Home » Articles posted by James A Jacobs (Page 332)
Author Archives: James A Jacobs
New Site for U.S. Budget Information
GovBudget.com is a publication of The Federal Budget Group LLC, led by Charles S. Konigsberg, veteran budget and fiscal policy advisor to three U.S. Senators and three White House Budget Directors. We have designed GovBudget.com to provide you with a user-friendly web portal to the Federal Budget. We believe that every American should be able to access clear, accurate and nonpartisan information on how our government raises and spends nearly $3 trillion per year.
The information is not very detailed, but it is a quick, simple, easy to understand overview. See also: User-Friendly Federal Budget Web Site?, Government Technology, February 28, 2007 News Release
Continue readingWho Owns What C-Span Airs?
There have been a few stories recently about C-Span and whether or not its broadcasts are copyrighted. (See list at end of this post.) This started when Republicans claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi illegally posted C-Span video clips of House floor footage. Later, they withdrew that complaint after some clarification by C-Span of their policies. The clarifications led to more confusion, though. Now Nancy Scola has posted a very useful and clear article about the issue:
- Who Owns What C-Span Airs?, Nancy Scola, The OpenHouse Project, February 27th, 2007.
This kind of issue will undoubtedly continue to be important to the extent that privatization of government communication expands and private companies and politicians attempt to use "intellectual property" law to constrain access of public information to the public.
More:
- Congressional Video In Vogue, Tech Daily Dose, February 16, 2007.
- C-Span's IP Policies For Congress Called Inconsistent, by Andrew Noyes, National Journal's Technology Daily, Feb 16, 2007 PM edition, [subscription required]
- Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a Lesson, by Noam Cohen, The New York Times, February 26, 2007.
- MetaVid (a project which seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time collective [re]mediation of legislative proceedings.)
- Ripping (off) the Congressional video record by Carl Malamud.
Google Earth’s origins and future
This is an interesting article about Google increasing its business with the federal government. Yesterday, Google kicked off "a two-day sales meeting that attracted nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members eager to learn more about its technology offerings."
- Google Searches For Government Work, by Sara Kehaulani Goo and Alec Klein, Washington Post, February 28, 2007; D03.
An interesting tidbit in the article describes how government agencies use enhanced versions of Google Earth to display information for the military on the ground in Iraq and to track airplanes that fight forest fires across the country. The article says that the technology behind Google Earth "got its start in the intelligence community, in a CIA-backed firm called Keyhole. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004."
Yesterday, Google's partner, Lockheed Martin, demonstrated a Google Earth product that it helped design for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's work in Iraq. These included displays of key regions of the country and outlined Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, as well as U.S. and Iraqi military bases in the city. Neither Lockheed nor Google would say how the geospatial agency uses the data.Continue reading
TIA becomes ADVISE
Congress killed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program in 2003 and several new programs have been reported to take its place. (See Total Information Awareness just changed its name FGI, 2006-02-26.) A forthcoming GAO report looks at the use of the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) system.
- New Profiling Program Raises Privacy Concerns, by Ellen Nakashima and Alec Klein, Washington Post, February 28, 2007; D03.
The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year. But researchers testing the system are likely to already have violated privacy laws by reviewing real information...Continue reading
Is The White House Scrubbing its Website?
There is a report on the Daily Kos that attempts to document removal of embarrassing materials from the White House website.
- (Updated) The White House website is getting scrubbed by smintheus, Daily Kos, (Sun Feb 25, 2007 at 12:39:00 PM PST)
Some of the post has "proven" facts and other bits are labeled "Speculation." I would be very interested if anyone in the library community can verify or disprove any of the facts or speculations in the article. Also, are there official print resources that document the information that smintheus finds missing at the White House web site? Please let us at FGI know what you find.
If we can't verify or disprove any of this, perhaps we should ask ourselves why we can't. What are we as depository libraries doing if we can't answer what should be a simple straightforward question about who said what, when?
Continue reading
Latest Comments