I have a bunch of tabs open of boingboing posts that I want to share, but it's been such a hectic day (I invited Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate party to give a talk today at my library!) so I think I'll just list them and let you all sort them out.

• Peer to Patent: keeping the Patent Office honest with community review
• Amazon will distribute the US National Archive on DVD
• NY Public Library giving away free public domain books-on-demand
• Pirate Party founder at Stanford (I'll post the video soon. W00t!)
• Bruce Schneier interviews TSA head Kip Hawley
• Data mining prompted fight over NSA domestic spying program (here's a login-free link to the NYT article)

Now if THIS doesn't convince you that a) blogs are incredibly useful tools for disseminating information and b) boingboing should be read several times a day as a matter of course then I don't know what will convince you. Happy reading :-)

• Florida voting machines can be hacked, by Marc Caputo, Miami Herald, Jul. 31, 2007.

Reversing an unofficial policy of denial, the Florida Secretary of State's office has conducted an elections study that confirmed Tuesday what a maverick voting chief discovered nearly two years ago: Insider computer hackers can change votes without a trace on Diebold optical-scan machines.

See also
Lunchtime listen: "Hacking democracy"

Most vote machines lose test to hackers (California)

This documentary exposes the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. The film follows investigative journalist Bev Harris as she investigates the security and accuracy of electronic voting systems. It's 1hr 22 minutes so perhaps this will be 2 lunchtime listens.

According to the Future Digital System blog, FDSys is ingesting a full run of Statutes at Large from the Library of Congress.

The scanned files take up 1.4TB worth of storage space and "The next step is for GPO to assess the content and determine whether the content complies with GPO specifications and create access derivatives (including OCR text) of the content."

People who are considering LOCKSS boxes to store federal content shouldn't blanch at the 1.4TB figure for Statutes at Large. Generally speaking, scanned files (which are images) are much larger than born digital content. For example, GPO deposited a year's worth of 10 Federal born-digital e-journals during their LOCKSS pilot. These 10 "journal-years"" worth of content took up 900MB or roughly 0.9 GB. At that rate, we could have harvested these 10 journals for over 250 years before filling up our 250GB hard drive. Of course, we'd need to upgrade our hard drives well before that.

Having said that, it will be interesting to see what sort of uses that GPO can put this material to.

A new article from Ars Technica:

Deep packet inspection meets 'Net neutrality, CALEA
By Nate Anderson | Published: July 25, 2007 - 11:10PM CT

Details the promise and peril of a new technology called "Deep Packet Inspection." On the plus side large-scale deployment of this technology might well be able to make large scale denial of service attacks a thing of the past and provide robust virus protection to all.

As this article indicates, this comes with a downside:

Looking this closely into packets can raise privacy concerns: can DPI equipment peek inside all of these packets and assemble them into a legible record of your e-mails, web browsing, VoIP calls, and passwords? Well, yes, it can. In fact, that's exactly what companies like Narus use the technology to do, and they make a living out of selling such gear to the Saudi Arabian government, among many others.

According to the article, this technology can also allow ISPs to determine who can access what, as shown by this example from Great Britain:

What that means in this is that you pay by the gigabyte and by the service. Plans start at £9.99 (around $20) a month for just 1GB of data, though use after 10 PM appears not to count for this quota. The lowest price tier also does not support gaming and places severe speed controls on FTP and P2P use (allowing only 50Kbps at peak periods). Plus.net says that the lowest tier will not work adequately with online games or corporate VPNs. Paying £29.99 (around $60) a month provides 40GB of data transfer and fast P2P and FTP speeds, along with 240 VoIP minutes from the company. All of these tiers feature downloads speeds of up to 8Mbps.

As Congress and the Government Printing Office insist on moving from a custody model (libraries have publications housed locally) to an access model (we link to the Future Digital System), librarians have an obligation to consider what will happen to users if we move from our current net neutrality to a model facilitated by the software described above. Do we think its ok for the government to have a complete record of who is accessing what publications? Are we prepared to turn users away when our ISP informs us that our monthly download limit has been reached? What happens when GPO reaches its Internet quotas in a future world where the government purchases Internet access from private providers?

It doesn't have to be this way. Support Net Neutrality. Educate yourself about digital library technologies and help build the geographically distributed federal depository library system of the future.

Thanks to the folks at Current Cites for pointing out this article.

Things are changing. The old ways of thinking about "government information" are becoming obsolete at Internet Speed. Check out this:

• Dick Durbin embraces community to help draft broadband legislation. David All, July 31, 2007.
  "I'm a Republican, so I must say I was somewhat shocked when I heard that
  Democratic Senator Dick Durbin was going to be posting at the popular
  conservative outpost, Redstate, about how best to write legislation for a
  national broadband strategy. But he has....[I]sn't it great that citizens now have the same access to the process as the lobbyists?"
• Legislation 2.0: A conversation with RedState. Dick Durbin, July 31, 2007.YouTube
  "I think this is a unique experiment in transparent government and an
  opportunity to demonstrate the democratic power of the internet. If we¹re
  successful, it could become a model for the way legislation on health care,
  tax policy or education is drafted in the future."
• What should we include in our national broadband strategy?, Dick Durbin, Redstate.

• Amazon to Copy and Sell Archives' Footage, by Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post July 31, 2007 pC01.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has a new agreement with Amazon.com to reproduce and sell copies of thousands of historic films from NARA's collections. Unlike the controversial deal that the Smithsonian made with Showtime, which gave Showtime "semiexclusive" rights to Smithsonian content, the NARA deal with Amazon is "non-exclusive." NARA will get a digitized "preservation copy" of content that CustomFlix processes.

This is surely a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we'll have better access to more content for more people and NARA gets some digital conversion done.

On the other hand, It is not yet clear which content will be made more accessible and which will not. Almost certainly, we'll see a preference for that which has commercial value rather than scholarly value. In addition, "access" will be for a fee and not free and, presumably, the fees will not be based on "cost recovery" but on profit.

Nina Gilden Seavey, an Emmy-winning filmmaker and director of the Documentary Center at George Washington University notes the reason for this kind of outsourcing and commercialization.

"Ultimately, the accessibility of the collections and the maintenance of the collections has become such a huge burden on the federal government, the question is how to provide some sort of self-sustaining mechanism for use of these collections."

This deal provides one vision of how to provide accessibility and maintenance. Another path would have the government and libraries taking responsibility to preserve such content and make it freely available.

Now are you worried? On Saturday, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer John Wildermuth, in an article entitled, "Most Vote Machines lost test to hackers", described how teams of computer security experts (aka "hackers") hired by the state were able to crack every model of voting machine that they tested -- including Sequoia, Hart InterCivic and Diebold. The UC's report/document dump is now on the CA Secretary of State's site.

This obviously has national implications. Last week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey advanced H.R. 811, the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007," which amends the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot.

State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California’s voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems’ electronic functions, according to a University of California study released Friday. The researchers “were able to bypass physical and software security in every machine they tested,” said Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who authorized the “top to bottom review” of every voting system certified by the state.

BlackBoxVoting.org posted an open letter to CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen in which BBV board member Jim March said, "Please consider taking more aggressive action. Decertify everything, citing the obvious failure of Federal oversight as the primary cause." Feel free to contact California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen and let her know what you think of electronic voting machines.

twitter.com/HouseFloor has live updates from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, updated every five minutes with any new information from:
clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.html .

This is in beta testing mode...

What the New York times called the "banal bureaucracy of government information" is the day-to-day responsibility of government information professionals. In the last few years, we've seen more and more cases of the government hiding some of the most useful "banal" information. Here is the most recent example:

• U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports by Noam N. Levey and Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007.

As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

...The change, a State Department spokesman said, reflects a technical decision by reconstruction officials in Baghdad...

Today Creative Commons -- a non-profit organization founded by Laurence Lessig devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others through copyright reform and the Creative Commons license -- announced ccLearn, a new division devoted to promoting the use of freely copyable materials for classrooms and education. The idea is that in order for Web technologies to truly have a revolutionary impact on education, there needs to be the development of "open educational resources (OER), which in their fullest form should be free, accessible, authoritative, and derivable." Makes perfect sense, no?

Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

• With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.
• With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.
• With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

[Thanks BoingBoing!]

What a great idea! Karl Fogel, an open-source software developer, writer and activist for copyright reform had this to say in a recent New York Times article:

Karl Fogel, president of the Subversion Corporation, which produces open-source version control software, He sees its power to shape public behavior.

Think of what version control software could mean for the Congress, he was quoted as saying recently at Tim O’Reilly’s blog . If bills were created under a system where strike-throughs and additions were carefully tracked, the public would know which legislator made which change to a proposed piece of legislation as it made its way through the Capitol.

At last, there would be transparency in the legislative process. Best-case scenario, it would shame legislators from inserting language against the public interest and only meant to reward political contributors; at worst, it would make such insertions public and allow the voters to punish the politicians who made them.

"Crossing Out, for Emphasis" by Noam Cohen. NYT 7/23/07.

Proving that everything old is new again in terms of information restriction, I came across this title from my federal depository's shelves:

Hearing on sensitive but not classified information : Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Thursday, May 28, 1987
by United States. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.

I thought this part of the introduction was interesting reading:

The difference of opinion was over the means to protect this information. In general, the library and information science communities felt that sensitive material should be classified in order to relieve these communities of the burden of limiting access to information and determining which information should not be made available to foreign nationals or governments.

In general, the government and the defense establishment would prefer that the library and information communities exercise a degree of judgement in releasing sensitive data to foreign nationals in order to slow up the flow of valuable technological and other information to the East Bloc. Classifying much of this information would take time and expense for all concerned, as well as limiting the flow of sensitive information to all Americans.

In my view the information flowing to the Eastern Bloc couldn't have been that useful since the Warsaw Pact imploded barely two years after this hearing.

In this hearing, Sandra K. Peterson of Yale University represented the ALA Government Documents Roundtable (GODORT). Her testimony begins on page 41 of the hearing proceedings.

Time constraints keep me from giving you most of Ms. Peterson's testimony, but a key point was that the government's proposed definition of "Sensitive but unclassified" was so broad that GODORT believed "Much of the information that the federal government collects compiles, produces, publishes and disseminates falls within these definitions."

Towards the end of her prepared testimony, Ms. Peterson emphasized GODORT's basic position which I believe they hold today. I know we do at FGI:

In summary, GODORT believes that unclassified government information of all formats should be accessible by the American public.

Hear, Hear!

Now if we could just make the SBU concept go away. Seems like there is more work to do.

This is a really interesting article, particularly for those who have GIS or data mixed in with their government information responsibilities.

• Taking it to the streets by Patrick Marshall, GCN 07/23/07

With the geoWeb, however, the federal government has found itself with two major roles from the get-go. First, federal agencies are providing much of the data behind the geoWeb explosion. Second, government is finding the geoWeb to be an effective way to deliver information directly to citizens via its own Web applications.

Don't miss the sidebars:

• Candid cameras
• Exploring the geoWeb

Diplomats take a shine to Wikipedia-like app

In the latest issue of the Federal Depository Library Program's Administrative Notes, there is this item:

Library Services and Content Management Update
Remarks by Richard G. Davis
Acting Superintendent of Documents
Director, Library Services and Content Management

At the Federal Documents Task Force Meeting
ALA Annual Conference
Saturday, June 23, 2007

Among other issues, Mr. Davis talks about the no-fee access to government information:

GPO Access – No Fee Access

I also want to emphasize that GPO’s commitment to provide the public with no-fee access to Government information through the FDLP, including GPO Access, remains the same. GPO will not allow access to content available through GPO Access to be restricted, diminished, or based on user fees for the FDLP. The public will be able to continue to print and download this information through the FDLP without restriction into the future.

While we at FGI greatly respect the 150+ year tradition of no-fee access and while we believe that Mr. Davis is sincere in his commitment, he cannot bind Congress or future GPO leadership. Free access (leaving aside NTIS and other cost recovery bits) is Congressional and GPO policy today, but only future leadership can determine policy in the future. Whatever access scheme is available in 2095, Ric Davis won't have put it into place.

While GPO cannot guarantee permanent no-fee public access by simple decree, it stands at a crossroads where it can either facilitate no-fee access or make it possible for future leadership to institute a pay per view model. If GPO were to work with the library community and deposit non-DRM digital publications based on selection profile, those publications would remain available for access and preservation no matter what future GPO policy was. A future Congress and GPO wouldn't be able to successfully order over 1,000 libraries to destroy their files and sign up for a pay per view system.

Where GPO is currently going however, is a centralized model where users have access to a central repository of files. Today that repository is free. It isn't subject to Digital Rights Management. But that's today. Because they have custody of the electronic publication, our free access depends on the the good will of GPO and Congress' unwillingness to change USC Title 44. But given enough time that can change. Especially in the secrecy and privatization-hungry environment Americans find themselves in today.

That is why what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them. Libraries need to step up to the plate, and a Government Printing Office wishing to facilitate permanent no-fee public access needs to help with training, storage estimates and simple section mechanisms like those used to select LOCKSS journals.

The OECD released its semi-annual broadband penetration rankings (Broadband Statistics to December 2006), which show that the United States has fallen further to 15th among the 30 members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

There has been some criticism of the report and attempts have been made to discredit it. (See for example today's Wall Street Journal Broadband Baloney by Robert M. McDowell. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). Jul 24, 2007. pg. A.15; [WSJ subscription required]. Another copy here [Proquest subscription required]).

A report by freepress directly addresses the criticisms of the OECD report.

• 'Shooting the Messenger' Myth vs. Reality: U.S. Broadband Policy and International Broadband Rankings by S. Derek Turner, Research Director, Free Press, July 2007

Excerpt:

Release of the latest OECD report – unlike previous studies -- was met with a fierce response by incumbent providers and the think tanks they support, as well as prominent public attacks by several members of the executive branch.

Free Press found that the major critiques leveled at the OECD data simply fall apart upon closer examination. The coordinated attempt to “shoot the messenger” cannot hide critical failures in the U.S. broadband market. These failures are chiefly due to poor policy decisions that have fostered an anti-competitive marketplace. Our European and Asian counterparts are outperforming us because they have policies that foster vigorous competition in the broadband marketplace, offering consumers more choice, faster speeds and lower prices.

...In 2004, President Bush set a clear goal for high-speed Internet access in the United States...

The president clearly called for not only universal access by 2007, but more importantly he wanted broadband to be affordable. The president correctly pointed out that marketplace competition and consumer choice would spawn greater consumer broadband adoption, ultimately benefiting the entire American economy. This was his policy goal.

In reality, the United States has not met either the goal of universal availability or achieved the level of competition necessary to spur adoption rates and achieve the economic and social benefits the president desired.

But that hasn't stopped administration officials from declaring victory anyway.

It's time for the first of the CNN-YouTube Presidential Debates. It will be broadcast on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/citizentube July 23, 2007. But sadly missing so far in the race that is so dependent on the Internet is any mention of the digital divide.

• Binary America: Split in Two by A Digital Divide, by Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post, July 23, 2007; C01.

As this article says, there are "two Americas online: one that's connected to high-speed Internet -- socializing, paying bills, uploading debate questions to presidential candidates on YouTube -- and one that's not. This is the digital divide, now more than a decade old, a rarely discussed schism in which the unconnected are second-class citizens. In some parts of this so-called Internet ghetto, the screech of a telephone modem dialing up to get online is not uncommon. And with dial-up, YouTube is impossible to use."

Excerpts:

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Less than a mile and a half from the Citadel, the site of the Democratic presidential debate tonight, sits Cooper River Courts, a public housing project. Forget the Web. Never mind YouTube, the debate's co-sponsor. Here, owning a computer and getting on the Internet (through DSL or cable or Wi-Fi) is a luxury.

..."At one level, the YouTube debate shows that the Web has really become a centerpiece of American political culture," adds Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet. "At another level, it also shows that the debate is not for everybody. It's certainly not available to all Americans."

That is especially true at Cooper River Courts, where Tiara Reid, 14, in her jeans shorts and pink striped top, runs up and down the complex asking friends if anyone wants to go the library. Finally her mom, Jossie, who works at a deli, drives her and a neighbor's daughter. With school out and without Internet access at home, the library is the only place where she can go on the Web -- for a maximum of two hours a day.

Here is more on the Freedom of Information Act legislation that is stalled in the Senate. (Earlier story: DOJ objects to FOIA bill, Senate HOLD put on bill) An interesting statistic in this article is that only 6 percent of all FOIA requests come from news media -- most come from private concerns and individuals. The bill in question was on "secret hold" in the Senate until journalists polled Senators and discovered that it was Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, who put the hold on the bill. This article also has this quotable comment: "Don't expect a huge uproar if the bill doesn't make it. With an election coming, data secrecy isn't the sexiest issue. But many of those "Holy cow" newspaper articles you read have their roots in the banal bureaucracy of government information."

• Let the Sun Shine, by David Carr, New York Times July 23, 2007

Excerpts:

We live in a nakedly transparent age. Celebrities live out loud, companies routinely have their business spilled all over the Web and anybody can find out an awful lot about you or me with a click of the mouse.

Not so in Washington, however, where the mechanism for releasing information has all but ground to a halt.

...Almost everyone seems to realize that more sunlight is needed. A bill to bring the government into the same century as its citizens has picked up massive support across a broad spectrum, but has yet to reach the Senate floor for a vote because it is impaled on the obstinacy of a single senator.

...The bills are not intended to open the government kimono any further (this being a very security-conscious age), but simply to make agencies meet the requirements of long-standing mandates.

If you can't reach the above link, another copy of the article is here at Media Channel.

Janet Nocek is director of the Portland library and a member of the Executive Board of Library Connection, a Greater Hartford library consortium that received a national security letter in June 2005. She says, "I Was Gagged By The Patriot Act While The Attorney General Was Free To Tell Falsehoods About It."

• Patriot Abuse, By Janet Nocek, Hartford Connecticut Courant (July 22, 2007).

We were therefore not allowed to testify to Congress about our experience with the letters - which seek information, without court review, on people like library users.

...Unfortunately, we were prohibited from speaking to the public - or even to our U.S. senators and representatives - until after the Patriot Act was reauthorized.

...Reportedly hundreds of thousands of security letters have been sent out. The recipients remain gagged and can never speak about their experience, under threat of a five-year prison sentence. They can never describe the scope and nature of the information they give to the FBI.

...The act was reauthorized without significant change to the nondisclosure provision, which prevents anyone who receives an national security letter from talking about the experience, to anyone, ever.

Lunchtime listens are back!!

This is a video of a conversation between Laurence Lessig and Jeff Tweedy of the band, Wilco at the New York Public Library Thursday April 7, 2005 entitled, "Who Owns Culture?" The video below is Lessig's 20 minute presentation -- and what a fine bit of powerpoint IMHO! I've been looking around for the conversation part with Tweedy, but haven't had any luck. If you've got it, please leave me a link in the comments.

Congress is on the verge of mandating that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are tracked, deadlines enforced and agencies penalized for delays, but the Bush administration and the Department of Justice (DOJ) oppose the bill and the bill in now on hold.

Freedom of Information delays drag on for years But Republicans blocking measure to fix 1966 law By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY, July 18, 2007, Page 4A.

Following easy passage by the House of Representatives and the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, the FOIA fix has been halted. Despite recent reports detailing delays and difficulties in getting government information, the Department of Justice has objected to the new legislation. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is blocking it under Senate rules that allow any senator to place a "hold" on a bill.

Government Information in Legacy Formats: Scaling a Pilot Project to Enable Long-Term Access, by Gretchen Gano and Julie Linden, D-Lib Magazine (July/August 2007) Volume 13 Number 7/8.

The Yale Library pilot project described here has served not only as a means for analyzing and documenting aspects of a CD-ROM migration approach, but also as a launching pad for a community-wide consideration of a large-scale, distributed project to migrate this legacy collection and ensure permanent public access to government information distributed on CD-ROMs.

Government Secrecy: Decisions Without Democracy By David Banisar. Preface by Bob Barr and John Podesta. OpenTheGovernment.org and People for the American Way

Govinfo News says: "OpenTheGovernment.org and People for the American Way have issued an updated version of the 1987 primer on the expansion of executive power and government secrecy. The 1987 version documented the rise at the height of the Cold War; 20 years later, we face the same problems. The book also looks at the opportunities and challenges provided by the advent of digital government."

In the forward, Gary D. Bass of OMB Watch, Thomas S. Blanton of the National Security Archive and Ralph G. Neas of People for the American Way say:

Our three organizations are part of OpenTheGovernment.org, a broad-based coalition that brings together journalists, librarians, academics, individual citizens, advocacy groups, and professional associations committed to strengthening and protecting our right to know. This primer is just one step in engaging the public in a campaign to make our government more transparent and accountable to the public. “We the people” must exercise our rights to strengthen, if not preserve, democracy. We encourage you to get involved by visiting the website (www.openthegovernment.org) to learn what you can do.

There are big privacy implications of relying on private sector companies like Google instead of libraries to index knowledge. One of the biggest problems is that, in the age of the web, search engines don't just index content and help you find it, they also track what you use and how you use it, thus learning more about you. They don't just index what you want to find, they index you too.

An interview with Google's chief executive shows that this is Google's explicit goal.

• Google's goal: to organise your daily life, By Caroline Daniel and Maija Palmer, Financial Times, May 22 2007. "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and "What job shall I take?'" The race to accumulate the most comprehensive database of individual information has become the new battleground for search engines as it will allow the industry to offer far more personalised advertisements. These are the holy grail for the search industry, as such advertising would command higher rates. Mr Schmidt told journalists in London: "We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don't know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google's expansion."

An OpEd in today's Los Angeles Times examines these comments...

• Is Google's data grinder dangerous?, By Andrew Keen Los Angeles Times, July 12, 2007. Still, if iGoogle turns out to be half as wise about each of us as Schmidt predicts, then this artificial intelligence will challenge traditional privacy rights as well as provide us with an excuse to deny responsibility for our own actions. What happens, for example, when the government demands access to our iGoogle records? And will we be able to sue iGoogle if it advises us to make an unwise career decision?

As Keen says, "Google is not our friend. Schmidt's iGoogle vision of the future is not altruistic, and his company is not a nonprofit group dedicated to the realization of human self-understanding." See also: Privacy: "I have nothing to hide"