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
DoD Releases Directive on Information Operations
A 2006 Department of Defense directive on Information Operations (“Information Operations,” Department of Defense Directive O-3600.1, August 14, 2006), which had previously been withheld as “For Official Use Only,” was released last week in response to a FIOA request from Steven Aftergood and the Federation of American Scientists (Thanks Steven!!). This may or may not have something to do with the defense contractors embedded in our mainstream media outlets. Steven raises the question of whether those imbedded contractors violate or implement this policy. Thoughts? I just uploaded the document to the IA govt documents collection. FYI, I've started a new tag -- IA deposit -- for those documents that are uploaded to the IA. The tag (*every* tag on FGI) has an RSS feed of course, making it easy for library catalogers to keep up to date and get those fugitives cataloged and accessible to your users!
The directive, issued by the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence), assigns baseline responsibilities for the conduct of information operations, an umbrella term that includes electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security. Among related capabilities, the directive cites “public affairs,” the purpose of which is “to communicate military objectives, counter misinformation and disinformation, deter adversary actions, and maintain the trust and confidence of the U.S. population, as well as our friends and allies. Effective military operations shall be based on credibility and shall not focus on directing or manipulating U.S. public actions or opinion.”[Thanks Secrecy News!] Continue reading
The White House: Off Limits to Historians?
Meredith Fuchs, the general counsel of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, writes that the Bush administration's hostility towards public access to and preservation of records combined with changes in technology that have transformed the way in which we all communicate are leading to a situation in which "primary sources on the most important decisions and activities in the government may be lost, destroyed, or closed to the public." [emphasis added]
- The White House: Off Limits to Historians? by Meredith Fuchs, Passport: The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (5-1-08), posted at History News Network on Thursday, May 8, 2008.
[O]ver the last seven years there have been a series of moves by the current administration that may ensure that the records of the White House and the federal offices and agencies that work closely with the White House will not be available to historians.Continue reading