Hackers Targeted House.gov Sites
Hackers Target House.gov Sites. By Brian Krebs, Washington Post (August 6, 2009).
Hackers broke into more than a dozen Web sites for members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the past week, replacing portions of their home pages with digital graffiti, according House officials.The sites hit were hosted by a private vendor, GovTrends, which provides Web hosting for about 100 House sites. Continue reading
Voting records expunged in California
In California, Legislative votes on bills are posted on the web (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html). In fact, a bill cannot become a law without an official record of the vote. But it is possible to "expunge" votes and the L.A. Times reports that happened recently on a controversial bill.
- California Assembly expunges votes on oil drilling bill, By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times, August 6, 2009.
Although 28 members of the California Assembly supported a measure to allow new oil drilling off the Santa Barbara coast, their votes are nowhere to be found in the official state database.According to the status page for the Assembly Bill "ABX4 23," on July 24, action was rescinded and the "record expunged whereby a final roll call vote was taken" but no record of the House vote exists on the web site today. Offshore oil drilling is very controversial in California and both private contractors and the State hoped to reap a lot of money from the drilling. (Plains Exploration Falls On Tranquillon Ridge Rejection >PXP, By Aja Carmichael, Wall Street Journal, JULY 27, 2009). While voting records are often mis-used, in my opinion, in political contests -- taking votes out of context and viewing them as isolated and simple when they are, in fact, part of a process of conflict, compromise, and (one hopes) consensus -- removing records from the public record is hard to justify on any grounds. The usual excuses were used for this recent expunging: It doesn't happen often; and: Another vote will be taken later on the same or a different bill; and: You can still find the information somewhere else. These are excuses and not reasons and they are not even very good reasons. This is nothing but an attempt to control political information. As one Republican, who wrote the measure, said: "The message to the public is 'this vote was an inconvenient vote and we would rather you not look at the man behind the curtain.'" Continue reading
Welcome Aimee and James Quinn, bloggers of the month for August, 2009
Happy August, fine readers. Please welcome Aimee and James Quinn to the podium for the month of August. Aimee and James are librarians and activists who hale from the fine state of New Mexico (full bio here). Take it away James and Aimee. Also, many thanks to Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, our BOTM for July, 2009. Check out Jeanne's posts here: Cheers to Jeanne and now take it away James and Aimee! Continue reading
Aimee and James Quinn: bloggers of the month for August, 2009
James and Aimée Quinn are both librarians who share a love of cats, books, movies, coffee, dogs, exploring new places (especially libraries) and technology although James is much more tech savvy than Aimée. Both work with the Humane Societies to fight for animal rights. Aimée is a librarian at the University of New Mexico, Parish Memorial Library. She served on a variety of ALA committees, task forces, discussion groups, etc. related to government information, permanent public access to government information, rare & valuable government publications (yes they really do exist) and government literacy. Aimée is an assistant editor of the international journal, Government Information Quarterly. After working in academic law libraries for over 25 years, James, along with Matthew Wright, co-founded the Library Underground. He now works with Chris Zammarelli (another of our guest bloggers!) to maintain the site. James is an anti-nuke/environmental activist who also serves as the list owner for an international anti-nuclear discussion group. These activities coupled with associating with librarians makes him a dangerous peacenik. Continue reading
Smithsonian Reports Its Web and New Media Strategy
This new Smithsonian document "describes a transformational change for the Smithsonian, which will have impact on the Institution’s culture, operations, allocation of resources, talent recruitment, and priorities. This strategy can only become operational with adequate resources, and will require the Smithsonian to rethink the ways in which it generates revenues and prioritizes how resources are allocated to programs."
A key part of the strategy is to create a Smithsonian Commons "dedicated to the free and unrestricted sharing of Smithsonian resources and encouraging new kinds of learning and creation through interaction with Smithsonian research, collections, and communities" but it will also "Use the commons to attract the funding necessary to update the Smithsonian’s Web and New Media operations and business models." The report notes that:Attempting to directly monetize access to, and use of, museum content does not appear to be a sustainable business model. Through these low-margin business practices, we alienate users, perpetuate the practice of institutions charging each other, discourage research and publications, and undermine our civic mission. The commons presents an alternative: gradually reduce our dependence on access and use fees by aggregating larger number of visitors under a strong brand supported by sponsorships and other value-added products and services. It is likely that the Smithsonian will make more money by promoting “free” resources to a large audience than it can make charging small amounts for small transactions to a small audience, and it is a much better fit with the mission.Continue reading