[SLA-SF] Intersect Alert, June 29, 2006

[Anne Barker]

Freedom of Information

 

DOJ OIG Survey of Access to Information Problems Encountered by Gov't Agencies 

Survey Results on Access to Information Problems Encountered by Federal, State, and Local Accountability Organizations, Evaluation and Inspections Report (107 pages, PDF) http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/e0606/final.pdf

"Accountability organizations such as federal and state offices of inspector general and state and local audit organizations are responsible for helping ensure that government operations use public resources wisely and achieve intended results. As part of these accountability responsibilities, access to government information is critical to conducting audits, evaluations, inspections, and investigations. If accountability organizations face obstacles in obtaining access to records and other information, they will have difficulty performing their important missions."

 

FOIA Facts: The Return of the Backlog

"Like a boomerang, FOIA backlogs are back! FOIA backlogs are the number of pending requests at an agency at any one point in time. Ok, some may argue that they never really went away. However, many agencies greatly reduced the number of cases in their FOIA backlogs during the late 1990s and earlier this decade. For instance, my old employer, the FBI, reduced its backlog from over 16,000 pending FOIA requests in 1996 to just over 2,000 in early 2002. It has now increased, even though I'm not sure of the exact number currently. There are a number of reasons for this increase in backlog numbers. None of them are good, and all point to either inattention by upper level management to effective supervision of their FOIA programs, or intentional neglect of their FOIA programs."

http://www.llrx.com/columns/foia32.htm

 

White House becoming more secretive after leaks

"The Bush administration is becoming more secretive in response to press disclosures about the tracking of global financial transfers and other counter-terrorism measures, said Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff."

http://www.examiner.com/a-158586~White_House_becoming_more_secretive_after_leaks.html

 

Intellectual Property Issues

 

Don't want your work orphaned? Time to consider a visual registry

"Furniture makers are weighing in against orphan works legislation. An article published last week on the Furniture Today web site puts the worst possible spin on the legislation: "The Orphan Works Act promises to strip us of our archival property rights and permit offshore vendors to appropriate our work." Much like their brethren in illustration, textiles and photography, the opposition to orphan works comes back to the same problem: their copyright information is too easily separated from their work."

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/473

 

Creative Commons comes to Microsoft Office

"Microsoft and the Creative Commons on Wednesday plan to release a free tool that will let people attach a Creative Commons copyright license to Microsoft Office documents.  Currently, some Web-based tools let people associate a Creative Commons license with information. But Microsoft is the first vendor to embed a license-selection option inside its applications, said Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons and a Stanford Law School professor."

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6086018.html

 

In Digital Age, Advancing a Flexible Copyright System

"So closely is copyright associated with the phrase "all rights reserved" that some people have difficulty imagining any other system. But an unusual global alliance of artists, scientists and lawyers, meeting here over the weekend, has been working in recent years to forge a "creative commons" that allows artists to decide which rights they want to retain and which they would rather share."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/arts/26crea.html

 

Legal victory for Google in library project

"Google has won a crucial victory in a German court as it tries to persuade publishers that its drive to digitise library books to get at the information inside is not an attempt to smash copyright laws. Scientific publisher Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG), backed by the German publishers association, had asked a Hamburg court for an injunction stopping the American web giant from scanning its books as part of its library project."

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1808770,00.html

 

Orwellian

 

Mine Data not Details

"As new disclosures mount about government surveillance programs, computer science researchers hope to wade into the fray by enabling data mining that also protects individual privacy. Largely by employing the head-spinning principles of cryptography, the researchers say they can ensure that law enforcement, intelligence agencies and private companies can sift through huge databases without seeing names and identifying details in the records."

http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71184-0.html

 

Lawmakers to Crack Down on Data Brokers

"Even as others cited the Fifth Amendment, a former data broker enthralled Congress on Wednesday with a bizarre, behind-the-scenes lesson on how this shadowy industry covertly gathers Americans' telephone records without subpoenas or warrants. Some lawmakers gasped and others shook their heads in amazement during testimony from James Rapp, a former data broker run out of the business years ago by Colorado police."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062100263.html

 

Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror

"Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/washington/22cnd-intel.html

 

New Jersey Director Blasted for Requiring Subpoenas

"Michele Reutty, director of Hasbrouck Heights Public Library and president-elect of the New Jersey Library Association, will face a closed hearing in July with the library's board of trustees over her requiring police to obtain subpoenas before giving them patron records during a May investigation."

http://www.ala.org/al_onlineTemplate.cfm?Section=alonline&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=130653

 

Government Drops Demand for Library Records

"The American Civil Liberties Union today declared victory in their legal battle with the FBI over a Connecticut library group's right to keep patron records private. After dropping their vehement defense of the gag provision accompanying the request, the FBI has now abandoned the demand all together."

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nationalsecurityletters/25997prs20060626.html

 

GOP bill targets NY Times 

"House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records. The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation."

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/062806/nytimes.html

 

Public Policy

 

Library board restores money for Spanish fiction

"The Gwinnett County library board restored $3,000 for Spanish-language fiction to the 2007 budget Wednesday, reversing a decision that prompted cries of an anti-Hispanic bias two weeks earlier. The unanimous vote came at a special meeting called by Chairman Lloyd Breck after the five-member board was bombarded with hundreds of emails."

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/0629gwxlibrary.html

 

Intellectual Freedom

 

House appropriation mandates NIH public access policy

"A measure passed in last week's House Appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services would ensure that research funded by public tax dollars is readily available to the public. The bill requires scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health to submit copies of their peer-reviewed journal manuscripts to NIH's online archive, known as PubMed Central. Those manuscripts would then have to be made available to the public for free on the PubMed Central Web site within a year of publication."

http://www.fcw.com/article94956-06-19-06-Web

 

UK Royal Society tests free access to papers

"The world's oldest learned society will today tear up its 340-year-old business model with the launch of an "open access" journal allowing people to read its new scientific papers free of charge. The Royal Society in London virtually invented the subscription-based system of peer-reviewed scientific journals when it started the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665. But in a trial that will be closely watched by researchers and journal publishers around the world, it will allow authors to pay for costs of publication themselves."

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ec82359e-00c1-11db-8078-0000779e2340.html (registration required)

 

Royal Society charges £300 per page for open access

"The Royal Society is to charge authors £300 per page to use its new open access journal service. EXiS Open Choice will offer authors whose work is accepted by Royal Society journals the opportunity to make their articles immediately available online. Initially authors will be charged a discounted rate of £225 per A4 page, but that will later be increased to £300."

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2159024/royal-society-charges-300-per

 

OA Business Model a Challenge for Public Library of Science

"It seems that open access journal publishing, known as the "gold" version of OA, isn't paved with gold. In an eye-opening analysis in the journal Nature, the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which launched its first open access journals in 2003, is said to be facing a "looming financial crisis.""

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6346148.html

 

Morehouse College to Inherit King Papers

"A collection of Martin Luther King Jr.'s handwritten documents and books won't be sold at auction and instead will be given to his alma mater, officials said Friday. A coalition of business, individuals and philanthropic leaders led by Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin bought the collection for an undisclosed amount, said Morehouse College President Walter Massey."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060624/D8IEB1200.html

 

Elsevier Cautiously Tries a Variation on Open Access

"The world's leading STM publisher, Elsevier, announced this month that it will offer authors the chance to make their articles freely available for a fee. Six journals in physics will offer the option, including Nuclear Physics A, Nuclear Physics B, Nuclear Physics B, Proceedings Supplements, Nuclear Instruments and Methods A, Physics Letters B, and Astroparticle Physics. Elsevier officials say that 30 more journals across other fields also will offer this option in the coming months."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6346403.html

 

International Outlook

 

China blocks search engines of popular Chinese portals

"Chinese authorities have blocked the search engines of two of the country's most popular web portals as part of their efforts to censor the Internet. The search engines at Sina.com and Sohu.com have been shut down since noon Monday. Searches conducted on Tuesday brought up messages saying the sites were undergoing upgrades."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/20062006/323/china-blocks-search-engines-popular-chinese-portals.html

 

UK National Archives merges with government information department

"Just a year after its birth, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is to be merged into The National Archives. The merged organisation intends to become a super authority on government information management."

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2158778/national-archives-merges

 

Blogs test political limits of Internet in China

"A New York Times columnist has created Chinese-language blogs on two of China's most popular Web portals to test the limits of the Internet in China -- but one of them could not be accessed on Wednesday."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062100271.html

 

Syria blocks independent news website: rights group

"Syrian authorities have blocked an independent news website run by a group that promotes free press, a human rights group told AFP. "Authorities blocked the Mashed al-Suri (syriaview.net) site, an independent online newspaper run by the Syria Center for Free Press and Expression," said laywer Mohannad al-Hassani who heads the Syrian Organization for Human Rights."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/23062006/323/syria-blocks-independent-news-website-rights-group.html

 

China Weighs Fines for Reports on 'Sudden Events'

"Chinese media outlets will be fined up to $12,500 each time they report on "sudden events" without prior authorization from government officials, according to a draft law under review by the Communist Party-controlled legislature. The law, revealed today in most state-run newspapers, would give government officials a powerful new tool to restrict coverage of mass outbreaks of disease, riots, strikes, accidents and other events that the authorities prefer to keep secret."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/26/world/asia/26cnd-clampdown.html

 

Internet Access

 

Senate deals blow to Net neutrality

"A U.S. Senate panel narrowly rejected strict Net neutrality rules on Wednesday, dealing a grave setback to companies like eBay, Google and Amazon.com that had made enacting them a top political priority this year. By an 11-11 tie, the Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve a Democrat-backed amendment that would have ensured all Internet traffic is treated the same no matter what its "source" or "destination" might be. A majority was needed for the amendment to succeed."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6089197.html

 

State governments push for Net neutrality laws

"As a U.S. Senate panel prepares for a vote on Net neutrality legislation this week, state attorneys general in New York and California are joining Internet companies in saying that network operators must not be permitted to prioritize certain broadband content and services."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6088164.html

 

Senators adopt Web labeling requirement

"Web site operators posting sexually explicit information must slap warning labels on their pages or face prison terms of up to five years, according to a proposal adopted by a U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday. During a day of debate on a wide-ranging communications bill, the Senate Commerce Committee approved an amendment backed by the Bush administration that proponents claim would help clean up the Internet and protect children online."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6088745.html

 

 

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