Archive for the ‘Access to Information’ Category

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Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators

Should an investigator or attorney “friend” a prosecution witness in order to find impeachment evidence? Are there legal or ethical bars to surreptitiously gathering data from social network profiles? Should the intent of the user have any bearing on the formulation of law related to access? These and more questions were stirred up in the mix of case studies presented at the (first, annual?) symposium, Social Networks: Friends or Foes? Confronting Online Legal and Ethical Issues in the Age of Social Networking, sponsored by UC Berkeley School of Law. Yeah, a long title but, hey, these folks are academics. And the case studies constituted just the first panel (”Problems Unique to Social Networking and the Law”) of an extraordinary assemblage of academic, government, activist, policy and practicing lawyers rounding out the 5-panel day.

Much of the discussion concerned access to profile content, – the difference between civil and criminal (where there’s the familiar prosecution/defense imbalance) cases – whether certain information should be private even if it can be viewed by unintended parties. For example, should employers be able to view deleted personal information? No one mentioned the issue of whether schools have a legal right to compel students to turn over their user names/passwords (See: “Area School Wants Access To Students’ Social Networking”). There may be instances when a legal requirement for disclosure would apply. Lauren Gelman, Executive Director, Stanford Law, Center for Internet and Society, raised the question of whether evidence in the online sites could be used, say, in divorce cases, to support evidence gathered by other means. The Deputy General Counsel for Facebook took the position that user’s profile content is private, begging the audience to sue the company to settle issues of access.

See: Social Networks: Friends or Foes

Source: PI Buzz

Posted in Legal, Papers and Presentations, Privacy, Search News, Social Media, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

ALA & ARL Provide Statement on USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Access the Statement (2 pages; PDF)

On October 20, 2009, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Representatives Jerrold R. Nadler (D-NY) and Bobby Scott (D-VA) introduced the USA PATRIOT Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R.3845). The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) believe that this bill contains
necessary and important reforms to the powers created by the USA PATRIOT Act.

Several provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act are set to expire on December 31, 2009 unless Congress acts to reauthorize them. This “sunsetting” provides lawmakers with an
opportunity to revisit the USA PATRIOT Act and address the numerous shortcomings and abuses that have come to light in the years since its passage. The Senate Judiciary
Committee took up these issues recently with disappointing results. Senator Feingold’s excellent proposals for comprehensive reform, which ARL and ALA endorsed, were
passed over in favor of a minimal bill that would offer library patrons some limited protections for their offline activities, but does little else to address deep concerns with
the original USA PATRIOT Act. The full Senate has yet to vote on a bill.

Access the Complete Statement (2 pages; PDF)

Source: ARL/ALA

See Also: ALA: House takes lead with strong surveillance reform bills
You will find links to track the legislation via GovTrack.us

See Also: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
Disappointed in Patriot Act Revisions
Two librarians from Vermont are featured in this report.

Posted in Access to Information, Libraries and Librarianship, Privacy | No Comments »

An Editorial Published In the Guardian: In praise of… Wikileaks

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

From the Editorial

A brown paper envelope for the digital age, Wikileaks.org is now home to more than 1m documents that governments and big business would rather the public did not see. The site – similar to Wikipedia in style, but otherwise independent of it – serves as an uncensorable and untraceable depository for the truth, able to publish documents that the courts may prevent newspapers and broadcasters from being able to touch.

[Snip]

Useful in Britain, it is invaluable in less free societies, such as China, where the authorities play a cat-and-mouse game with Wikileaks’ Swedish webhosts to try to block access. So far Wikileaks has stayed ahead, with technology leaving the law lagging behind. The site exists in a sort of legal limbo, not private, but not yet fully accepted by courts as part of the public domain.

Source: The Guardian (U.K.)

Posted in Access to Information | No Comments »

ALA: House takes lead with strong surveillance reform bills

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

From the Blog Post:

The USA Patriot Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R. 3845) and the FISA Amendments Act of 2009 (H.R. 3846), introduced into the House of Representatives Tuesday, would together systematically reform our national surveillance laws.

“The Senate Judiciary Committee failed to pass a bill that would restore the balance between protecting civil liberties and ensuring law enforcement has the tools it needs to fight terrorism, but leaders in the House have boldly stepped up to reopen the public debate on these challenging issues and address the need for reform,” American Library Association (ALA) President Camila Alire said.

[Snip]

H.R. 3845 calls for reform to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, often referred to as the library provision, by improving the standard for issuing a Section 215 order, providing recipients of Section 215 orders with the ability to immediately challenge both the underlying order and any gag order associated with it, and prohibiting a request for Section 215 records to a library or bookseller for documentary materials that contain personally identifiable information concerning a patron.

[Snip]

“Libraries have been on the receiving end of both Section 215 orders and NSLs, and we know reform is needed to these broad, sweeping policies in order to prevent the abuse of these tools and to protect innocent Americans from the unwarranted surveillance, collection and retention of their personal information,” Alire said.

Read the Complete Blog Post

Source: American Library Association District Dispatch

See Also: Track the Legislation (Free) Using the Powerful GovTrack.us.

+ Track H.R. 3845 (Note the Numerous Tracking Options on the Right Side of the Page)

+ Track H.R. 3846

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Privacy | No Comments »

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Disappointed in Patriot Act Revisions

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

From the Interview:

([Bob] Kinzel, [Reporter, Vermont Public Radio] The controversy started when [Senator Patrick] Leahy [D-VT] offered a second version of the bill that didn’t include all of the protections of his first plan. He says he did this because the stronger provisions received very little support in his committee. When the changes were adopted, the Library Association withdrew its support for the legislation.

Senator Sanders says he doesn’t care for the changes either:

(Sanders) “I’m not happy with the language as it currently stands.”

([Bob] Kinzel, [Reporter, Vermont Public Radio] Sanders says it’s possible to fight terrorists and protect civil liberties.

(Sanders) “I would also hope that everybody in this country respects the Constitution of this nation and that you don’t go on fishing expeditions and tapping people’s phones or securing the books that they’re reading or going into the websites that they are looking at without evidence that you have reason to believe that they are involved in terrorist activities. That’s what the issue is.”

Also interviewed are:

+ Trina Magi, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Library Associate Professor at the University of Vermont.

+ Gail Weymouth, Chairperson, Intellectual Freedom Committee, Vermont Library Association and Library Direct, Sherburne Memorial Library, Killington, VT.

+ Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT)

Much More of the Report via the Transcript or Listen Online/Download the Complete Report.

Source: Vermont Public Radio

Posted in Access to Information, Privacy | No Comments »

Consumer Data Broker ChoicePoint Failed to Protect Consumers’ Personal Data, Left Key Electronic Monitoring Tool Turned Off for Four Months

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Consumer Data Broker ChoicePoint Failed to Protect Consumers’ Personal Data, Left Key Electronic Monitoring Tool Turned Off for Four Months

ChoicePoint, Inc., one of the nation’s largest data brokers, has agreed to strengthened data security requirements to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company failed to implement a comprehensive information security program protecting consumers’ sensitive information, as required by a previous court order. This failure left the door open to a data breach in 2008 that compromised the personal information of 13,750 people and put them at risk of identify theft. ChoicePoint has now agreed to a modified court order that expands its data security assessment and reporting duties and requires the company to pay $275,000.

In April 2008, ChoicePoint (now a subsidiary of Reed Elsevier, Inc.) turned off a key electronic security tool used to monitor access to one of its databases, and for four months failed to detect that the security tool was off, according to the FTC. During that period, an unknown person conducted unauthorized searches of a ChoicePoint database containing sensitive consumer information, including Social Security numbers. The searches continued for 30 days. After discovering the breach, the company brought the matter to the FTC’s attention.

The FTC alleged that if the security software tool had been working, ChoicePoint likely would have detected the intrusions much earlier and minimized the extent of the breach. The FTC also alleged that ChoicePoint’s conduct violated a 2006 court order mandating that the company institute a comprehensive information security program reasonably designed to protect consumers’ sensitive personal information.

+ United States of America (for the Federal Trade Commission) v. ChoicePoint Inc.

Source: Federal Trade Commission

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Industry, Legal, Privacy, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

CIA’s Venture Capital Arm, In-Q-Tel, Invests in Social Web Monitoring Firm

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Noah Shachtman, in a Wired exclusive, “U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets,” discusses the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, investing in a company named Visible Technologies that monitors the social web. He also reports that the CIA is using Visible’s service. Here’s the news release from Visible.

Schatman Writes:

It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords,

It’s important to know what the CIA is up to and this article does a good job providing that info.

The rest of the article (worth reading) offers more about what Visible does; comments from Steven Aftergood, editor of Secrecy News; and more about the investment and In-Q-Tel in general.

Source: Wired

Can you name another company that received funding from In-Q-Tel? That’s right, Keyhole Corp. And of course we all know that Keyhole was acquired by Google in 2004 and became Google Earth and used with other Google Map services.

+ In-Q-Tel Invests in Keyhole (June 25, 2003)
+ Google Acquires Keyhole (October 27, 2004)
+ In-Q-Tel Sells 5,636 Shares of Google (November 14, 2005)

The acquisition was reported in many places including the Washington Post, The Register, and InternetNews.com.

Here’s the Keyhole Inc. home page a couple of weeks before the Google acquisition. (via Internet Archive)

Could Visible Technologies and what they offer be ripe for a Google purchase? We know Google is in acquisition mode. Something to think about.

Posted in Access to Information, Open Source Intelligence, Social Media, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Personal Financial Records found in Dumpster

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Personal financial records found in Dumpster

Authorities from both the Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office are looking into how files containing private financial information ended up in two Dumpsters.

The owner of a hair salon, Claudia Dozier, discovered the documents as she was taking out the trash behind her business, Hair Visions Salon, south of Temple Terrace. Dozier called a television reporter, who determined that they were mortgage applications belonging to Creative Financial Services of Tampa Bay Inc., a mortgage lending company.

Source: St. Petersburg Times

Posted in Privacy, Search News | No Comments »

Cool! Revelations from the Russian Archives: Exhibit Publications from the Library of Congress

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From the Web Site:

With the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, ownership of the huge archival legacy of the entire Soviet period (both of the government of the USSR and of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), located in large centralized archives in Moscow and Leningrad, passed to the now-independent Russian Federation. Russian archivists turned to American colleagues, including Librarian of Congress James Billington, in early 1992 to request assistance in declassifying and organizing the formerly secret and inaccessible party archives.

In exchange for assistance and advice offered by Americans, including the Library of Congress, the new Russian Commission on Archives offered the Library of Congress the remarkable opportunity to exhibit in Washington original, formerly top-secret, documents from the Communist Party archives. The exhibit, termed “Revelations from the Russian Archives,” was the first of the Library’s exhibits to be put online, in the very early days of the Internet. The exhibit opened in June 1992 with a symposium of Russian and American historians, librarians, and archivists presenting views on the significance of the epochal changes occurring since the then-recent collapse of the USSR and the consequences of these changes for archival documents from the entire Soviet period, 1917-1991.

IIn 1997 the Library published Revelations from the Russian Archives: Documents in English Translation, a compendium of translations of all the documents in the exhibit. This richly illustrated book presents 343 documents on a broad range of subjects with commentary to make their significance clear.

The three publications digitized here were published at the time of the June 1992 exhibit at the Madison Gallery of the Library of Congress’ Madison Building. They detail the items shown in the exhibit and present a summary of the symposium of scholars discussing the documents.

+ Access the Revelations from the Russian Archive

+ Revelations from the Russian Archives: A Report from the Library of Congress (Page Images, View Online) ||| (70 pages; PDF)

+ Revelations from the Russian Archives: a Checklist (Page Images, View Online) ||| (32 pages; PDF)

Source: Library of Congress

Posted in Access to Information, Archives and Special Collections, History | No Comments »

Access to Information: California County Hoarding Map Data Ordered to Pay $500,000

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From the Article:

A California county’s three-year battle to prevent a nonprofit group from obtaining public mapping data has ended disastrously for the county after it was ordered by a court to pay the group $500,000 in legal costs.

Last February, Santa Clara County, the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, was ordered to hand over the public records to the California First Amendment Coalition for a minimal duplication fee after initially trying to charge $250,000 for the data and then appealing to the federal government to designate the data a national security secret that couldn’t be released. This week the county paid out to the coalition twice the amount in legal fees that it had once hoped to rake in as profit for the data.

[Snip]

In 2006, the coalition used the state’s sunshine law to ask for a digital, data-rich map compiled by the county. Called a geographic information system, or GIS, parcel basemap database, the map shows the boundaries of 450,000 real estate parcels in Silicon Valley, along with overlaid aerial photos, street addresses and other data.

The county demanded $250,000 for the information, along with a signed nondisclosure agreement asserting that the coalition wouldn’t redistribute it, even though other California counties provide the same data for free or charge a minimal duplication fee.

Source: Wired

Posted in Access to Information, Geographic, Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »

A Connecticut Public Library Being Urged Not to Carry Book

Friday, October 16th, 2009

From the Article:

Friends and former neighbors of Dr. William Petit are urging the Cheshire [CT] Public Library to not carry a new book about the killings of his wife and two daughters, but library officials say it will be on the shelves.

Former neighbor and friend Christina Gilleylen says 30 people have signed a petition urging the library not to carry the book about the 2007 slayings in town, titled “In the Middle of the Night: The Shocking True Story of a Family Killed in Cold Blood” by Brian McDonald.

Head Librarian Romona Harten says the library hasn’t received the book yet, but it will be on the shelves because of free speech protections.

Cheshire Public Library Web Site and Facebook Page

Source: AP (via Hartford Courant)

Posted in Access to Information, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Metadata Ethics Opinions Around the U.S.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Metadata Ethics Opinions Around the U.S.

Metadata is loosely defined as “data about data.” More specifically, the term refers to the embedded stratum of data in electronics file that may include such information as who authored a document, when it was created, what software was used, any comments embedded within the content, and even a record of changes made to the document.

While metadata is often harmless, it can potentially include sensitive, confidential, or privileged information. As such, it presents a serious concern for attorneys charged with maintaining confidentiality — both their own and their clients. Professional responsibility committees at several bar associations around the country have weighed in on attorneys’ ethical responsibilities regarding metadata, but there is no clear consensus on the major metadata issues. To help track current views on metadata and ethics, we’ve assembled the following chart.

Source: American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Legal, Privacy, Source File | No Comments »

To Kill a Mockingbird Challenged in Toronto, Ontario (Updated 10/15)

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Word in this very brief report that a parent has asked the Toronto District School Board to remove To Kill a Mockingbird from the library at the Malvern Collegiate Institute (a public secondary school).

The book was published in 1960. The main plot involves a white lawyer defending a black man accused of rape in a fictional Alabama town.

Racial injustice is a major theme in the novel and racial epithets are used in the text.

The Toronto District School Board meeting is Wednesday night.

Source: CityNews

UPDATE (10/15) From The Globe and Mail

An anticipated debate over a parent’s right to object to certain books their children study at Toronto public schools didn’t take place last night, leaving one trustee claiming the others deliberately shut him out of the meeting.

Trustee Josh Matlow had hoped to object to a policy that allows parents to ask a principal to excuse their child from reading any particular book. It’s an informal process that made headlines earlier this school year over a Toronto parent’s suggestion that Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird be replaced because of its language.

Mr. Matlow believes the board should define what “reasonable grounds” it requires before agreeing a student need not study a book, saying it borders on being too “politically correct.” He added a “discussion” on the matter as a last-minute item on the agenda, but Trustee Cathy Dandy adjourned the meeting when he was out of the room. Mr. Matlow suggested she did so deliberately.

Posted in Access to Information, Censorship, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Access to Government Information: Public Access to DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) Documents Restored

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

From a Secrecy News Post by Steven Aftergood:

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) recently deleted the publications web page for its Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, inhibiting broad public access to many of the agency’s arms control and proliferation-related studies. But most of the affected DTRA publications have been recovered and reposted in a new DTRA archive on the Federation of American Scientists website.

[Snip]

A 2008 version of the now-deleted DTRA page is available via the Internet Archive [Wayback Machine].

[Snip]

Whatever DTRA’s motivation may have been, impeding public access to archived public records on government websites is an unwholesome act. So we have taken steps to reverse it. See our compilation of selected DTRA reports.

More in the Complete Blog Post

Source: Secrecy News

Posted in Access to Information, Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »

Vermont: Librarians Say Leahy Let Them Down on Patriot Act

Monday, October 12th, 2009

From the Article:

Sen. Patrick Leahy is finding himself at odds with privacy-protecting librarians in the state — a group that usually has praise for Vermont’s senior U.S. Senator and has often worked with him in the past.

Last week Leahy’s Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve an extension of pieces of the USA Patriot Act, major parts of which have long been criticized by those librarians and others interested in protecting civil liberties, including in some cases by Leahy himself.

[Snip]

“I am feeling very disappointed,” said University of Vermont Research Librarian Trina Magi, one of the most active librarians in Vermont on privacy issues. “I don’t think the bill voted out of the Judiciary Committee comes close to meeting the hopes we had.”

[Snip]

“We are very confident in Sen. Leahy, we know he shares our concerns. I am confident he was trying to get the best legislation he could,” said John Payne, director of library and information services at St. Michael’s College and president of the Vermont Library Association. But, he added, the bill as it came out of the Senate Judiciary Committee “was very watered down.”

The chairwoman of the library association’s committee dealing with intellectual freedom, Gail Weymouth, a Killington librarian, said that the Judiciary Committee bill doesn’t offer very many additional protections for those concerned that the Patriot Act has resulted in a loss of privacy and individual rights – particularly given the reports showing how the provisions have been used.

“We appreciate what Sen. Leahy has tried to do, but it is very disturbing that the Judiciary Committee could just overlook what has been said,” said Weymouth.

“It is being so abused that it is very disturbing,” she said.

Much More in the Complete Article Including Comments from Sen. Leahy

Source: Time Argus

Posted in Privacy | No Comments »

Considerations Around Wireless Net Neutrality: The Few Vs. the Many

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Considerations Around Wireless Net Neutrality: The Few Vs. the Many

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski laid out his priorities for the wireless industry at the CTIA IT event last Wednesday. He wants to:

* Bring more spectrum to market to handle rapidly increasing demand for wireless data
* Remove red tape to allow wireless carriers to expand networks faster
* Conduct the regulatory process at the FCC more openly and on a fact-based, data-driven basis
* Codify and enforce net neutrality with special considerations to wireless

I am sure the wireless industry is welcoming the first three priorities of the new Chairman. They represent a welcome and overdue recognition of the situation we are in – more than 270 million American wireless subscribers and more than 42 million of them using smartphones to access the Internet. While the discussion continues about the need for the codification of net neutrality for wireless, it is very encouraging that Chairman Genachowski has recognized that wireless networks deserve special consideration.

Source: Nielsen Wire

See previous:
+ FCC to Propose ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules

Posted in Access to Information, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0, Wireless Web and Search | No Comments »

New DoD Website Fosters Secret Science

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Steven Aftergood Writes on Secrecy News

The Pentagon’s Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) last month announced the creation of a new password-protected portal where authorized users may gain access to restricted scientific and engineering publications.

“DTIC Online Access Controlled… provides a gateway to Department of Defense unclassified, controlled science and technology (S&T) and research and engineering (R&E) information,” according to a September 21, 2009 news release (pdf). “As defense S&T information advances, so does the unique community to which it belongs,” said DTIC Administrator R. Paul Ryan.

Much More in the Complete Artcile

Source: Secrecy News

Posted in Access to Information, Databases, Directories, and Guides, Government Documents and Political Information | No Comments »

Cancer Data? Sorry, Can’t Have It

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Cancer Data? Sorry, Can’t Have It

Not long ago, I asked a respected cancer researcher if he could send me raw data from a trial he had recently published. He refused. Sharing data would make the study team members “uncomfortable,” he said, as I might use this to “cast doubt” on their results.

I’d heard this before: as a statistician who designs and analyzes cancer studies, I regularly ask other researchers to provide additional information or raw data. Sometimes I want to use the data to test out a new idea or method of statistical analysis. And knowing exactly what happened in past studies can help me design better research for the future. Occasionally, however, there are statistical analyses I could run that might make an immediate and important impact on the lives of cancer patients.
…
Given the enormous physical, emotional and financial toll of cancer, one might expect researchers to promote the free and open exchange of information. The patients who volunteer for cancer trials often suffer through painful procedures and harsh experimental treatments in the hope of hastening a cure. The data they provide ought to belong to all of us. Yet cancer researchers typically treat it as their personal property.

Source: New York Times

Posted in Access to Information, Information Policy, Science, Search News, Statistics | No Comments »

State Initiatives Regarding Electronic or Open-Source Textbooks

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

State Initiatives Regarding Electronic or Open-Source Textbooks (PDF; 560 KB)

A growing number of states are using legislation as a means of enabling the use of electronic or open-source textbooks. This ECS StateNote examines the differences between e-textbooks and open-source textbooks and takes a look at related action in several states.

See also: Exemplary State Online Resources for Students, Career Explorers and Adult Learners (PDF; 60 KB)

Source: Education Commission of the States

Posted in Access to Information, E-books, Education, Information Policy, Search News | No Comments »

Critics: National Archives Lax in Records Management Enforcement

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

From the Article by Aliya Sternstein:

The National Archives and Records Administration on Oct. 2 issued new regulations that provide more information on managing electronic records. The guidance also tries to make the somewhat arcane subject matter more comprehensible through a question-and-answer format.

But some specialists and open government advocates said the problems that NARA and other agencies experience with storing and retrieving a growing number of e-records are due to a lack of policing, not an absence of rules. One measure that would go a long way toward safeguarding valuable information is baking automated archiving filters into the design of a system at inception, rather than later on in the system’s life cycle.

Access the New Regulations (58 pages; PDF)

Source: nextgov

Posted in Access to Information, Archives and Special Collections | No Comments »

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