Contacting Members of Congress
The University of Michigan Library Documents Center maintains a simple but handytext list of e-mail addresses and web sites for members of the 107th Congress.
BustPatents Web Site
BustPatents provides, “legal resources and tools for surviving the patenting frenzy of the Internet, bioinformatics, and electronic commerce.” The site hosts a useful annotated list of national and international patent resources.
Secret Court Provides Senate Wiretap Ruling
“The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review announced in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it would provide the panel with a copy of what is expected to be a signal ruling on the Justice Department’s request for broad new wiretap powers.” A copy of the opinion is available at: The court was …
Awards for Digital Legislature Sites
The Center for Digital Government and Government Technology announced their 2002 Digital Legislatures Awards. The top honor went to the Arizona State Legislature web site.
California Assembly Kills Financial Privacy Bill
The California Senate, in a 25-13 vote on August 31, 2002, killed the Financial Information Privacy Act (SB 773), “which would require a financial institution, as defined, to provide a specified written form to a consumer relative to the sharing of the consumer’s confidential consumer before the financial institution could share the confidential consumer information …
California State Prisoners and the Internet
A U.S. District Judge ruled that the California Department of Corrections must allow prisoners, who have no Internet access, to receive printed copies of documents and materials obtained through the Web.
Making a Case for Local E-Government
This report provides a New York state perspective on the value of e-government initiatives and examples of successful programs.
South Dakota Makes All Forms Available Online
Via the new South Dakota Service Direct Portal, the state has made available over 1,100 forms, by service or category. Users may search for forms and download them, or fill them out online and submit them electronically.
State Department Web Site Links to Republican National Committee
The State Department web site had apparently been providing a link to the Republican National Committee web site, in violation of federal laws prohibiting the use of government resources to promote partisan causes. According to an article in the New York Times, the link was removed on September 12.
Morrison & Foerster Sues Direct Marketing Company
The national law firm, Morrison & Foerster LLP (known as MoFo), with its main office in San Francisco, sued direct mail marketer Etracks.com Inc., an Oklahoma corporation, and Learn2 Corporation, for spamming the firm’s servers with more than 6,500 unsolicited emails.
Arizona Wins Digital Legislature Award
The Center for Digital Government has given its first ever award, in the category of Best Digital Legislature, to the Arizona State Legislature Information System (ALIS) web site, which “allows the public to create individualized bill-tracking systems, among many other features and services. Arizona also boasts a 100 percent usage rate of members with laptops.” …
Department of Homeland Security and Privacy
The two author’s of this article, Jeffrey Eisenach and Peter Swire, are former members of the Reagan and Clinton administrations respectively. They concur on the need for the creation “of a new commission on privacy, personal freedom and homeland security.”