From the Sydney Morning Herald:
The military in Fiji is moving to shut down access to anti-government weblogs after unsuccessful attempts to find those responsible for the sites.
Senior military commander Colonel Pita Driti has told Pacific Radio that access to the sites would be closed down this afternoon.
Archive of entries posted on May 2007
Fiji’s war on bloggers
Inexplicable Anomaly
From The Hill:
One special talent of Congress is to sternly slam the barn door closed after the animals have already wandered off. We can see this in the debate over whether to “open up” Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the public when there are already fee-based services selling the reports, and free but incomplete [...]
CRS Director Defends Access Restrictions
From Secrecy News:
CRS director Daniel P. Mulhollan issued a lengthy internal memorandum last month in which he writes:
The reasons for limiting public distribution of our work can be summarized as follows. First, there is a danger that placing CRS in an intermediate position [between Congress and the public] would threaten the dialog on policy issues [...]
Google Shareholders Vote Against Anti-Censorship Proposal
PC World:
A majority of Google shareholders today voted against an anti-censorship proposal that took aim at the way the search giant conducts its business in China and other countries that engage in active censorship.
So, what does it mean when a democratic vote calls for censorship? For those who criticize Google, who should they answer [...]
League Launches Government Transparency Handbook
League of Women Voters Press Release:
The League of Women Voters (LWV) is pleased to announce the release of Observing Your Government In Action: Protecting your Right to Know. This comprehensive resource guide, part of the League’s Citizen Transparency Initiative, provides useful best practices and tips for observing government activities and promoting transparency.
Imminent Closure of the Savanna River Ecology Laboratory
From the Reconciliation Ecology Blog:
The Savanna River Ecology Laboratory of the University of Georgia is about to go under, after 56 years of ecological research, thanks to the Bush administration’s apathy if not antipathy towards science, especially in the environmental arena.
Read below the fold two messages on this issue posted to Ecolog-L this week. And [...]
GPO dives into digital future
From Government Computer News:
The Government Printing Office is ready to test the ambitious Future Digital System, a content management system designed to handle the many documents GPO publishes and posts for the rest of government. . .
. . . The program’s goal is to digitize nearly every federal document published since the birth of the [...]
Open Access and the Progress of Science
From American Scientist:
There’s an old joke about asking the way to somewhere and being told it would be best not to start from where you are. It’s a good way to frame some thoughts about whether our present system of scholarly communication aids the progress of science or gets in the way.
If we could start [...]
Germans advocate Open Access online
From Information World Review:
A group of German universities have launched a web site to advocate the adoption of open access (OA) publishing. Open-access.net is backed by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and managed by the universities of Bielefeld, Goettingen, Constance and the Free University of Berlin.
By creating the German language platform the group hope [...]
When should a secret not be a secret?
From the BBC:
Two men have been jailed for breaking the Official Secrets Act by leaking a confidential memo between President Bush and Tony Blair. The content of the memo has never officially been made public.
The memo at the heart of the trial in Court Five of the Old Bailey will remain secret for many years [...]