Part-Time Policy Wonk

In a victory for democracy and transparency, the European Parliament adopted Written Declaration 12/2010 (WD 12) on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement earlier this week. WD 12 calls on EU negotiators to ensure that ACTA does not weaken citizens' fundamental rights of freedom of expression, privacy, and judicial due process, and will not require Internet intermediaries to act as copyright police at the behest of the entertainment industry. WD 12 also calls on EU negotiators to make the ACTA negotiation texts public, and to ensure that ACTA's proposed border measures do not interfe...

As I noted in my speech yesterday at the Gov2.0 Summit, Gov2.0 has become a popular catchphrase in Washington today and no organization has been more excited about its potential when it comes to data transparency than the Sunlight Foundation. But now, some 20 months since President Obama made his initial commitment to technology and transparency, we have numerous concerns. One of the core examples that I used was USASpending.gov, which President Obama championed into law when he was in the Senate, along with Sen. Tom Coburn, in 2007. USASpending was created to provide the public with informa...

Copyright trolls are nothing new, and Righthaven is just the latest group of lawyers to try to turn copyright litigation into a business model. What these lawyers have in common is that they seek to take advantage of copyright's draconian damages in order to bully Internet users into forking over money. To anyone who has watched the file-sharing lawsuits of the last few years or the current BitTorrent cases brought by a DC law firm, the Righthaven saga is developing into a familiar, unfortunate story. It also has some especially troubling twists. The basic pattern: Righthaven has brought ove...

Updated below The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has proposed new rules to comply with the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.  The Court reviews government applications for intelligence surveillance and physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The proposed FISA Court rules (pdf) provide new procedures by which telecommunications companies can petition the Court to modify or dismiss a court order or a directive from the Attorney General or the DNI requiring them to assist in electronic surveillance, to provide “any tangible thing,” or to...

The House of Representatives took a step toward greater government transparency last year by posting its expense reports online, but the clunky PDF format makes it difficult to compare lawmakers’ outlays or to pinpoint exactly how the money is spent. The Senate, on the other hand, is moving at a glacial pace and has yet to offer details about its plan to start publishing expense reports online in 2011.

!--break-- The Obama administration released yesterday a list of 26 mission-critical information technology (IT) projects that will receive immediate attention from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) because they "have experienced problems such as significant cost increases or schedule delays." This reassessment process of IT projects, which is part of the administration's reform-minded 2012 budget process and their larger Accountable Government Initiative, seeks to set the programs straight before they waste any more taxpayer funds. When the administration released its FY 2012 budget...

Over the objections of manufacturers, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will launch a searchable, online database in March that collects consumer complaints about harmful or dangerous products.

More than 30 organizations, including SLA, wrote a letter to Representative Edolphus Towns (D-NY), Chairman of the House and Oversight and Government Reform Committee in support of H.R. 6086. The bill will eliminate broad Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that were enacted last month when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) was signed into law. The bill strikes FOIA exemptions that were included in the Dodd-Frank Act that allow the SEC to avoid disclosing records or other information obtai...

Experts from around the world are meeting this week in London to advocate for transparency in development efforts. The Conference on Transparency, Free Flow of Information and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is being held in advance of next month's UN Summit to review progress toward the Goals. !--break-- Established by the UN General Assembly's 2000 Millennium Declaration, the MDGs establish targets for global development by 2015 on topics such as poverty, education, maternal health, and environmental sustainability. The Obama administration has committed to the MDGs and in July relea...

The White House issued an executive order last week to formalize procedures for sharing classified information with state, local and private sector entities.  The new order does not alter or amend previous orders on national security classification or access to classified information, but it should facilitate increased sharing of classified information with non-federal officials. The closest thing to a policy innovation in the new order seems to be a provision that “a duly elected or appointed Governor of a State or territory… may be granted access to classified information without a back...