[SLA-SF] Intersect Alert, July 10, 2006

Mon Jul 10 21:11:58 PDT 2006

Freedom of Information

Power Trips Database Goes Live

"More than 25,000 public documents detailing the privately funded travel taken by members of Congress and their aides from January 2000 to June 2005, was made public today by the Center for Public Integrity. The database, which can be accessed at http://www.publicintegrity.org, is the product of nearly a year's worth of investigative research done by Center staff, American Public Media reporters and Northwestern University Medill School students.

·         The House of Representatives' forms are kept in a sub-basement of the Cannon House Office Building, where the public copies are often hard to read, torn and misfiled. It is against House rules to digitally scan the documents.

·         The Senate travel disclosure documents are stored in a computer system in the Hart Senate Office Building, but the records are not available online."

http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0628-08.htm

Frequent Filers: Businesses Make FOIA Their Business

"By far the heaviest use of the Freedom of Information Act comes from the nation's businesses, seeking government records on contracts or for a host of other commercial uses, a new study by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government shows. Often they work through information brokers to mask their own identity. The review of records of 17 departments and agencies showed media use at six percent."

http://www.cjog.net/documents/Who_Uses_FOIA2.pdf

Agencies Are Not Living Up to FOIA Obligations - Report

"On the 40th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) many federal agencies are still lagging in their efforts to comply with the law, according to a report released on July 4. CDT and several other public interest groups contributed to the report, published by OpenGovernment.org. The report tracked the way that agencies responded to a 2005 presidential order intended to improve disclosure of information. It found that many agencies failed to properly respond or are lagging in implementing FOIA."

http://www.cdt.org/headlines/912

Freedom of Information at 40

"Forty years ago on July 4, 1966, Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Freedom of Information Act while vacationing at his Texas ranch. But the event does not even appear on LBJ's Daily Diary, which is the first indication (the dog that didn't bark) that something was amiss on the Pedernales. Documents from the LBJ Library show that the normally gregarious President, who loved handing out pens at bill signings, refused even to hold a formal ceremony for the FOIA, personally removed strong openness language from the press statement, and only agreed to approve the bill after the Justice Department suggested the tactic that has become President Bush's favorite - a signing statement that undercut the thrust of the law."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB194/index.htm

FOIA Legislative History

There's a new FOIA Legislative History available from the National Security Archive.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foialeghistory/legistfoia.htm

Tax dollars to fund study on restricting public data

"The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of sensitive data available to the press and public through freedom-of-information requests. Beginning this month, St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio will analyze recent state laws that place previously available information, such as site plans of power plants, beyond the reach of public inquiries. Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at the law school, said he will use that research to produce a national "model statute" that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that potentially dangerous information "stays out of the hands of the bad guys." "There's the public's right to know, but how much?" said Addicott, a former legal adviser in the Army's Special Forces."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-05-foia-research_x.htm

GAO Reports Address Government Document Classification

·         Managing Sensitive Information: Actions Needed to Ensure Recent Changes in DOE Oversight Do Not Weaken an Effective Classification System, Full-text GAO-06-785 - http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06785.pdf, and Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06785high.pdf

"DOE's Office of Classification's systematic training, comprehensive guidance, and rigorous oversight programs had a largely successful history of ensuring that information was classified and declassified according to established criteria. However, an October 2005 shift in responsibility for classification oversight to the Office of Security Evaluations has created uncertainty about whether a high level of performance in oversight will be sustained."

·         Managing Sensitive Information: DOD Can More Effectively Reduce the Risk of Classification Errors, Full-text GAO-06-706 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06706.pdf, and Highlights http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d06706high.pdf

"A lack of oversight and inconsistent implementation of DOD's information security program are increasing the risk of misclassification."

POGO Calls on Congress to Stop the Department of Homeland Security from Mislabeling Average Information as "Sensitive"

"The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) today urged House and Senate appropriations committee members to demand that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stop designating information that is not crucial to national security as "sensitive." In a letter to the appropriators, POGO stressed that a provision in the House version of the DHS appropriations bill that would change how the agency classifies information as "Sensitive Security Information" (SSI) needs to become law. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office have found that DHS, specifically the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), has labeled even widely available information as SSI to cover up embarrassing information."

http://www.pogo.org/p/government/ga-060702-ssi.html

Federal Government Continues to Fall Behind In Responding to FOIA Requests, CJOG Finds

"The federal government continues to fall further behind in getting information to people seeking public records under the Freedom of Information Act. The backlog of requests, a critical indicator of information delays, rose from 20 percent in 2004 to 31 percent in 2005, despite a decline in the volume of requests, according to a survey of 22 agencies and departments by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government. Had these departments and agencies maintained their 2004 level of processing requests, there would have been no significant backlog. Agencies also said "no" more often-and spent more to do so."

http://www.cjog.net/documents/.pdf

Intellectual Property Issues

Congress Introduces Orphan Works Bill

"After months of negotiations, Congress is addressing a bill to deal with orphan works, which are still in copyright but whose owners cannot be located."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6346417.html

Who's killing Death By Popcorn? Artists worry over copyright legislation as a new film is pulled from Harbourfront program, writes VAL ROSS

"Welcome, once more, to the muddle where creativity and copyright collide. From Peron's point of view, he is defending his company's material from unauthorized use. For their part, the artists say they used material that they had been assured was doomed to the dumpster, recycling it to create a perspective on their community."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060705.COPYRIGHT05/TPStory/

Utah film sanitizers ordered to cut it

"After a bitter three-year legal battle involving Utah companies that sanitize movies on DVD and VHS tape, a federal judge in Denver ruled Thursday that such editing violates U.S. copyright laws and must be stopped. In a ruling in the case involving CleanFlicks vs. 16 of Hollywood's hottest directors, U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch found that making copies of movies to delete objectionable language, sex and violence hurts studios and directors who own the movie rights."

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4026743

Open Access

Microsoft Relents to Pressure on OpenDocument Format

"Microsoft will offer free software that will let Word, Excel and PowerPoint handle documents in the rival OpenDocument Format promoted by Sun Microsystems, IBM and others. Microsoft has been promoting a format called Open XML. Over the past year, the company's rivals have sparked a debate over the two technologies, arguing that documents, such as government archives, that need to be saved for many decades and beyond shouldn't be entrusted to a technology owned by a single company such as Microsoft."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115215216823499185.html

Orwellian

Fox & Friends Co-Host Kilmeade Advocated "Office of Censorship" in Wake of NY Times Banking Surveillance Story

"On June 29, several Fox News media figures suggested that the U.S. government should "put up the Office of Censorship" to screen news reports to determine whether they "hurt the country" or are of "news value," in the wake of a New York Times article disclosing a Treasury Department program designed to monitor international financial transactions."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200606290009

Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say 

"The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=abIV0cO64zJE&refer=#

Invisible Men: Did Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl mislead the Supreme Court?

"It's not within the Supreme Court's power to decide the constitutional challenges brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo detainee whose case will be argued before the court tomorrow, say Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. In a brief they filed with the Supreme Court, they argue that Congress kicked Hamdan's current case out of court when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December. The senators base their argument on the "legislative history" of the DTA-the official statements that members of Congress make about a bill leading up to its passage, as captured in the Congressional Record. In other words, Graham and Kyl cite themselves: in particular, an "extensive colloquy" between the two that appears in the Record on Dec. 21, 2005, the day of the DTA's passage. Justice Department lawyers for the Bush administration rely on the same colloquy as evidence that "Congress was aware" that the DTA would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear "pending cases, including this case" brought by the Guantanamo detainees.  The problem is that Kyl and Graham's colloquy didn't actually happen on Dec. 21. It was inserted into the Congressional Record just before the law passed, which means that the colloquy did not alert other members of Congress to the views it contains."

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2138750

Senators Kyl and Graham's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Scam: The Deceptive Amicus Brief They Filed in the Guantanamo Detainee Case

"The Bush/Cheney Administration has been doing everything possible to keep its treatment of purported terrorist detainees out of the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court. To assist the Administration, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona engaged in a blatant scam that was revealed during the briefing of Hamdan. Senators Graham and Kyl not only misled their Senate colleagues, but also shamed their high offices by trying to deliberately mislead the U.S. Supreme Court. Their effort failed. I have not seen so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon's reign."

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060705.html

Public Policy

New York City Mayor Makes Libraries Permanent Line-Item

"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has agreed to "baseline" funding for the library and two other programs, making them permanent allocations in the city's annual budget, according to the June 28 New York Daily News. In the past, libraries have been a part of what pundits have dubbed the "budget dance," in which the mayor would propose cuts that the city council and library leaders would negotiate to restore."

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2006abc/june2006ab/newyorkbudget.htm

Wisconsin Mayor to Fund Sunday Hours from His Salary

"Charles Damaske, mayor of Muskego, Wisconsin, said in a news release June 23 that he would reduce his 2007 salary by half and remove himself from the city's health insurance policy to provide funds for Sunday hours during the school year at Muskego Public Library."

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2006abc/june2006ab/muskego.htm

10,000 EPA Scientists Protest Library Closures

"In an extraordinary letter of protest, representatives for 10,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientists are asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency's network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research, according to the letter released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)."

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=706

Read the letter of protest from EPA scientists - http://www.peer.org/docs/epa/06_29_6_union_library_ltr.pdf

SF Supervisors Budget Committee votes $480k to open branch libraries on Sundays

More branch libraries in the San Francisoc Public Library system could open on Sundays. That is the effect of the Budget and Finance Committee's action Thursday to place $480,000 on reserve for new Sunday hours at branches that are currently closed on that day.

http://www.sfbayview.com/070506/openbranch070506.shtml

Intellectual Freedom

UIW to reinstate library's subscription to the New York Times

"The University of the Incarnate Word announced Friday that it will reinstate the library's print subscription to the New York Times after cancelling it earlier this week to protest the publication of stories exposing the government's secret anti-terrorism program to monitor international banking transactions."

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA063006.UIW-Times.en.127b026a.html

International Outlook

68 Countries Now Have Access Laws

Freedominfo.org has published a new Global Survey of Freedom of Information Laws for 2006.

http://www.freedominfo.org/countries/index.htm

Internet Access

Congress targets social-networking sites

"The concept of forcing companies to record information about their users' Internet activities to aid in future criminal prosecutions took another twist this week. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, originally proposed legislation in April that would require Internet service providers to retain activity logs to aid in criminal investigations, including ones involving child abuse. Now DeGette and some of her colleagues in the House of Representatives are suggesting that social-networking sites should be required to do the same thing."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6089574.html

EarthLink christens its first citywide Wi-Fi

"As EarthLink launches its first citywide Wi-Fi network in Anaheim, Calif., this week, serious questions arise about whether the company's strategy to build municipal wireless networks across the country will really work."

http://news.com.com/2100-7351_3-6089302.html

Google says bill could spark anti-trust complaints

"Google warned on Tuesday it will not hesitate to file anti-trust complaints in the United States if high-speed Internet providers abuse the market power they could receive from U.S. legislators."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/04/AR2006070400501.html

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