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The Secret Patriot Act
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says that the government applies a broad legal interpretation of certain provisions of the "P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act" and has classified that interpretation so that it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged.
- There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says, By Spencer Ackerman, Wired (May 25, 2011). Wyden says he "can't answer" any specific questions about how the government thinks it can use the Patriot Act. That would risk revealing classified information -- something Wyden considers an abuse of government secrecy. He believes the techniques themselves should stay secret, but the rationale for using their legal use under Patriot ought to be disclosed.
- The Secret PATRIOT Act and the End of Limited Government in America, by E.D. Kain, Forbes (May 26, 2011). Apologists for the PATRIOT Act have claimed that the innocent have nothing to fear from the government’s broadened powers.
"We can have honest and legitimate disagreements about exactly how broad intelligence collection authorities ought to be, and members of the public do not expect to know all of the details about how those authorities are used," Sen. Wyden said. "But I hope each Senator would agree that the law itself should not be kept secret and that the government should always be open and honest with the American people about what the law means." But the Senate moved toward cloture on reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act provisions and the Wyden amendment, which was co-sponsored by several Senate colleagues, was not permitted to be offered or to be voted upon.Continue reading
Status of the Wayback Machine
Roy updates us on the status of the Wayback machine with an example from the White House:
- Back to the Wayback Machine, Roy Tennant, Library Journal (May 18th, 2011). But that means that any claims to be "archiving the web" should be taken with a grain of salt. Maybe say "archiving the parts of the web that matter" or "ignoring what doesn’t matter so much".
Through a user-friendly web interface, Archive-It partners can catalog, manage, and browse their archived collections using web archiving tools developed at the Internet Archive. Collections are hosted at the Internet Archive data center and are accessible to the public, including full-text search.Continue reading
More on Google and Newspaper Archives
Following up on Google cancelling its newspaper digitization project, here are two more stories:
- Google archive decision 'astonishing' to Ottawa originator, by Vito Pilieci, The Ottawa Citizen (May 24, 2011). Google’s decision to end support for its newspaper archival services is distressing news for the Ottawa businessman who sold Google the technology to digitize records. "It’s disappointing, especially when you consider what I thought that this would do," said Bob Huggins, former chief executive officer and co-founder of PaperOfRecord.com, which Google bought in 2008 for an undisclosed sum. ...Huggins suggested that Google should partner with public sector institutions, such as the Library of Congress in the United States, to continue the newspaper digitization effort. The information could be stored by the library for safekeeping and made available online for everyone to read. "They need to give their head a shake here and realize they have some public responsibility," added Huggins. "For a company that said they wanted to organize all of the world’s data, what happened to that mandate?" While Google has shifted its focus away from digitizing historical newspapers, the company is trying to work hand-in-hand with newspapers to help them charge for content on their websites.
- Demise of Google Newspaper Archive Shows Need for National Digital Library Policy, by Irvin Muchnick, Beyond Chron, The San Francisco Alternative Daily (May 25, 2011). ...the collapse of the project reinforces the limits of self-appointed public utilities. Apparently, the newspaper archive wasn't getting enough eyeballs to make the project profitable.
OMB to cut two transparency programs, put improvements on hold
OMB to cut two transparency programs, suspend others, By Joseph Marks, NextGov (05/24/2011).
Two transparency initiatives and numerous improvements to open government programs will be scrapped as a result of a 75 percent funding cut lawmakers agreed to in April to avert a federal shutdown, officials said Tuesday. ...The government's most visible and popular transparency initiatives will stay in operation, such as USAspending.gov, which tracks government spending on contracts, and the IT Dashboard, which details spending on information technology projects. But planned improvements will be put on hold, according to Kundra's letter.Update: Kundra on e-gov cuts: no project unaffected, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation (May 24, 2011).
Data quality may suffer....New data will be harder to come by.Continue reading
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