Breaking: Congress votes to let telecoms off the hook, legalize warrantless wiretapping
The Senate passed the FISA bill Wednesday, 69-28. It turned back three amendments that would have watered down, delayed or stripped away the immunity provision demanded by President Bush. When the president signs the bill, as expected, it will effectively dismiss some 40 lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies for alleged violations of wiretapping and privacy laws. Glenn Greenwald has more, including this succinct rap-up of this travesty:
With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law in this country.
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Title 44 (Chpt 29) News: Electronic Message Preservation
As we have seen through the conflict and problems of preserving White House e-mail, the law has not kept up with preservation of electronic messages.
A bill (H.R.5811, "The Electronic Message Preservation Act") moving through Congress would address the problems by adding a new Section 2911 to Title 44, Chapter 29. It would require the electronic capture, management, and preservation of electronic records, require that they be readily accessible for retrieval through electronic searches, and would establish mandatory minimum functional requirements for electronic records management systems to ensure compliance with the requirements.
The Bush administration is threatening a veto:
White House Threatens To Veto House E-Mail Storage Bill, By Dan Friedman, CongressDaily, Jul 9, 2008 (subscription required, but freely available here).
The White House and officials at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) argue that the law gives NARA new responsibility and expands the agency's job from advice to oversight, but the sponsors of the bill say that it only affirms the National Archives' job of advising the White House on record-keeping.
The CongressDaily articles notes that:
A less-discussed but farther-reaching part of the bill updates the Federal Records Act to require federal agencies, also under standards set by the National Archives, to save all e-mail records electronically and create systems to allow electronic searches. According to GAO and a committee report, most agencies now use "print and file" records systems for keeping e-mail, many of them spotty.
(See National Archives and Selected Agencies Need to Strengthen E-Mail Management, United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-08-742 June 13, 2008.)
A comment in the Committee Report (House Report 110-709, "Electronic Message Preservation Act" 110th Congress 2d Session, June 11, 2008) says:
To make federal agencies comply, I believe this legislation should include enforceable repercussion language. Ms. Patricia McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org suggests this is the only way to make federal agencies comply with the Federal Records Act. Ms. McDermott states that she does not "think anyone has ever been prosecuted for destroying, much less failing to preserve federal records." Just ask former Clinton EPA Director Carol Browner. She supposedly oversaw the destruction of her computer files in violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records.Continue reading
Access to EU Documents – Some Good News….
[cross posted on LegalResearchPlus] On July 1st, the Court of Justice for the European Communities issued a judgement on access to legal opinions and it offers good news. (Judgment of the Court of Justice in two joined cases C-39/05 P & C-52/05 P, Sweden and Turco v Council and Others, July 1, 2008): The headline on the court's press release reads: THE COURT AUTHORISES, IN PRINCIPLE, ACCESS TO LEGAL ADVICE GIVEN TO THE COUNCIL ON LEGISLATIVE QUESTIONS [bold text appeared in release]. The press release of the Court also states:
The Court takes the view that disclosure of documents containing the advice of an institution’s legal service on legal questions arising when legislative initiatives are being debated increases transparency and strengthens the democratic right of European citizens to scrutinize the information which has formed the basis of a legislative act.
The Court concludes that Regulation No 1049/2001 imposes, in principle, an obligation to disclose the opinions of the Council’s legal service relating to a legislative process. There are, however, exceptions to that principle as regards opinions given in the context of a legislative process, but being of a particularly sensitive nature or having a wide scope that goes beyond the context of the legislative process. In such a case, it is incumbent on the institution concerned to give a detailed statement of reasons for such a refusal.
For excellent analysis and updates on this topic, check out the Statewatch Observatory on Access to EU Documents.
Continue readingDigital Divide and E-Government
The Pew Internet and American Life Project has a new survey Home Broadband Adoption 2008 (PDF, 31 pages) that says "Adoption stalls for low-income Americans even as many broadband users opt for premium services that give them more speed." NextGov looks at the report in relation to e-government initiatives. (E-Government's Tough Nut, by Allan Holmes, Tech Insider NextGov, July 3, 2008.) Some of the problems for a government wanting to interact with citizens online is that many citizens cannot or will not be able to do so. The articles picks the relevant statistics from the Pew report: the percentage of low-income Americans who have a broadband Internet connection dropped from 28 percent to 25 percent; of those that use the slower dial-up connections, almost two-thirds said they had no desire to change to broadband; 27 percent of Americans have no Internet access, with most of those being either elderly or low-income; only 10 percent of the non-Internet users have any desire to become wired. As Holmes says:
These are the hard-core resisters - and there are millions of them. That means if government wants to move ahead with providing more electronic services - including services that may require faster and more robust connections that broadband provides - a large portion of Americans may just not care. And these resisters are exactly the demographics that government tends to serve.Continue reading