Author Archives: James A Jacobs

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, said recently that all we need to build an exciting, creative World Wide Semantic Web is for information distributors to expose their information in standard, structured formats. (See: Berners-Lee: Semantic Web's success lies in cooperation, By Jonathan Bennett, CNet News.com, Sep 19, 2006).

Ironically, the example he chose to use is British Ordnance Survey records. This is ironic because the British government now sells "limited-use licences" to its GIS data on a "cost recovery" basis. (See Free data – a valuable commodity, September 18, 2006). Such policies make what Berners-Lee calls "serendipitous reuse" virtually impossible.

For us in the U.S., the lesson is clear: if we want government information (public information, information collected, compiled, and created with public funds) to be part of the Semantic Web, GPO and other government agencies must guarantee that they will make such public information freely available, unencumbered by Digital Rights Management tools, and available in standardized, structured formats.

Unfortunately, GPO has explicitly announced its mission as distributing electronic documents "on a cost recovery basis." This, along with policies such as OMB Circular A-130 that require reliance on the private sector and cost recovery go further to guaranteeing that government information will not be part of the Semantic Web.

GPO could go far to remedying this situation by changing its mission to guarantee that it will deposit digital government information with the existing Federal Depository Library Program libraries. Why does it not do so?

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Good news on for open government and better government information:

After holds dropped, Senate clears database bill By Rob Thormeyer, Government Computer News (09/08/06).

Legislation to create a central database that will track all sorts of federal spending passed the Senate last night, ending a dizzying turn of events in which a handful of senators placed and removed opposition to the bill since it cleared a committee in late July.

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Bruce Craig reports on the release of a volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (Foreign Relations, 1964-1968, Volume XXIX, Part 2, Japan, Editor: Karen L. Gatz, General Editor: Edward C. Keefer, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 2006, DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLICATION 11321).

• Controversial FRUS Volume on Japan Finally Published, Bruce Craig, writing in the newsletter of the Coalition for History (8-24-06).

What makes this volume unique is that it has been nearly ready for publication for over seven years, but owing to a handful of controversial documents relating to covert operations in Japan that for years intelligence screeners would not permit the HO to include in the volume, PART 2 JAPAN is only now seeing the light of day...but minus the intelligence agency covert operations documentation. One of the first things a reader of this volume will notice as different is the inclusion of not only the usual "Preface" but also a "Note on U.S. Covert Actions" and an "Editor's Note" posted at the beginning of the volume. Collectively, the preface and these notices serve, in essence, as disclaimers for the HO. ... Though readers of this particular FRUS volume are being denied access to the raw documentation by intelligence agencies and there is not the level of detail that one would characteristically expect to see in a volume in the FRUS series, the HO asserts it is not permitting history to be entirely rewritten because of deletions. Nevertheless, one source inside State views the volume as being "minimally acceptable" in terms of meeting FRUS legislative directives. One does wonder, however, whether the JAPAN volume is merely an anomaly, or is this practice expected to be employed more frequently in future FRUS releases in order to sidestep CIA and other intelligence agency objections.

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CNet News.com reports that surveillance of Americans by the federal government has steadily increased; that spending on securing classified information has increased to $7.7 billion; and that new justifications for not releasing unclassified government documents to the public are proliferating. None of this is good news for advocates of open government and the freedom to read.

• Post-9/11 privacy and secrecy: A report card By Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache, CNet News.com, September 8, 2006

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You may have heard one of many news reports yesterday about increased nicotine content of cigarettes. The data that these news stories used came from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health where a 1996 state law requires cigarette makers to test the nicotine content of their products and report the results annually. Less well reported was this tidbit about the U.S. Federal Trade Commission:

The Federal Trade Commission for three decades regularly released reports on the nicotine and tar content of cigarettes -- reports that frequently came under criticism for failing to adequately reflect the amount of nicotine smokers inhale in actual use. The reports showed that nicotine levels on average had remained stable since 1980, after falling in the preceding decade. The last of those studies was released in September 1999, commission spokeswoman Claudia B. Farrell said yesterday. The Federal Trade Commission has continued collecting data on nicotine, but she did not know why they have not published reports on the findings. -- Cigarettes Pack More Nicotine, by Stephen Smith Boston Globe, August 30, 2006

The Los Angles Times reports that, "Massachusetts is one of three states to require tobacco companies to submit information about nicotine testing according to its specifications, and the only state with data going back to 1998." Cigarettes Packing More Nicotine, Report Shows, (From the Associated Press) August 31, 2006. Continue reading →

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