Part-Time Policy Wonk

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...