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  • Breaking Down the Kerry/McCain Privacy Bill
    Published: April 28, 2011
    4/28/2011 Author:  Justin Brookman Consumer Privacy Baseline Privacy Legislation Yesterday, CDT released its top-level analysis of the "Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011, (S. 799) introduced in the Senate by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ).  It is the first comprehensive privacy bill introduced in the Senate in over a decade.  CDT pr...
  • Grand Jury May Be Investigating WikiLeaks
    Published: April 28, 2011
    Source: Secrecy News
    A grand jury has been empaneled in the Eastern District of Virginia to investigate a possible violation of the Espionage Act involving the computer-based acquisition of protected government information concerning national defense or foreign relations.  In other words, the Grand Jury seems to be investigating WikiLeaks. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com reported that a summons to appear before the Grand Jury on May 11 was served on an unidentified recipient in Cambridge, MA. He also posted a copy of the document.  See “FBI serves Grand Jury subpoena likely relating to WikiLeaks,” April 27. The...
  • Organizations ask for the Reintroduction of Legislation to Access CRS Reports
    Published: April 5, 2011
    More than 35 organizations, including SLA, signed letters sent to the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform, and the U.S. Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee Members, asking that legislation be swiftly reintroduced authorizing and encouraging the public distribution of reports that are published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The signing organizations respect the need for confidentiality of CRS support of members of Congress, and do not intend to overstep boundaries. The organizations are see...
  • Landmark Public Online Information Act Jointly Reintroduced In House And Senate
    Published: April 4, 2011
    Today Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) reintroduced the landmark Public Online Information Act. If enacted, POIA would bring the government into the 21st century by requiring the government to embrace the presumption that government-held information, already required to be public, must be available online. Data should be free from the shadows of obscurity and brought into the sunlight of the Internet. The current way information is often made accessible in Washington is that you often must show up in person at a musty repository and photocopy information page b...
  • Save the Data: Thousands Sign Open Letter
    Published: April 4, 2011
    This morning Sunlight is sending an open letter to Congress on behalf of 13 organizations and more than 2,000 signatories that calls on legislators to save online transparency programs from budget cuts. With thousands of tweets and phone calls, we’re keeping up the pressure, but more is needed if we are to prevent these programs from going dark. If you haven’t already, follow the link to sign our open letter or be put in contact with your representative. The cost of defunding USASpending.gov, Data.gov, the IT Dashboard, and other programs is high. These e-government initiatives help the go...
  • SLA Urges Further Hearings on GAO Report of EPA Library System Reorganization
    Published: April 4, 2011
    On 4 April 2011, representatives from SLA, AALL, and MLA sent a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, Chair of the U.S. Committee on Environment and Public Works,  thanking her for her continued commitment to conducting oversight of the reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) library network. Based on the troubling findings in the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) September 2010 report (GAO-10-947), the three associations urged Chairman Boxer to further examine the implications of the reorganization of EPA’s library system. Read Letter.
  • New Leak Penalties Proposed in Senate Intel Bill
    Published: April 5, 2011
    Source: Secrecy News
    The Senate Intelligence Committee is proposing to punish leaks of classified information by authorizing intelligence agencies to seize the pension benefits of current or former employees who are believed to have committed an unauthorized disclosure of classified information. The pending proposal would “provide an additional administrative option for the Intelligence Community to deter leakers who violate the prepublication review requirements of their non-disclosure agreements,” the Committee said in its new report (pdf) on the FY2011 Intelligence Authorization Act. “This option may req...
  • Transparency at Risk in Budget Debate
    Published: April 5, 2011
    Penny-pinching fever has engulfed Washington, with both parties eager to root out perceived wasteful spending. Several proposals look for savings in the government's information dissemination programs. While some of the proposals are carefully targeted reductions, others would slash funding indiscriminately with damaging consequences to some innovative transparency projects and programs. !--break-- Congress Proposes Cuts to E-Government H.R. 1, the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) for the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2011, slashes the budget for the Electronic Government Fund from $34...
  • Documents Obtained by EFF Reveal FBI Patriot Act Abuses
    Published: March 31, 2011
    In yesterday's Senate Judiciary Hearing, "Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," FBI Director Robert Mueller testified about the Bureau's desire to extend three expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act -- PATRIOT Section 215, authorizing secret court orders for the Internet and financial records of innocent Americans; the "lone wolf" wiretapping provision, which unconstitutionally allows foreign intelligence investigators to bypass traditional wiretapping protections and spy on people inside the U.S. who have no link to any foreign organization; and the "John Doe" roving wiretap...
  • DNI Drags Heels on GAO Access to Intelligence
    Published: March 30, 2011
    Source: Secrecy News
    The Director of National Intelligence has prepared a draft intelligence directive on access by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to intelligence information, but it is “shockingly bad,” a congressional official said. The GAO is an investigative arm of Congress that performs audits and reviews in support of congressional oversight and the legislative process.  But GAO access to intelligence information has often been frustrated by resistance from the executive branch, which has sought to strictly limit the conduct of intelligence oversight to the congressional intelligence committ...
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Administrative Office of U.S. Courts Wants Your Feedback on PACER

From AALL’s Washington Blawg:

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) announced on November 2 that it is looking for feedback on PACER through an online survey to assess user satisfaction with current services and generate suggestions for future improvements to the system.

From the UK – Legislation to access public’s texts and emails put on hold

From The Guardian:

Plans for a £2bn Home Office surveillance project to track details of everyone’s email, mobile phone, text and internet use have been put on hold after a consultation raised concerns over its technical feasibility, costs and privacy safeguards.

The Home Office has confirmed that legislation for the project, known in Whitehall as the “interception modernisation programme”, will not be included in next week’s Queen’s Speech and is unlikely before a general election. The fresh delay follows concerns raised by internet service providers and mobile phone operators over the project’s feasibility, and anxieties over who would foot the bill.

From the UK – Government opens data to public

From the BBC:

An ambitious website that will open up government data to the public will launch in beta, or pilot, form in December.

Reams of anonymous data about schools, crime and health could all be included.

Data.gov.uk has been developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the University of Southampton.

It is designed to be similar to the Obama administration’s data.gov project, run by Vivek Kundra.

International Activists Launch New Website to Gather and Share Copyright Knowledge

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL.net), and other international copyright experts joined together today to launch Copyright Watch — a public website created to centralize resources on national copyright laws at www.copyright-watch.org. . .

. . . Copyright Watch is the first comprehensive and up-to-date online repository of national copyright laws. To find links to national and regional copyright laws, users can choose a continent or search using a country name. The site will be updated over time to include proposed amendments to laws, as well as commentary and context from national copyright experts. Copyright Watch will help document how legislators around the world are coping with the challenges of new technology and new business models.

From India – Centre protests ‘copyright violation’ by Google Books

From the Financial Express:

Web portal Google Books’ initiative to create a digital library by scanning printed publications has triggered alarm bells in India, forcing the Centre to take up the matter with the US government. In a meeting held in the last week of October here, senior Indian officials told their US counterparts that the portal would encroach upon the copyrights of Indian authors and publishers.

Revised Google Settlement Offers Minor Changes on Antitrust Issue, No Response on Library Pricing

From Library Journal:

Shortly before midnight last night, Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers released a revised version (PDF) of the Google Book Search Settlement, with some clear concessions to foreign rightsholders (as noted by Publishers Weekly), a vague—and, to critics, fatally inadequate—concession on orphan works. There was also no response to library concerns about pricing of the potentially monopolistic institutional database—an issue that Google representatives say can’t be addressed in the settlement.

The one notable response to criticisms from the library community was an agreement that, as Google representatives had already stated, more than one free public access terminal per library building may be authorized.

Redline version of the Amended Settlement Agreement

Google Book Search Settlement Revised: No Reader Privacy Added

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Late Friday night the parties to the Google Book Search class action submitted a revised settlement agreement to the federal court in New York that is hearing the case.

Unfortunately, the parties did not add any reader privacy protections. The only nominal change was that they formally confirmed a position they had long taken privately that information will not be freely shared between Google and the Registry.

Modifications to the Google Books Settlement

From the Google Public Policy blog:

The changes we’ve made in our amended agreement address many of the concerns we’ve heard (particularly in limiting its international scope), while at the same time preserving the core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rightsholders with ways to sell and control their work online. You can read a summary of the changes we made here, or by reading our FAQ.

Copyright overreach goes on world tour

From the Washington Post:

. . . We may be watching a sequel to the DMCA story today. An international copyright agreement, negotiated under unusual secrecy, could impose a further round of restrictions on our use of digital technology.

This Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, represents an attempt by the United States and other countries to set common rules for violations of intellectual-property laws. The United States hopes to use ACTA to export its laws, but in the process it might have to import others.