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Schneier on “sensitive but unclassified” Science
The Halfway House Between Science and Secrets; An Interview With Bruce Schneier on Science and Security By Jonathan Pfeiffer, interviewer Science Progress, March 19th, 2008. "A recent, Congressionally-mandated, National Research Council report (Science and Security in a Post 9/11 World, by the Committee on a New Government-University Partnership for Science and Security, National Research Council) recognizes that the 9/11 attacks provoked counter-productive security measures that stifle access to fruitful scientific research.... The NRC warns that the widespread practice of labeling scientific research as "sensitive but unclassified" has had grave consequences for our security and our economy.... Security expert Bruce Schneier talks with Science Progress about the science that makes us smarter and the security that makes us safer." Schneier says:
And a lot of scientific data, information, and knowledge-stuff that is used by the scientific community, used by businesses, used by everybody-gets stuck in this halfway house between secret and open. It's a form of secrecy, and it's a form of stifling information sharing. And where it affects scientists is that science thrives on information sharing. Science works because one person's research becomes another person's footnotes.Continue reading
CongressTube coming soon!
What is a Member of Congress to do? Embedding a YouTube video on on an official House or Senate web page is against the rules (See The Wrong Way to Talk About Member Web Sites), yet many do it anyway. The House and the Senate both have their own video technology for official sites but it is, uh.... slow..... And even pointing to YouTube is against the rules. But recently, the Franking Commission has come up with a compromise idea. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office put out a request for a commercial-free video zone for Congress. YouTube was the only one that responded to the request, but it should be up and running within a month. For details, see: Et Tu, YouTube? Lawmakers to Get Their Very Own Sites for Videos, By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, April 11, 2008; page A19. What will that do to our view of "official government web sites"? Will videos be considered in the scope of Title 44 by GPO? Will they be scheduled for acquisition by NARA? Continue reading
Lunchtime listens from NYPL
The New York Public Library has lots of free audio and video (and text!) on iTunes! See: NYPL on iTunes U., by Barbara Taranto, NYPL, April 8, 2008. If you have iTunes, here are some direct links to get you started:
Continue readingNARA will NOT harvest at end of current administration
According to a post on .govwatch (The National Archives Is Quietly Destroying Millions of Documents April 08, 2008 by Coby Logen), a recent memo at the National Archives and Records Administration says:
After considering our other records management program priorities for FY 2008, availability of harvested web content at other "archiving" sites (e.g., www.archive.org), and the resources required for conducting and preserving a government-wide web snapshot, NARA has determined that we will not conduct a web harvest or snapshot at the end of the current Administration.Logen says that "Not capturing federal web sites now may mean losing millions of web pages authored under the Bush administration when leadership changes in January 2009." John Wonderlich at the Sunlight Foundations comments that "The fact that digital preservation is done by others outside NARA isn't an excuse for NARA to abdicate their responsibility, but an argument that they should be capable of fulfilling it." (Digital Preservation Under Threat? by John Wonderlich on April 9, 2008) This seems yet another example of the government saying it cannot and therefore it won't. (The NARA/TGN contract as a bad precedent). Call it the Katrina of digital preservation? The New York Times sums up the underlying issue nicely yesterday: "In Storing 1's and 0's, the Question Is $" (By John Schwartz, New York Times, April 9, 2008). It is not a technological issue; it is an issue of funding and policy and control. (See: The Technical is Political.) Continue reading
Analysis of C-SPAN coverage of Congressional hearings
VoterWatch has done an interesting analysis and enumeration of which hearings C-SPAN has broadcast and which it has not. It found that C-SPAN covered 28% of all committee hearings held during the week of February 4-10, 2008.
- C-SPAN Analysis: What Are We Missing?, by Billy Hallowell, VoterWatch, April 4, 2008.
Hallowell notes that:
Since our primary interest is in creating a video record of what occurs in House and Senate meetings, access to footage is paramount. Unfortunately (and as many of you know), our government doesn’t offer adequate access to video, audio, and transcripts, as the quality and availability of these items greatly differ among committees. Since C-SPAN is the main hub for Congressional footage, we decided to examine one week of network coverage to see exactly what the C-SPAN channels are covering—and what they’re not. While we are not attempting to fault C-SPAN for missing hearings (after all, covering all of the committees is an arduous and expensive task), we think it’s important to understand what we’re not seeing.
Documents librarians will want to know that Bernadine E. Abbott Hoduski is on the Board of VoterWatch and FGI's own Shinjoung Yeo is on the Advisory Board. Continue reading
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