A Spam Filtering Conference was held on January 17, 2003 at MIT. The conference was organized by Paul Graham, author of A Plan for Spam (published August 2002), and had 580 attendees. Brief abstracts of papers presented at the conference, including titles and authors, are here. Topics included applications solutions for specific platforms, legal efforts …

Subjects: E-Mail