“OPEN FOIA” Bill Introduced as Sunshine Week Nears
The Sunshine Week blog announced that Senator Patrick Leahy and Senator John Cornyn introduced the OPEN FOIA Act, which would add new transparency and accountability standards when Congress considers adding new FOIA exemptions to the law. According to Leahy's press release, "The exemptions to FOIA addressed in the OPEN FOIA Act, known as (b)(3) statutory exemptions, are typically buried in complex and lengthy legislative proposals, making it difficult for requestors to determine whether access to information is subject to FOIA. The OPEN FOIA Act would provide more transparency when Congress includes such exemptions in legislation". This new act follows the passage of the Leahy-Cornyn OPEN Government Act, which the President signed into law in December 2007. Continue reading
Federal and State data mashup creates new information
An interactive web service created by federal scientists on the University of Arizona campus in cooperation with the state of Arizona Department of Water Resources with funding from the U.S. Geological Survey "brings formerly hard-to-get water information as close as a mouse click." (UA-based scientists make water data easy to find on Net, by B. Poole, Tucson Citizen, 03.14.2008)
Data for creating and presenting the layers of information on ground-water conditions came from the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) and the Arizona Department of Water Resources Groundwater Site Inventory). A document describes how the site was created: An Online Interactive Map Service for Displaying Ground-Water Conditions in Arizona, By Fred D Tillman, Stanley A. Leake, Marilyn E. Flynn, Jeffrey T. Cordova, and Kurt T. Schonauer. USGS, National Water Availability and Use Program, Open-File Report 2007-1436, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia 2007.
The Geological Survey map complements Arizona Wells, produced by Sustainability of semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Areas (SAHARA), a University of Arizona-based group that aims to foster information exchange. Arizona Wells includes much of the data used in the Geological Survey map and water quality data from the Arizona Department of Water Resources.
One of the reasons we need open, re-usable, downloadable government information is so that sites like these can be built to create new information and to make information that was once hard to use, easier to use. As the Tucson Citizen article says, "Before such interactive maps, the public had to find the data, then interpret the numbers and codes in the databases."
Continue readingLocal FOIA and Open Government
The San Francisco Bay Guardian has a special issue on open government and freedom of information.
- Freedom of Information: Sunshine in the digital age How technology can vastly improve public access to government, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
It begins this way:
"On one front, the advocates of secrecy are pushing hard to keep electronic data under strict controls. The state Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit the release of electronic data embedded in a public record. The county of Santa Clara tried to set a $100,000 price on access to a public database. But on the other hand, sunshine advocates are pushing for ways to use the same technology to make government more open.
The special issue includes articles on "A citizen's guide to fighting secret government"; "Virtual meetings"; a "Sunshine experiment in Palo Alto" (Posting e-mails from council members on the city's Web site); and more. Of particular interest are these two:
- More sunshine -- easily and at no cost, Technology can allow the city to take a huge step forward in public access -- right now. By Kimo Crossman, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
- Battleship metadata, Legislation on mapping software would create an expensive new category of public records. By Sarah Phelan, San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 12, 2008)
Crossman notes:
...video recordings of city meetings can't be downloaded -- the only way to review it or post a clip to YouTube is to order a $10 DVD, which arrives a week after you send a check (and no, they don't take PayPal). And while many other city meetings make audio recordings, you have to pay $1 for an audio tape and pick it up during business hours or pay more for postage. They all should be available as free podcasts. ...In fact, we all know storage continues to get cheaper and smaller -- so San Francisco should abolish any retention timeframes for electronic records and keep them all into the foreseeable future. The world-famous Internet Archive is right here in the Presidio: I suspect that group would love to archive all the city information, and keep it online, free and forever.Continue reading
Pentagon will mail you a copy of Iraq study that finds no smoking gun
ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon canceled plans to post a new comprehensive military study of Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism on the website of the Joint Forces Command. The story says, "The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. It won't be emailed to reporters and it won't be posted online." The Pentagon also canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report's release.
- Pentagon Report on Saddam's Iraq Censored?, ABC News: Rapid Report March 12, 2008.
- Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda, ABC News: Rapid Report, March 13, 2008.
The report was prepared by Kevin M. Woods and James Lacey "under the Iraqi Perspectives sub task of the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program (JAWP) task order for the Director, Joint Center for Operational Analyses and Lessons Learned, United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM)" and the Institute For Defense Analyses. It is based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and on thousands of hours of interrogations of former top officials in Saddam's government in U.S. custody.
The executive summary of the report says
This study found no "smoking gun" (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. Saddam's interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations.
The ABC report says that when asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed a Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it "too politically sensitive."
ABC has posted a copy of an executive summary of the document here:
- Iraqi Perspectives Report Saddam And Terrorism: Emerging Insights From Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) January 2007. IDA Paper P-4287. (9 pages, 3.4 Meg PDF) [another copy is available at www.webcitation.org/5WJZa7Cuc]
ABC also has a copy of a longer version of what is apparently the same report here:
- Iraqi Perspectives Project Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents Volume 1 (Redacted) "This volume is a redacted version of Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents, Volume I (IDA Paper P-4151). November 2007 Approved for public release; distribution unlimited. IDA Paper P-4287 Log: H 07-001575 ( 94 page, 11.7 Megs, PDF) [another copy is available at www.webcitation.org/5WJaXglxS]
Terrorist Watch List to Near One Million Names by Summer 2008
According to a news release from the ACLU, the U.S. Terrorist Screening Center has over 900,000 names in its Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month. At that rate, the number of names in the database would exceed 1,000,000 names by the end of July, 2008. The ACLU launched a watch list counter showing the number of new names supposedly added each day to the list, as well as a number of well-known people who have been put on the list. Go to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center FAQ to learn who gets included in the TSDB and whether or not you can find out if you are in it (hint: you can't). Continue reading