From the International Herald Tribune:
Two New York inmates challenging a ban on some religious books in chapel libraries at U.S. prisons are trying to take the fight nationwide, asking that their lawsuit be given class action status so it can benefit thousands of others behind bars.
Archive of entries posted on August 2007
2 New York prisoners sue to get their banned religious books back
Digital standards come first – Before agencies digitize their records, LOC group must develop standards
From Federal Computer Week:
There are no governmentwide standards for digitizing books, records, photos, maps and films or other analog materials. But federal agencies are working together to create standards for bringing millions of creative works into the digital world.
Representatives from the Library of Congress, the Government Printing Office, the National Archives and Records Administration, the [...]
The Determinator: Behind the Scenes at the Stanford Copyright Renewal Database: An Interview with Mimi Calter
From the LibraryLaw Blog:
Hot off the press: Check out an interview about Stanford’s copyright renewal database that I conducted with Mimi Calter, Executive Assistant to the University Librarian Stanford University.
Politician blasts Chertoff on spy satellite plans
From Newsday:
A top Congressional overseer has blasted Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for failing to inform him about plans to use spy satellites to gather information for domestic homeland security and law enforcement.
The Aug. 22 letter from House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) chastised Chertoff for not advising his committee about the new program, [...]
DOD ending TALON military database of domestic terror threats in September
From JURIST:
The US Defense Department’s controversial Threat and Local Observation Notice system, or TALON database, will be discontinued on September 17 [press release] but the data it has collected will be retained in accordance with intelligence oversight requirements, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Gary Keck said Tuesday. Keck said that TALON is being suspended because it [...]
Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed
From the New York TImes:
The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.”
The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, [...]
CIA IG Report on 9/11 Declassified by Law
From Secrecy News:
In compliance with a requirement imposed by Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified and released the executive summary of a CIA Inspector General report (pdf) that was generally critical of CIA performance prior to September 11, 2001.
From a secrecy policy point of view, the most interesting thing about the disclosure is that it [...]
North America Local and County Histories to Go Online
From FamilySearch.org:
Thousands of published family histories, city and county histories, historic city directories, and related records are coming to the Internet. The Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library, and FamilySearch’s Family History Library in Salt Lake City announced the joint project today. When complete, it [...]
Calling All Presidential Candidates: Who Will Stand Up and Be Transparent?
From Reason Online:
Meet the only three would-be chief execs who will dare to tell you how the government spends your money.
Presidential aspirants Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) don’t agree on very much.
When it comes to immigration, stem-cell research, abortion, health care, trade–you name it, basically–these three get [...]
EPA CIO wants better search capabilities
From Federal Computer Week:
Although sharing data with the public is important, so is making that information easy to find, said Molly O’Neill, chief information officer at the Environmental Protection Agency.
She said that nine times out of 10 she can’t find what she’s looking for using either the agency’s search engine or Google.