5.2 Million 19th Century Passenger Arrival Records Now Online at NARA
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) announced the online availability of over 5.2 million records of passengers who arrived at the ports of Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia in the 19th century. These records were transcribed from original ship manifests into databases by Temple University's Center for Immigration Research and donated to NARA. Intrigued, I went to NARA's Access to Archival Databases (AAD) and searched "Records for Passengers Who Arrived at the Port of New York During the Irish Famine" between 1846-1851 (over 607,800 records!), and I found several of my Troy clan ancestors that arrived in 1851. I'll have to compare the names with the extensive family tree that my grandfather made. If he was alive today, he'd be searching this database for hours! Other record sets include: Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Germans to the United States, 1850-1897; Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Italians to the United States, 1855-1900; and Data Files Relating to the Immigration of Russians to the United States, 1834-1897. Continue reading
Breaking: Total Information Awareness (TIA) still with us
Today, Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal reported that the National Security Agency has assembled what some intelligence officials admit is a driftnet for domestic and foreign communications. According to Gorman: into the NSA's massive database goes data collected by the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Treasury. This information includes data about email (recipient and sender address, subject, time sent), internet searches (sites visited and searches conducted), phone calls (incoming and outgoing numbers, length of call, location), financial information (wire transfers, credit-card use, information about bank accounts), and information from the DHS about airline passengers. The only problem is, the Total Information Awareness Program (TIA) was supposed to have been killed by Congress in 2003. The ACLU responded to the report and said it would be filing a FOIA request to get more information.
The American Civil Liberties Union responded today to a stunning new report that the NSA has effectively revived the Orwellian ""Total Information Awareness"" domestic-spying program that was banned by Congress in 2003. In response, the ACLU said that it was filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for more information about the spying. And, the group announced that it was moving its "Surveillance Clock" one minute closer to midnight. "Congress shut down TIA because it represented a massive and unjustified governmental intrusion into the personal lives of Americans,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the Washington Legislative Office of the ACLU. “Now we find out that the security agencies are pushing ahead with the program anyway, despite that clear congressional prohibition. The program described by current and former intelligence officials in Monday's Wall Street Journal could be modeled on Orwell’s Big Brother." The ACLU said the new report confirmed its past warnings that the NSA was engaging in extremely broad-based data mining that was violating the privacy of vast numbers of Americans.Continue reading
Presidential Signing Statements 1929-2008
The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara has archived all Presidential Signing Statements from Herbert Hoover through George W. Bush.
You can search or browse by year. The signing statements are part of a much larger documents section that includes executive orders, proclamations, "fireside chats" and more.
The Project site also includes a "data" section with information such as a table of vetoes and "success rate", a section on presidential elections data (statistics) and more.
Continue readingFederal courts adopt uniform rules for judicial discipline
The Judicial Conference of the United States has announced the adoption of uniform standards for the first nationally binding judicial discipline rules among the federal Circuit courts. The standards curtail the decentralized self-regulatory system that let individual circuit's set their own standards and closed "jurisdictional gaps," according to Judge Ralph K. Winter of the 2d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and chair of the Conduct Committee that compiled the reforms. The changes were made in response to recommendations by a special committee chaired by Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and pressure from some in Congress to improve implementation of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, the basis of federal judicial discipline. Continue reading
Some Gov Agencies Block Web 2.0 Access
A blog post by Coby Logen was brought to my attention in the comments from my previous post about Government agencies using Twitter, called "Agencies Block YouTube, Shoot Themselves in the Foot" (great title!). When I was hunting fervently for the NASA Twitter account, I almost jumped to the conclusion that perhaps they never did create one because of this article I stumbled upon, discussing how some Government agencies block access to Twitter on Government computers. I found a recent news report on GovTech.com entitled, "Don't Block Web 2.0 Access", urging businesses to "resist the temptation" to block their employees' access to Web 2.0 technologies . I wish the author had urged the U.S. Government to resist the temptation too, but perhaps this is implied. This quote from Coby's blog post sums up the issue nicely: "It is humorous that the Secretary of Energy invites us to explore the Solar Decathlon MySpace page while he doesn't trust his own employees to do so. And you've got to chuckle a little as you watch the Secretary of the Interior on a field trip to learn about "technology and collaborative science" via the collaborative technology that his department banned. But I hope no one in the Coast Guard or FEMA (both in DHS) would benefit from NOAA's environmental visualization channel on YouTube, because they aren't allowed to watch it." Continue reading