Citizen-based Semantic Web of Government Information — The Ultimate ReMix?
How can anyone deal with 368 million Web pages under the federal .gov domain? Researchers have a very interesting proposal for using wikis to enhance and enable government information. Use of wiki technology would "allow outside parties to add contextual information and pull together disparate strands of data." They see this as an implementation of the semantic web concept. Their paper is here:
IRS data goes from free to $12,000 per month
In 1976, a court ordered the Internal Revenue Service to disclose records showing how thoroughly it audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts the additional taxes assessed after audits. And, "For decades, the information was given at no charge to a professor at Syracuse University, Susan B. Long, who made it available on the Internet at trac.syr.edu, with tools for people to conduct their own analyses." But, "In May 2004, the service told her that it would not provide the information and ordered its statisticians to stop answering her questions. It also advised her that if it ever did make the data public again, the information would cost $12,000 a month to receive electronic copies."
Much of what the public knows about the efficiency, effectiveness and evenhandedness of the revenue service and other big federal agencies is based on the figures that Professor Long collects and posts. Continue reading
CRS report on domestic surveillance
Secrecy News recently released the CRS report giving a detailed evaluation of Bush Administration legal claims regarding Presidential authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance within the United States. CRS evaluated the arguments presented in defense of the reported NSA surveillance activity, and ultimately (if delicately) find them wanting. Definitely one to read and print out for one's library collection. PDF of report from Secrecy News
From the foregoing analysis, it appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here under discussion, and it would likewise appear that, to the extent that those surveillances fall within the definition of “electronic surveillance†within the meaning of FISA or any activity regulated under Title III, Congress intended to cover the entire field with these statutes. To the extent that the NSA activity is not permitted by some reading of Title III or FISA, it may represent an exercise of presidential power at its lowest ebb, in which case exclusive presidential control is sustainable only by “disabling Congress from acting upon the subject.†While courts have generally accepted that the President has the power to conduct domestic electronic surveillance within the United States inside the constraints of the Fourth Amendment, no court has held squarely that the Constitution disables the Congress from endeavoring to set limits on that power. To the contrary, the Supreme Court has stated that Congress does indeed have power to regulate domestic surveillance, and has not ruled on the extent to which Congress can act with respect to electronic surveillance to collect foreign intelligence information. Given such uncertainty, the Administration’s legal justification, as presented in the summary analysis from the Office of Legislative Affairs, does not seem to be as well-grounded as the tenor of that letter suggests.Continue reading
Google DRM
At the Consumer Electronics Show last week, Google announced its new video service google video. Part of that service involves yet another media player and yet another Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Will Google's entry into the DRM field lap over into other areas, such as Google Book Search? Will government information that is in the public domain and scanned by Google for its full text service become DRM'd? We just don't know. While we can imagine that our good buddy Google will do no evil, as Siva says, we have no guarantees. It is by definition, the job of libraries to provide access to information. If libraries choose to rely on the Google's of the world to take care of the hard part of this process, libraries and the public will get only what those private companies find it in their commercial interest to allow us to have. Continue reading
Bush adminstration has been slowly dismantling environmental information tool
New OMB Watch Report on TRI: Dismantling the Public's Right to Know OMB watch released a new report in December, 2005, Dismantling the Public's Right to Know: EPA's systematic Weakening of the Toxic Release Inventory, stating that the "Bush administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are slowly dismantling its flagship environmental information tool: the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)." The TRI database has been providing the public information about environmental risks in workplace and communities.
"The easy access to pollution information provided by TRI has empowered citizens to push for improvements, and facilities have acted to reduce releases. Since facilities began reporting in 1988, there has been a nearly 60 percent reduction in total releases of the 299 core chemicals that the program began tracking. This is a significant drop, one that was fueled by merely making information publicly available. As new chemicals have been added to the TRI program, those releases have also dropped. This year, EPA reported a 42 percent reduction in releases and disposal of the more than 650 chemicals now tracked under TRI over the 6 years between 1998 and 2003. TRI is EPA's premier database of environmental information, and it demonstrates the power that information holds to promote change that benefits everyone's environment, health and safety."Continue reading