Government e-mail retention in states inconsistent, incomplete, and worse
E-mail public documents get erased, disappear, by Sudhin Thanawala, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2008.
A 50-state survey by the Associated Press of government e-mail retention earlier this year found a wide variety of laws and practices, with the vast majority of states officially treating e-mail like printed documents. But most of the states with e-mail laws allow officials to choose which ones to turn over in Freedom of Information requests and to decide on their own when e-mail records are deleted.Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Agriculture
Last week we introduced the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange Wiki, a set of resource guides created by documents librarians for the larger community of government information users. Last week I forgot to mention that the committee that maintains the guides are actively seeking new additions as stated on their website:
The goal of this GODORT Education Committee project is to gather into one place the many tools available to government information librarians to assist in the successful management of electronic government information and in building advocacy skills to promote access to this information. Please feel free to add your handouts, guides, and tutorials to the Exchange to assist your government information colleagues. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can provide templates for one another to save time, share models, and work smarter.With that bit of housekeeping out of the way, we come to this week's highlight: Government Documents on Agriculture (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last modified 1/29/2008 Bert Chapman has produced a large number of guides to government information. And all of them are quite good. He generally starts his guide as he does here with an introductory paragraph that includes useful catalog subject headings:
The U.S. Government produces voluminous information on agriculture. This information covers material as diverse as gardening advice, crop insurance, rice production, soils of individual U.S. counties, wheat export statistics, and laws. Purdue Libraries have many government publications on agriculture with most of these being in the HSSE, LIFE, and MEL Libraries. Useful subject headings to search the Library Catalog for government information on agriculture include Agriculture and State--United States Agricultural Laws and Legislation--United States Agricultural Price Supports--United States Crop Insurance Peanuts Poultry Industry Wheat Trade--United StatesIn addition to listing basic resources such as: He also points out agencies likely to have agricultural related publications at various levels of government:
- House Agriculture Committee HSSE DOC Y 4.AG 8/1: (Reps. Mike Pence (R-IN), Joe Donnelly (D-IN) and Brad Ellsworth (R-IN) are members of this committee)
- National Agricultural Safety Database
- Indiana Agricultural Statistics Service
- International Coffee Organization
- South Africa Dept. of Agriculture
Why the Viacom YouTube Suit Is Important To Documents Librarians
As you probably know, early this month, a judge ordered Google, which owns YouTube, to turn over to Viacom records of which users watched which videos on YouTube. (Google Told to Turn Over User Data of YouTube by Miguel Helft, New York Times, July 4, 2008.) As the Times noted, "The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there.... Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube." What relevance does this have for documents librarians and government-information-using-citizens? Simply, this: whenever an information provider collects and retains records of information use it puts the privacy of information users at risk regardless of its own intentions. As an editorial in the Los Angeles Times said yesterday:
...the lawsuit illustrates how YouTube threatens its users' privacy simply by collecting and retaining so much data. Just because Viacom isn't interested in users' identities doesn't mean that other copyright holders, law enforcement agencies or aggrieved parties won't be. Stanton's order is a reminder that websites shouldn't retain personally identifiable data any longer than the law or their services require. Google argues that the data enable it to improve its services, combat fraud and personalize offerings. Its approach, though, reflects an engineer's habit of hoarding information for the sake of as-yet-unimagined features, not the cautious practices of a privacy-conscious company.See also Will GPO guarantee user privacy? Can it? Nevada Library Assn presentation: Privacy Privacy: "I have nothing to hide" Privacy and the "Terrorist Surveillance Act" Continue reading
-- Why is YouTube hoarding data?, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2008.
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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