Google Earth’s origins and future
This is an interesting article about Google increasing its business with the federal government. Yesterday, Google kicked off "a two-day sales meeting that attracted nearly 200 federal contractors, engineers and uniformed military members eager to learn more about its technology offerings."
- Google Searches For Government Work, by Sara Kehaulani Goo and Alec Klein, Washington Post, February 28, 2007; D03.
An interesting tidbit in the article describes how government agencies use enhanced versions of Google Earth to display information for the military on the ground in Iraq and to track airplanes that fight forest fires across the country. The article says that the technology behind Google Earth "got its start in the intelligence community, in a CIA-backed firm called Keyhole. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004."
Yesterday, Google's partner, Lockheed Martin, demonstrated a Google Earth product that it helped design for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's work in Iraq. These included displays of key regions of the country and outlined Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, as well as U.S. and Iraqi military bases in the city. Neither Lockheed nor Google would say how the geospatial agency uses the data.Continue reading
TIA becomes ADVISE
Congress killed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program in 2003 and several new programs have been reported to take its place. (See Total Information Awareness just changed its name FGI, 2006-02-26.) A forthcoming GAO report looks at the use of the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) system.
- New Profiling Program Raises Privacy Concerns, by Ellen Nakashima and Alec Klein, Washington Post, February 28, 2007; D03.
The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year. But researchers testing the system are likely to already have violated privacy laws by reviewing real information...Continue reading
James R. Jacobs
James R. Jacobs -- not to be confused with Jim Jacobs, one of the other cofounders! -- is one of the cofounders of Free Government Information. At the time of FGI's founding in November, 2004, James was the local, state and international documents librarian at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). He has since moved from UCSD to the Bay Area and is currently the Government Documents Librarian at Stanford University Library where he is very involved with both traditional collection development as well as digital projects like LOCKSS-USDOCS. He received his MSLIS in 2002 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was a 2005 Library Journal Mover & Shaker (or CO-mover&shaker w Shinjoung Yeo!) and is a member of Beta Phi Mu.
Continue readingIs The White House Scrubbing its Website?
There is a report on the Daily Kos that attempts to document removal of embarrassing materials from the White House website.
- (Updated) The White House website is getting scrubbed by smintheus, Daily Kos, (Sun Feb 25, 2007 at 12:39:00 PM PST)
Some of the post has "proven" facts and other bits are labeled "Speculation." I would be very interested if anyone in the library community can verify or disprove any of the facts or speculations in the article. Also, are there official print resources that document the information that smintheus finds missing at the White House web site? Please let us at FGI know what you find.
If we can't verify or disprove any of this, perhaps we should ask ourselves why we can't. What are we as depository libraries doing if we can't answer what should be a simple straightforward question about who said what, when?
Continue readingSo What’s the Big Deal About Climate Change?
My time as blogger of the month is almost through, so I'm going to end with a quote from a section of the EPA's Climate Change Kids Site called, "So What's the Big Deal?"
"It is important to understand that scientists don't know for sure what climate change will bring. Some changes brought about by climate change will be good. If you live in a very cool climate, warmer temperatures might be welcome. Days and nights could be more comfortable and people in the area may be able to grow different and better crops than they could before. But it is also true that changes in some places will not be very good at all."One of my classmates pointed this gem out. Continue reading