Author Archives: James A Jacobs

New on the FGI Remixes page is the innovative re-use of information from several government agencies and others to create a site to help non-unionized workers. The online database has information on more than 60,000 companies, listing information about their executive compensation, overseas job outsourcing, and violations of labor, safety and health standards: Job Tracker. Continue reading →

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The Mosaic Theory, National Security, and the Freedom of Information Act by David Pozen, Yale University Law School, Yale Law Journal, Vol. 115, No. 3, 2005.

The “mosaic theory” describes a basic precept of intelligence gathering: Disparate items of information, though individually of limited or no utility to their possessor, can take on added significance when combined with other items of information. Combining the items illuminates their interrelationships and breeds analytic synergies, so that the resulting mosaic of information is worth more than the sum of its parts. The first work to explore the "mosaic theory" in detail, this Note documents the theory's evolution in FOIA national security law and highlights its centrality in the post-9/11 landscape of information control. After years of doctrinal stasis and practical anonymity, federal agencies began asserting the theory more aggressively after 9/11, thereby testing the limits of executive secrecy and of judicial deference. Though essentially valid, the mosaic theory has been applied in ways that are unfalsifiable, in tension with the purpose and text of FOIA, and susceptible to abuse and overbreadth. This Note therefore argues, against precedent, for greater judicial scrutiny of mosaic claims. Continue reading →

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Editor and Publisher has a story (White House Stands by 'Not Accurate' Quote in Dispute By Joe Strupp, November 09, 2005) about different transcripts of a White House press briefing. The official White House transcript (Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, October 31, 2005) and the transcripts by two commercial transcript companies (Congressional Quarterly and Federal News Service) differ dramatically.

The dispute is over what McClellan said in response to this comment from a reporter:

"Whether there's a question of legality, we know for a fact that there was involvement. We know that Karl Rove, based on what he and his lawyer have said, did have a conversation about somebody who Patrick Fitzgerald said was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. We know that Scooter Libby also had conversations."

White House transcript: "I don't think that's accurate."

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Here is another article on current thinking on the utility of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS).

• OMB mulls evolving beyond GILS, By Jason Miller, Government Computer News 11/07/05.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently issued an RFI (Efficient and Effective Information Retrieval and Sharing) asking vendors for ideas for more "efficient and effective information retrieval and sharing."

The article notes that agencies have been using GILS sparingly over the last decade and that "OMB is asking whether technology has surpassed GILS, which officials said relies on metadata tagging, and whether there is something that is less costly and more effective for searching the mounds of government data."

This article quotes Eliot Christian, a data and information systems manager at the Geological Survey, as saying that tagging is one aspect of metadata, but is not what GILS is focused on: "GILS says we ought to have interoperable search, but it never required metadata tagging." The article also quotes Kurt Sanford, president and chief executive officer for Lexis Nexis U.S. Corporate and Federal Markets, as saying that the RFI "could quite possibly be the most important e-government initiative envisioned to date."

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One of the key issues we track here at FGI is privacy, particularly as it relates to the ability of citizens to read government reports and information without having their activities tracked and monitored. We are concerned that, if the only "authentic" copy of a government publication is one that is available on a government-controlled web server, the government has the potential for tracking reading habits of individuals and tracking who is reading particular documents.

We like to assume this would never happen, and GPO has assured us that "GPO follows Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recommendations and other suggestions regarding Internet privacy policy." Nevertheless, we are always intrigued by stories of the government skirting existing privacy laws and policies.

It is in that context that we call your attention to this story:

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