Does Your State Make the Grade?
The Pew Center on the States has been running a "Government Performance Project" for some time. It seeks to grade the 50 states on how well they manage their information, as well as their infrastructure, money, and people. The latest evaluation is titled Grading the States 2008 Report. -George Wilson Continue reading
DoJ probe on Guantanamo interrogations released
The Department of Justice’s Inspector General has just released its report (PDF) (uploaded to the Internet Archive of course!) on the FBI’s involvement in detainee interrogations in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Reuters reports that the “Bush administration’s top security officials ignored FBI concerns” and that the “FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use. According to McClatchy News, The IG's report had been delayed in part because the Pentagon slow-rolled its review of the report for classified information.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's top security officials ignored FBI concerns over the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects, which one agent called "borderline torture," a four-year Justice Department probe found. The FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use, said the 370-page report released on Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general. Critics say the techniques employed by the CIA and U.S. military in questioning terrorism suspects captured after the September 11 attacks amounted to torture. FBI agents participated interrogations and still do, but bureau Director Robert Mueller directed agents in 2002 not to participate in coercive questioning, the report said.[Thanks Crooks and Liars!] Continue reading
Calling all independent government observers!
Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org -- along with folks from several other great orgs -- is organizing a non-conference in Chicago this August. He's looking for 100 delegates to meet and work on issues of making government information more accessible to more people in a variety of formats. Find out more information here. Are there any FGI readers out there interested in going? So far, there are 3 working groups (case law, municipal govts, and copyright) but I'd love to put together a library working group. Any takers? Leave a note in the comments to let us know you're interested in going. In your comments, it'd also be good if you left your ideas about what tasks a library working group could handle. Think of this as pre-un-conference agenda setting :-)
The Internet has created a new generation of individuals and institutes that practice the time-honored tradition of observing and reporting on the activities of government. These are reporters in the sense of court reporters, not journalists, auditors as in independent investigators rather than CPAs. The classic independent observer is the court reporter, such as Henry Wheaton and Richard Peters, two businessmen in the early days of the Republic who took it upon themselves to collect, print, and sell the decisions of courts. Indeed, it was a business spat between those two that led to the classic pronouncement by the Supreme Court on works of government:Continue readingThe Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right. Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834)The new breed of government observers span all walks of life. In addition to a vibrant commercial sector, there are increasingly a number of nonprofit, academic, and individual citizen efforts."
The FCC at Stanford: A paper trail
On April 17, 2008, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held a public en banc hearing on broadband network management practices. Hosted by Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, the event was attended by five FCC Commissioners who heard from legal scholars, high-tech entrepreneurs, Web start-ups and an auditorium full of interested community members about whether and how the FCC should provide more oversight of phone and cable companies in order to ensure "net neutrality." Stanford Law School Archivist Sarah Wilson has compiled a document with testimony, statements, press releases and news coverage related to the hearing. Her work, The FCC Hearing at Stanford, is available as part of the Robert Crown Law Library Legal Research Paper Series. -Kate Wilko Continue reading
Five blogs worth reading
Federal Computer Week (FCW) profiles 4 government blogs and one non-government blog that they find worth reading here: 5 blogs worth reading, FCW, May 12, 2008. For each one they give a description, notes on how often it is updated and why it is worth reading, and sample entries. 1. The Impact of IT on Businesses and Their Leaders 2. Department of Health and Human Services blog 3. Congressional Budget Office Director’s Blog 4. DipNote 5. Navy Department CIO blog Continue reading