From the Wall Street Journal:
. . . An important note: The records being put online are public, and available – sensitive information and all — to anyone who goes down to the courthouse or county seat. And many of them have already been compiled and digitized by data warehouses, who often make them available to [...]
Archive of entries posted on June 2007
When Public Records Are Too Public
White House Backs Cheney’s Secrecy Stance
From CBS News:
The White House on Friday defended Vice President Dick Cheney’s decision not to cooperate with a government office charged with safeguarding national security information — and denied that Cheney ever suggested the agency be shut down.
Despite objections from the National Archives and others, presidential spokesmen say Cheney’s office is not bound by certain [...]
The Cheney Branch of Government
From Time:
On the same day that the CIA announced it will soon release hundreds of pages of once-classified documents that detail some of the agency’s most closely guarded — and controversial — secrets of old, it was revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney has been resisting even his own Executive Branch’s efforts to find out [...]
Pork Project – An earmark lesson for Washington from the states: shame
From the Wall Street Journal:
It was about a week ago that House Democrats ran up the white flag on earmarks and begrudgingly agreed to live by their campaign pledges to make pork requests public. It was also about a week ago that Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a sweeping new state transparency law, which will [...]
Nature Publishing Group and its partner organizations launch Nature Precedings, a free document-sharing service for scientists
Nature Press Release:
Today Nature Publishing Group (NPG) and partner organisations launch Nature Precedings, a free online service enabling researchers to rapidly share, discuss and cite early findings.
Written scientific communication takes place mainly through journals, but increasingly the web provides complementary opportunities for more rapid, participative and informal communication.
Nature Precedings is a free service from NPG [...]
Library of Congress joins Science.gov Alliance!
Press Release:
The Library of Congress (LOC) recently joined the Science.gov Alliance. The nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and largest library in the world, the LOC serves as the research arm of Congress with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The addition brings the Science.gov Alliance membership to 17 organizations. Currently [...]
Disclosing Freedom of Information Releases
Abstract:
The Freedom of Information (FOI) Acts passed in 2000 in England and Wales and in 2002 in Scotland require organisations, including UK Higher Education Institutions (HEI), to provide requested information within certain conditions. The JISC Information Governance Gateway (JIGG) project aims to provide a single online gateway into information and resources related to HEIs’ compliance [...]
Cheney Defiant on Classified Material
From the Washington Post:
Vice President Cheney’s office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.
Since 2003, the vice president’s staff has not [...]
CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry
From the Washington Post:
The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency’s worst illegal abuses — the so-called “family jewels” documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The [...]
AALL Action Alert–Help Needed Immediately on House FY 2008 Legislative Branch Appropriations bill
From the AALL Advocacy listserv:
BACKGROUND
H.R. 2771, the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act for FY 2008 and its accompanying Report 110-198, were filed late Tuesday night. The recommended amounts for the Government Printing Office are not good.
H.R. 2771 is scheduled for a House floor vote tomorrow and we have just learned that Rep. Jeff Flake (AZ-R-6) will [...]