Project Censored releases 2010 top 25 “news that didn’t make the news”
Project Censored, a media research project from Sonoma State University in California every year puts out a list of "news that didn't make the news." They've just released their 2010 edition (see below). I hope lots of people will go out and get a copy for themselves and their local libraries because this is what journalism is all about. It is the flip side of govt transparency as more available govt information makes for better and more thorough journalism.
- 1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
- 2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
- 3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
- 4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
- 5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
- 6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
- 7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
- 8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
- 9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
- 10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
- 11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
- 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
- 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
- 14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
- 15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
- 16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
- 17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
- 18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
- 19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
- 20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
- 21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
- 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
- 23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
- 24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
- 25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon
Congress Camp 2009: Recap
As promised, here is my report on the first-ever U.S. Congress Camp. The event was an unconference held in Washington, DC on September 12-13, 2009. Participants were from the civic hacking community, advocacy software companies, advocacy groups, gov 2.0 crowd, academia (public policy), and social media start-ups, with a sprinkling from congressional offices, and one or more from big tech and and other walks of life. The announced focus of Congress Camp was citizen-Congress communications, although topics related to congressional content in general came up. (See more on the communications topic from the recent CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress.) You can read and hear about Congress Camp on the web. See:
- CongressCamp site and blog
- Congress Camp Provides Dynamic Dialogue... posting on NextGenWeb, September 17
- Congress Camp: Where the Hill Meets Web 2.0 September 16 posting on INfluence, the blog of Forum One Communications
- Government 2.0 Radio September 20 episode, featuring interviews with Congress Camp participants (one hour; starts with general Gov 2.0 news)
CRS report on use of Twitter by Congress
Social Networking and Constituent Communication: Member Use of Twitter During a Two-Week Period in the 111th Congress, by Matthew Eric Glassman, Jacob R. Straus, and Colleen J. Shogan, Congressional Research Service 7-5700, R40823 (September 21, 2009). [posted on politico.com] See also:
- For GOP, revenge is tweet, by KENNETH P. VOGEL Politico (9/23/09)
- Tweet All About It: New Stats On Hill Usage, By Andrew Noyes, Congress Daily "Tech Daily Dose" (Sept. 23, 2009).
Cloudy Daze
There has been a recent uptick in the movement toward and the hype about cloud computing. The federal government's embrace of cloud computing with its apps.gov store for agencies to easily obtain cloud computing resources is, perhaps, the most visible. A couple of recent articles provide context and realism to the hyperbole.
- Legal Implications of Cloud Computing - Part One (the Basics and Framing the Issues), By David Navetta, InfoSecCompliance Blog (September 12, 2009). (Also available on LLRX).
Bottom line: this is not your father's outsourcing relationship, and trying to protect clients with contracts may be very difficult or impossible unless the cloud computing community begins to build standards and processes to create trust. ...there is going to be incredible financial pressure on organizations to take advantage of the pricing and efficiency of cloud computing and if attorneys fail to understand the issues ahead of time there is a serious risk of getting "bulldozed" into cloud computing arrangements without time or resources to address some serious legal issues that are implicated.
- Demystifying Cloud Computing for Higher Education, by Richard N. Katz, Philip J. Goldstein, and Ronald Yanosky, ECAR Research Bulletin, Volume 2009, Issue 19 (September 22, 2009) [membership required].
Public clouds are profit-driven and are most effective with those services that are highly commodified. If an IT service can be offered in a standardized fashion without special regard to end user variations, or to local, state, regional, or even national regulatory differences, then that service can be offered as an undifferentiated commodity service—presumably at a great price. In such a case, the dominant legal principle is likely to be caveat emptor—buyer beware—backed by standard contract language shielding the provider from any significant liabilities for process failures or data corruption and loss. ...The challenges and risks that will constrain higher education’s adoption of cloud computing relate to trust, confidence, and surety. ...Notwithstanding the near unanimous belief that cloud computing is an important enabler of a fundamental shift in the organization and economics in enterprise IT, the (non-hyperbolic) literature and the discussion with community leaders also make clear that at present the topic is mired in hype and near-utopian optimism.
FCC chair Genachowski emphasizes support for net neutrality
We've been tracking net neutrality for a while but it seems to have gone below the radar. That is, until today when Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), gave a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. and presented a series of open-access principles, emphasizing, among other things, net neutrality. And groups like Save the Internet cheered!
Genachowski added 2 principles to the FCC's original 4 principles of network freedom mapped out by Michael Powell in 2005 (see other 4 below):
(the other 4 principles are: (1) consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; (2) consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; (3) consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; and (4) consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. See TechlawJournal for background)
On a side note, the speech was posted to the FCC's beta site called OpenInternet.gov built to "facilitate input and participation in the commission proceedings as this discussion evolves."