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National Security Archive sues White House over missing e-mails
Archive Sues to Recover 5 Million Missing White House E-mails, The National Security Archive, September 5, 2007.
The National Security Archive today sued the White House seeking the recovery and preservation of more than 5 million White House e-mail messages that were apparently deleted from White House computers between March 2003 and October 2005....
"The Bush White House broke the law and erased our history by deleting those e-mail messages," said National Security Archive director Tom Blanton. "The period of the missing email starts with the invasion of Iraq and runs through the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."
White House Sued Again Over E - Mail, by The Associated Press, September 5, 2007
The White House abandoned an automatic archiving system for its e-mail in 2002 and did not replace it, says a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Executive Office of the President.Continue reading
Congressional Committees – Secrecy and Delayed Transparency
Perla Ni of VoterWatch says, "We just did a survey of what transcripts/audio/video is available from Congressional Committees. What we've found is pretty sad. Here's the state of available video/audio/transcript for House and Senate committees." (Transparency of committee hearings - transcript/audio/video , Perla Ni, Open House Project group, Sep 4, 2007)
- Congressional Committees - Secrecy and Delayed Transparency
"You'll notice how many committees for which there is no audio, no video nor transcript available. Including the Ethics committee, ironically. Also, for the ones that do post video, either it's not posted until months after or it's posted, but not archived so if you miss it, you've missed it."
And Paul Blumenthal says, "Check out this study I did last year on this very topic. These two blog posts contain all my research from the 109th Congress." (reply Sep 5, 8:00 am)
- House Version: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/1596
- Senate Version: http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/node/1617
Lunchtime Listen: Greg Elin of the Sunlight Foundation
Here is a good lunchtime listen:
- Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators: Greg Elin, Chief Architect, Sunlight Foundation, ITConversations (2007-08-18)
If you want a preview, read Udell's blog post about the interview here:
- A conversation with Greg Elin about the Sunlight Foundation Jon Udell, August 20, 2007.
The Sunlight Foundation aims to make the operation of Congress and the U.S. government more transparent and accountable.Continue reading
Microsoft Loses Vote on File Standards
Microsoft Loses Vote on File Standards by The Associated Press, New York Times (September 4, 2007) "Microsoft Corp. has failed in a first step to win enough support to make the data format behind its flagship Office software a global standard, the International Standards Organization said Tuesday."
There is an ongoing battle between the proprietary "open" format that Microsoft is proposing and the Open Document Format standard created by open source developers. The result of the battle will help determine how governments and libraries will archive digital documents.
See also: Open Document Standards (2007-08-10)
Continue readingDorothea Lange and Censored Images of Japanese Internment
Dorothea Lange's pictures from the 1930s helped to create documentary photography. "Migrant Mother," her 1936 portrait of a 32-year-old stoop-laborer, which she shot on assignment for the federal Resettlement Administration, has become iconic, part of our collective memory of the Great Depression. The woman sits in a doorway with three of her seven children, staring into the distance, her expression an impossible combination of despair, dignity, and hallowed beauty. Over the decades and throughout the world, in countless exhibitions and publications, scores of people have seen this image and others by this major American artist. However, less than five years after she took "Migrant Mother," Lange shot another 1,000 photographs, also on commission from the US government, that are far less familiar. In fact, they were considered so revealing of this country's bias, brutality, and shame that they were immediately censored and confiscated by the same government agencies that had commissioned them. They were of Japanese internment camps in California during World War II.
Excerpt from Persons Of Japanese Ancestry by Marilyn Richardson, Women's Review of Books, Vol 24, Issue 3 (May/June 2007), a review of Impounded: Dorothea Lange and Censored Images of Japanese Internment Edited by Dorothea Lange and Gary Y. Okihiro.
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