[SLA-SF] Intersect Alert, July 18, 2006

Tue Jul 18 21:13:46 PDT 2006

Freedom of Information

>From Big Dig officials: Info under wraps

"Reeling from growing outrage over the deadly tunnel disaster, the Big Dig has thrown a shroud of secrecy over previously public inspection reports and other documents that could show who is to blame for the tragedy. Officials at both the state Turnpike Authority and Federal Highway Administration yesterday refused to release even basic information about the work done on the I-90 Seaport connector. . ."My greatest fear is that the federal government is merely rubberstamping decisions by the contractors and then by the state of Massachusetts," Amey said."

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=148110

Who or What Constitutes Media under the FOIA?

"The problem with making a law in the 1970s and then ignoring the fact that technology, commerce and government operations have all changed completely from the time the law was passed, is illustrated by the fee waiver provision for members of the media as set forth in the FOIA. The FOIA grants fee waivers to "representatives of the news media. At the time the law came into being, the news media was either print (newspapers and magazines) or electronic (radio and TV). Today the landscape has completely changed. While news is still produced by the traditional print and electronic sources, it is also produced by an increasing amount of independent internet sites, bloggers and other entities (public and non-public), publicizing their findings on their own websites."

http://www.llrx.com/columns/foia33.htm

Protection of National Security Information

"This [Congressional Research Service] report provides background with respect to previous legislative efforts to criminalize the unauthorized disclosure of classified information; describes the current state of the laws that potentially apply, including criminal and civil penalties that can be imposed on violators; and some of the disciplinary actions and administrative procedures available to the agencies of federal government that have been addressed by federal courts. Finally, the report considers the possible First Amendment implications of applying the Espionage Act to prosecute newspapers for publishing classified national defense information."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RL33502.pdf

Intellectual Property Issues

Gracenote, music publishers in lyrics deal

"U.S. digital entertainment company Gracenote on Thursday said it obtained licenses to distribute lyrics as music publishers mulled legal action against Web sites that provide them without authorization."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400030.html

Microsoft hands copyright control over to publishers

"Microsoft has moved further into searching copyright material with its Windows Live Books Publisher Program. Launched in May, the program will be expanded within the coming weeks to accept submissions in digital form, in addition to the print material currently being processed. This follows Microsoft's recent move into searching copyrighted content within journals with the Windows Live Academic Search service. Microsoft has worked hard to avoid the barrage of criticism Google faced when it launched the Google Books Library project to digitise copyright material. Microsoft's Clifford Guren, director of partner evangelism, Windows Live Books, said: "To be clear, we are only scanning and indexing in-copyright books with the expressed permission of the rights holder.""

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2160455/microsoft-hands-copyright

Open Access

Creative destruction in the library

"Publish or perish runs the adage. The publication of research is the bedrock of scientific careers and the foundation of grant applications. But for many years people have questioned the system's fairness. The normal mechanism is that scientists offer the fruits of their research-often bankrolled by the taxpayer-for nothing to publishers. Those publishers then charge money to people who wish to read their journals. Publishers have been making handsome profits from this arrangement. But change is afoot. Open-access publishing, in which papers are freely available immediately upon publication, is sweeping the dusty corridors. The catch is that the sponsors of research will have to fork out more money to pay for it."

http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=7109062&tranMode=none

Orwellian

New CRS Report on Terror Financing Program's Access to Global Banking Data

"Recent press reports have raised questions about the Department of the Treasury's Terrorist Finance Tracking Program's access to information on international financial transactions held by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a Brussels-based organization owned by banks in many countries, which serves as a hub for international funds transfers. Its records contain names, addresses, and account numbers of senders and receivers of international wire transfers between banks and between securities firms, thus providing a useful source for federal officials responsible for following money trails across international borders. On June 29, 2006, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 895 voicing support for the Treasury program as fully compliant with all applicable laws; condemning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information; and calling upon news media organizations not to disclose classified intelligence programs. H.Res. 904 was introduced to discourage government censorship of the press. This report addresses these issues and will be updated as legislative events merit."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22469.pdf

Public Policy

Layoffs at the Library

"The Library of Congress has notified 29 employees at the Congressional Research Service that their jobs will be abolished on Sept. 29. The layoffs are believed to be the first in the 92-year history of CRS, the division of the library that tracks legislative issues and collects data for members of Congress. The workers being eliminated perform clerical, technical and audio-visual duties."

Scroll halfway down: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900622.html

The Bush Administration's Adversarial Relationship with Congress -- as Illustrated by Its Refusal to Even Provide the Number of Signing Statements Issued by President Bush

"This summer, the Senate Judiciary Committee has held hearings on President Bush's uses and abuses of signing statements. Technically, these are statements by the President accompanying his signing of legislation. In this Administration, however, signing statements have been used as a dodgy practice of telling the Congress to go to hell. . . In truth, Bush himself does not have a clue about what he is doing, for this ploy is being guided by Vice President Cheney's office; I am told it is David Addington leading the way. Though carried out by Bush, it is best seen as another of Cheney's undertakings to enhance presidential power by neutering Congress. And it is working."

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060714.html

Intellectual Freedom

RCUK Releases Long-Awaited OA Policy

"In June 2005, the Research Councils UK (RCUK) issued its draft policy for public comment on Open Access (OA) for publicly funded research. At the time, the RCUK seemed poised to mandate OA across its eight research councils. A year later, on June 28, 2006, the RCUK released its updated position paper, which now only strongly encourages that a substantial portion of its funded research must be OA."

http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060710-1.shtml

McCarthyism and Libraries: Intellectual Freedom Under Fire, 1947-1954

Masters Thesis by Stephen Francoeur, Hunter College, 2006

"This essay will analyze how library organizations, such as the American Library Association, and individual librarians responded to the pressure placed on libraries during the McCarthy era to deal with alleged subversion. Although libraries have always been the target of censors, it was during the first decade of the Cold War that those Americans most fearful of Communist subversion swept up large numbers of their fellow citizens in a crusade to rid libraries of Communist influence. That effort by the self-proclaimed "loyal Americans" to save libraries put more than just library collections under the microscope. The librarians themselves were scrutinized to ensure that they harbored no troubling past or present connections to radical political groups. Pressure groups examined library services closely as well, keeping an eye out for subversion in library exhibits or making sure that controversial books were only available by request, not on open shelving."

http://francoeur.pbwiki.com/f/Francoeur%20MCCARTHYISM%20AND%20LIBRARIES%20essay.pdf [PDF; 452 KB]

International Outlook

Former ambassador posts censored passages from memoir on website

"The government is threatening to sue former ambassador Craig Murray for breach of copyright if he does not remove from his website intelligence material that was censored out of his newly published memoirs. Mr. Murray has posted full texts of all passages the Foreign Office ordered deleted from the book version of Murder in Samarkand, the former Tashkent ambassador's account of alleged British complicity in torture by the despotic Uzbekistan regime. His book contains links to the website."

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1817625,00.html

China gives Web reporter two-year jail sentence

"China sentenced reporter Li Yuanlong to two years in jail on Thursday, adding to its list of writers imprisoned for expressing themselves through the country's expanding but tightly censored Internet. Li, who worked on the Bijie Daily in the southwestern province of Guizhou, was detained in September and charged in February with issuing essays that "fabricated, distorted and exaggerated facts, incited subversion of the state and (sought) to overthrow the socialist system"."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6094022.html

Are Internet Service Providers blocking blogs?

"Bloggers in India are getting together to protest against the sudden blocking of popular Google-owned blog-hosting site Blogger by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Spectranet, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), Reliance Powersurfer, Airtel Broadband and Sify. . . J Grewal, Spectranet's Delhi representative at the National Internet exchange of India, told this reporter that, on July 15, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had sent ISPs a list of sites to be blocked. R H Sharma, senior engineer with MTNL, said the list ran into some 22 pages."

http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/jul/17blog.htm

Internet Access

Bill would limit access to social networking sites

"MySpace.com and other immensely popular social networking sites on the Internet were portrayed Tuesday as emerging playgrounds for sexual predators as lawmakers considered a measure to restrict their access in publicly funded schools and libraries. . . A bill by Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., would require schools and libraries that get federal funds to limit or ban access to social networking sites that could expose minors to sexual advances from adults."

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15016310.htm

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