From Page One of today’s WSJ, an article titled, Patriot Act Riles An Unlikely Group: Nation’s Librarians– [subtitled] Fears About Terrorism Clash With Principles of Privacy As Online Searches Surge: “The Patriot Act has generated protests from the left and the right since it passed, almost unanimously, six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: October 2003
Privacy Trust Survey Shows Public Has Concerns
Today the WSJ reported on a the results of privacy study conducted last month by the Ponemon Institute, an organization “dedicated to advancing ethical information and privacy management practices in business and government.” There is no link available to the text of the study. However the article states that its author, Larry Ponemon, “a pioneer… Continue Reading
Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board released Volumes II-VI of its report on October 28, 2003. Use this link to the website where you may access the table of contents and the full text of report volumes I-IV, in pdf. Continue Reading
Public Access to CRS Reports Temporarily Curtailed?
Each year the Congressional Research Search (CRS) publishes approximately 1,000 reports of which the public may have access to several hundred. In an interesting change of policy, Secrecy News reports that access to selected reports previously provided via the websites of two members of Congress, Rep. Mark Green (R-WI) and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT), has… Continue Reading
Southern California Fires
Below I have posted part of an email message sent to law-lib late this evening by one of our colleagues, Amy Hale-Janeke: “The San Diego County Public Law Library will be closed tomorrow, Oct. 28th due to the fire disaster. We were also closed today. For those of you who have not been watching the… Continue Reading
Clash of Financial Privacy Laws
California’s pioneering Financial Information Privacy Act SB 1, signed by Gov. Gray Davis on August 27, is in serious jeopardy of being preempted by amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Congress Is Close to Eliminating a Privacy Law Privacy bill may curtail safeguards in state law Continue Reading
White House Refuses Doc. Request for 9-11 Investigation
AP reports that the White House has failed to cooperate with the bi-partisan commission investigating the 9-11 attacks. This action takes the form of refusing to provide essential documents to the commission despite the threat of a subpoena. The panel is facing a May 27, 2004 deadline to complete its work. According to an October… Continue Reading
USPS Wants to Institute Intelligent Mail
Post Office Wants to ID the Mail: “A small change in labeling requirements for bulk mailings announced Oct. 21 requires bulk mailers to identify themselves on the outside of the envelope with a valid address. This marks the first step in the Postal Service’s desire to create “intelligent mail.” See Embracing the Future: Making the… Continue Reading
Controversy Concerning Amazon’s Inside the Book Service
This link is to the text of an email sent by the Author’s Guild to its 8,000 plus members, voicing concerns about Amazon’s new Search Inside the Book database: The Guild questions whether proper permissions were received from the authors of the 120,000 books in Amazon’s database. In addition, the organization has deteremined that it… Continue Reading
New GAO Report Favors Competition in Cable Market
Telecommunications: Issues Related to Competition and Subscriber Rates in the Cable Television Industry. GAO-04-8, October 24. Highlights. “Competition leads to lower cable rates and improved quality. Competition from a wide-based company is limited to a very few markets. However, where available, cable rates are substantially lower (by 15 percent) than in markets without this competition.” Continue Reading
MIT Students Devise Innovative Music Sharing System Using Cable TV
Today the New York Times reports on two students MIT students who, with the backing of their university, have devised a music sharing system called the Libraries Access to Music Project (LAMP), which they contend will eliminate the contentious copyright issues currently associated with file sharing on campuses nationwide. Their work is financed by Microsoft,… Continue Reading
New Survey Highlights Lack of Gov’t Website Accessibility
Achieving E-Government for All: Highlights from a National Survey, published October 22, by Darrell M. West, Director, Taubman Center for Public Policy, Brown University. More than 1,600 local, state and federal websites were reviewed using the free Bobby Accessibility Test. Several key facts: government data is increasingly migrating to the web; more than 100 million… Continue Reading
