Freedom of Information

Senate Passes Intelligence Bill Without Anti-Leak Measures
“The Senate passed the FY2013 intelligence authorization act on December 28 after most of the controversial provisions intended to combat leaks had been removed. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the bill was revised in order to expedite its passage.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/12/2013_intelauth.html

Intellectual Property

Partnering with Belgian news publishers
“Six years ago, Belgium’s French-language news publishers and authors sued Google. They argued that we violated their copyright by displaying snippets in Google News and linking to cached copies of their pages in Google search. Today, we’re delighted to turn the page. We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation and represents great news for both us and the newspapers. We continue to believe that our services respect newspaper copyrights and it is important to note that we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services. From now on, Google and Belgian French-language publishers will partner on a broad range of business initiatives.”
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.it/2012/12/partnering-with-belgian-news-publishers.html

Privacy Issues

Why We Should All Care About Today’s Senate Vote on the FISA Amendments Act, the Warrantless Domestic Spying Bill
“Today is an incredibly important vote for the future of your digital privacy, but some in Congress are hoping you won’t find out. Finally, after weeks of delay, the Senate will start debate on the dangerous FISA Amendments Act at 10 am Eastern and vote on its re-authorization by the end of the day. The FISA Amendments Act is the broad domestic spying bill passed in 2008 in the wake of the warrantless wiretapping scandal. It expires at the end of the year and some in Congress wanted to re-authorize it without a minute of debate. The good news is—thanks for your phone calls, emails, and tweets—Congress will now be forced to debate it, which means we can affect its outcome.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/why-we-should-all-care-about-senates-vote-fisa-amendments-act-warrantless-domestic

Congress Disgracefully Approves the FISA Warrantless Spying Bill for Five More Years, Rejects All Privacy Amendments
“Today, after just one day of rushed debate, the Senate shamefully voted on a five-year extension to the FISA Amendments Act, an unconsitutional law that openly allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans’ overseas communications. Incredibly, the Senate rejected all the proposed amendments that would have brought a modicum of transparency and oversight to the government’s activities, despite previous refusals by the Executive branch to even estimate how many Americans are surveilled by this program or reveal critical secret court rulings interpreting it.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/congress-disgracefully-approves-fisa-warrantless-eavesdropping-bill-five-more

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Jobline will be returning to the San Francisco Bay Region Chapter in 2013.

Freedom of Information

12 Days of Open Government Resolutions
“Conventional wisdom may hold that resolutions are made to be broken. Here at OpenTheGovernment.org, though, we believe that there is an art to making resolutions that stick: be bold, but also decide to do something that you can reasonably accomplish in a year. From now through December 25, we’ll be proposing one resolution per day that the Obama Administration can use to make the federal government more open and accountable in the coming year.”
http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/3665

CRS Report – The Presidential Records Act: Background and Recent Issues for Congress
“This report discusses the PRA and examines policy options related to the capture, maintenance, and use of presidential records—with a focus on electronic presidential records.”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R40238.pdf

Transparency Wrap-Up: 2012 Edition
“This year saw clear and important accomplishments in government transparency in several areas, such as improved whistleblower protections and progress on the numerous open government commitments made under the Open Government Partnership. There was, however, a missed opportunity for U.S. leadership at the Rio+20 environmental summit. And we are concerned that undue industry influence in certain regulatory arenas may be reducing public access to information. For example, a proposed rule would allow water companies to report on the quality of local water supplies in online formats only. And state laws requiring natural gas companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking often allow confidential business information exemptions that are so broad as to undermine the laws. Nonetheless, at the federal level, 2012 was a year of continuing progress for open government.”
http://www.ombwatch.org/transparency-wrap-up-2012-edition

Census encourages other agencies to share data collection system
“The Census Bureau is improving its data collection, saving money and helping other agencies do the same – and, according to its leadership, enhancing value for its customers. How? By putting one of its biggest surveys online.”
http://fcw.com/articles/2012/12/19/census-survey-online.aspx

The E-Gov Act’s legacy
“Much of today’s progress in digital government can be traced back to the E-Government Act of 2002. At a Dec. 17 Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event on the “past, present and future of federal e-government,” several former officials who were present at the legislation’s creation noted that it laid the foundation for the current Digital Government Strategy, cybersecurity standards and even much of the shared-services efforts related to IT acquisition.”
http://fcw.com/articles/2012/12/17/egov-legacy.aspx

Pennsylvania Governor Corbett Unveils PennWATCH Transparency Website
“Governor Tom Corbett ushered in a new era of transparency and accountability in state government today with the launch of Pennsylvania’s transparency website, known as PennWATCH at http://www.pennwatch.pa.gov.”
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/governor-corbett-unveils-pennwatch-transparency-website-184304731.html

Congress Permits Reclassification of Restricted Data
“Certain nuclear weapons-related information that has been removed from the category of Restricted Data (RD) and designated as Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) can now be restored to the RD category, under a provision approved by Congress in the FY 2013 national defense authorization act. Until now, the removal of information from the Restricted Data category was irreversible, being prohibited by the Atomic Energy Act.  That prohibition is nullified by the new legislation.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/12/rd_reclass.html

A look at money, transparency and policy since Citizens United v. FEC
“The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling has left an indelible mark on U.S. politics. Since the January 2010 ruling, outside groups and organizations have been able to promote their own special interests with neither accountability nor transparency. In the nearly three years since the ruling a flood of secretive money has washed over campaigns, super PACs have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and little has been done in the way of implementing policy to reveal the source of all donors. We’re taking a look back at the events since Citizens United v. FEC and created a timeline highlighting the milestones. These events cover four categories: Courts (major court rulings and cases), Disclose (legislation around greater disclosure of political contributions and spending), Super PACs (trend and news for independent expenditure only committees) and FEC (decisions made by the Federal Election Commission).”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/18/a-look-at-money-transparency-and-policy-since-citizens-united-v-fec/

FOIA Lawsuits Increase During Obama Administration
“A new study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has found that there were more court complaints asking federal judges to force the government to abide by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) during the first term of the Obama Administration than there were in the last term of President Bush.”
http://foiaproject.org/2012/12/20/increase-in-foia-lawsuits-during-obama-administration/

CRS Report – The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework
“This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and legislation currently before Congress (S. 3454).”
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf

Public Policy

CA State Senator Proposes Constitutional Amendment for Library Funding
“California State Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) introduced an amendment to the state constitution which would make it easier for local governments to raise funds for public libraries. The amendment would reduce the percentage of votes needed to pass such a measure from the two-thirds supermajority currently needed to 55 percent, though still more than a simple majority. The amended threshold would be more in line with what is required in California to pass K-12 school bond measures. General purpose tax measures that may be used to fund general local services require only a simple majority vote to pass.”
http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/12/funding/ca-state-senator-proposes-constitutional-amendment-for-library-funding/

Internet Access

COPPA Rule Brings Regs Up to Date . . . but Who Must Comply?
“Just in time for the holidays, the Federal Trade Commission’s long-awaited revision to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (the COPPA Rule) has finally been released.  The new Rule, which aims to update the federal requirements for data collection by operators of websites directed to children under 13, includes a number of changes that should give parents a better idea about the types of information being collected about their children by site operators and provide them with more modern means of providing their consent. Changes to the definition of “personal information” – including the addition of IP address and geolocation information – reflect the changing reality of online data collection since COPPA was first enacted, but we have persistent concerns that changes to the definition of sites “directed to children” significantly expand COPPA’s scope.”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/emma-llanso/2012coppa-rule-brings-regs-date-who-must-comply

European Human Rights Court: Internet Restriction Violates Freedom Of Expression
“The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled this week that “restriction of Internet access without a strict legal framework regulating the scope of the ban and affording the guarantee of judicial review to prevent possible abuses amounts to a violation of freedom of expression.””
http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/12/20/european-human-rights-court-internet-restriction-violates-freedom-of-expression/

2012 in Review: A Year in Digital Freedom
“As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2012 and where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. From SOPA blackouts to huge wins for location privacy, from government surveillance to new absurdity in software patent suits, 2012 was a huge year for digital freedom. And thanks to the support of our members, EFF remains at the forefront of these issues. As we move into 2013, we’ll be publishing a series of articles revisiting watershed moments in 2012, adding new links to this series below.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/2012-review-year-digital-freedom

Digital History

2013 NZ Web Harvest
“The National Library exists and has a social responsibility to preserve New Zealand’s social and cultural history, whether in the form of books, newspapers and photographs, or of websites, blogs and videos. The planned New Zealand Web Harvest 2013 recognises the importance of the internet in all areas of New Zealand society and culture by taking a ‘snapshot’ of the whole .nz domain as it exists on the web in February 2013. The Library has conducted two previous harvests, in October 2008 and April 2010.”
http://natlib.govt.nz/publishers-and-authors/web-harvesting/2013-nz-web-harvest

Intellectual Property

British Library welcomes announcement on copyright exceptions
“The British Library today welcomes the announcement by Rt Hon Vince Cable MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, outlining new exceptions to the UK’s copyright framework. In particular, the Library welcomes the exceptions that will now allow:

• Digital preservation of its collections including, for the first time, sound and film
• Non-commercial research copying of in-copyright sound and audiovisual content
• Non-commercial text and data mining of content that an organisation has purchased or has lawful access to
• The digitisation of its analogue collections for access on the premises”

http://pressandpolicy.bl.uk/Press-Releases/British-Library-welcomes-announcement-on-copyright-exceptions-5e4.aspx

Privacy Issues

Government Attorneys Agree With EFF: New ‘Counterterrorism’ Database Rules Threaten Privacy of Every American
“Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on how a little-known government agency—the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)—got the keys to government databases full of detailed, personal information of millions of innocent Americans. Using the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with officials, the Journal obtained emails and other information detailing how the massive new spying program, which the Attorney General signed off on in March, was approved by the White House in secret—over strenuous objections from government privacy lawyers.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/government-attorneys-agree-eff-new-counterterrorism-database-rules-threaten

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Freedom of Information

Update on the National Inventory of Legal Materials
“During the past 3 years, more than 350 AALL volunteers have contributed their time as part of their state working group to help AALL create the first-ever National Inventory of Legal Materials. After countless hours of research, calls to government offices and conversations with colleagues to discuss their findings, volunteers created state inventories that contain invaluable information about more than 7,000 legal titles from all three branches of government in print and online. This fall, the AALL Government Relations Office and Digital Access to Legal Information Committee (DALIC) completed our preliminary analysis of the inventories and posted the results on AALLNET. We’ve also linked to each of the 51 inventories so that anyone can see the underlying data.”
http://aallwash.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/update-on-the-national-inventory-of-legal-materials/

Internet Access

US says it won’t ratify UN telecom treaty
“The United States said Thursday that it will not sign a United Nations telecommunications treaty that U.S. technology companies warn would disrupt governance of the Internet and open the door to online censorship. The U.K. and Canada also said they would not ratify the treaty after negotiations ended at a conference hosted by the U.N. International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Dubai.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/272819-us-says-it-wont-ratify-un-telecom-treaty

Intellectual Property

Google Settles Copyright Dispute with Belgian Newspaper
“On Thursday December 13, 2012, Google and a group of Belgian newspaper publishers reached an agreement on a 6-year long copyright dispute.”
http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/12/16/google-settles-copyright-dispute-with-belgian-newspaper/

International Outlook

UK lost more than 200 libraries in 2012
“The fight to keep libraries open has dominated the headlines but the UK has quietly lost more than 200 branches over the past year, according to a detailed national survey. The rate of library closures has increased, reveals the annual report from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy: 146 branches closed between 2010 and 2011, with the number stepping up to 201 this year. The UK now has 4,265 libraries, compared with 4,612 two years ago, and the number of closures is likely to grow. Campaigners in Newcastle are currently fighting plans to close 10 out of the city’s 18 libraries, with Billy Elliot playwright Lee Hall calling on the council to protect the city’s heritage last month.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/10/uk-lost-200-libraries-2012

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you all detailing the open Advisory Council positions with the chapter and asking for volunteers. I have been thrilled by the response and would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our 2013 Advisory Council Chairs!

• Academic Relations – Shelli Owens
• Archives – Cathy Solomon and Jonathan Leff
• Bayline – Tricia Soto
• Government Relations – Michael Sholinbeck
• Hospitality – Sarah Cook
• Jobline – Lori Guidry
• Listserv and Reflector – Linda Yamamoto
• Mailing – Ginny Woodis
• Networking – Lauren Reid
• Nominating – David Grossman
• Professional Development – Chris Orr
• Tours – Claudine Taillac
• Vendor Relations – Sandy Malloy
• Webmaster – Becky Miller

You should not at all take this to mean that there are not still opportunities available for you to volunteer with the chapter! We are still looking for a Public Relations Chair, and we always have projects in the works, both short- and long-term. You can also volunteer as a committee member, getting, or keeping, your feet wet before stepping into a Chair position in the future. We have already had some members step-up to help out as committee members next year. In fact, all of them have already started in these roles! I would like to thank them as well.

• Erin Meggyressy – Hospitality
• Lisa Ngo – Professional Development
• Tony Sheaffer – Government Relations

Please contact me if you are interested in hearing more about any of the volunteer opportunities that are still waiting for you!

By Anne N. Barker
Chapter President-Elect

Freedom of Information

Finding Agency FOIA Regulations a Shockingly Difficult Task
“Today the National Security Archive published its latest Freedom of Information Act audit to assess which agencies have best followed the FOIA. The audit highlights outdated agency FOIA regulations (the principal tool agencies use to process their FOIA requests) government-wide, and made the  disheartening discovery that fifty-six out of ninety-nine government agencies have not updated their regulations since the most recent amendment to the FOIA. Along with being outdated, formatting inconsistencies, broken links, and in one case a complete lack of regulations, made tracking down each agency’s latest FOIA regulations unduly cumbersome.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/finding-agency-foia-regulations-a-shockingly-difficult-task/

Transparency and the Obama presidency: Looking Back and Looking Forward – Video and Event Recap
“How transparent has President Barack Obama’s administration been? While the first term seemed to start with several bold initiatives, members of the transparency community have been disappointed with the apparent lack of initiative since then. Panelists gave the administration mixed reviews at the Dec. 3, 2012 Advisory Committee on Transparency event examining what’s happened over the past four years and what in store for the next four. . . The video of the event is available on C-Span.
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/07/transparency-and-the-obama-presidency-looking-back-and-looking-forward-video-and-event-recap/

House Rules Changes: Sunlight’s Proposals for the 113th Congress
“Congress runs on rules. With the upcoming changeover from the 112th to the 113th Congress, the House of Representatives will adopt new regulations that innervate every aspect of legislative life. The last time it did this, in 2010, the House set the stage for greater openness and transparency in the lower chamber.  At that time, Sunlight issued a series of recommendations, some of which were adopted. The House of Representatives made significant progress toward ensuring the people’s house belongs to the people, from the new transparency portal docs.house.gov to expanded video coverage of House proceedings to retaining the Office of Congressional Ethics. In advance of the 113th Congress, we’re issuing an updated set of transparency recommendations, each of which would mark a significant step towards increased transparency.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/12/06/house-rules-changes-sunlights-proposals-for-the-113th-congress/

OGP transparency officials chosen to hold ‘government’s feet to fire’
“The Open Government Partnership (OGP) has officially unveiled the senior advisors that will oversee transparency commitments made by member countries to coincide with the launch of the Open Data Institute (ODI).”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/2012/dec/01/ogp-odi-francis-maude-digital-data

Advisory Board Urges White House to Lead Secrecy Reform
“In a long-awaited report to the President, the Public Interest Declassification Board urged the White House to take the lead in fixing the national secrecy system. The Public Interest Declassification Board is an advisory committee that was established by Congress to help promote possible access to the documentary record of significant U.S. national security decisions and activities.  In 2009, President Obama asked the Board to develop recommendations for “a more fundamental transformation of the security classification system.””
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/12/pidb_report.html

Privacy Concerns

Updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
“Yesterday was a watershed moment in the fight for electronic privacy: the Senate Judiciary Committee overwhelmingly passed an amendment that mandates the government get a probable cause warrant before reading our emails. The battle isn’t over — the reform, championed by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), still needs to pass the rest of the Senate and the House, and be signed by the President to become a law. But yesterday, thanks to thousands of people speaking out, we were able to begin the process of overhauling our archaic privacy laws into alignment with modern technology.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/deep-dive-updating-electronic-communications-privacy-act

Warrantless Surveillance 101: Introducing EFF’s New NSA Domestic Spying Guide
“On December 14th, EFF is back in federal court challenging the NSA’s domestic spying program in our long-running case Jewel v. NSA. In anticipation of our court appearance, we’ve launched a new section of our website to give everyone a clear understanding how the NSA warrantless wiretapping program works and why we’re challenging it as unconstitutional.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/warrantless-surveillance-101-introducing-our-new-nsa-domestic-spying-guide

Intellectual Property

Copyright Laws Slow DPLA
“As the Digital Public Library of America approaches its April 2013 launch, copyright laws still hinder the library’s ability to make a wide array of written materials accessible to the public. Two years into its initial efforts—the DPLA was first envisioned in October 2010, soon after Harvard withdrew its collections from the Google Books digitization project due to legal concerns—primary founding member and Harvard University librarian Robert C. Darnton ’60 boasts that the DPLA has the potential to become the “mother of all libraries.” But as the project moves forward, the problem of digitizing copyrighted material, essential for public collections, remains unsolved.”
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/12/7/dpla-copyright-slows-progress/

Copyright for a digital age
“We live in a digital age and therefore we should have a fully functioning knowledge-based economy. Why then do we remain saddled with a copyright framework more suited to the 19th century than the 21st? At the British Library we estimate that by 2020 75 per cent of all books and journals will be published in digital form.  Add to that the exponential growth of the internet and the explosion of mobile technology, and we see that the world is a dramatically different place to the 1980s (the era of the Betamax and personal cassette recorder) when the last major change to copyright legislation took place.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-capital/2012/11/copyright-digital-age

Appeal Filings Outline Authors Guild’s Objections to HathiTrust Opinion
“With a new round of filings hitting the docket last week, the Authors Guild appeal of Judge Harold Baer’s landmark copyright decision in the the HathiTrust case is underway. The broad appeal raises a handful of key questions on which the Guild is seeking review by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including whether the district court erred in finding the scan plan to be fair use.”
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/54982-appeal-filings-outline-authors-guild-s-objections-to-hathitrust-opinion.html

TPP: Why it Matters in the USA
“The U.S. and other governments are meeting yet again to hash out the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), this time in New Zealand. International trade agreements may seem far removed from our daily lives. Why should people in the U.S. take action against TPP? Although we don’t know what’s in the draft treaty, and the U.S. Trade Representative refuses to publish it, the leaked drafts we’ve seen are alarming. TPP is likely to export some of the worst features of U.S. copyright law: a broad ban on breaking digital locks on creative work, even for legal uses, a copyright term of life plus seventy years (the current international norm is life-plus-fifty), ruinous statutory damages with no proof of actual harm, and government seizures of computers and equipment involved in alleged infringement.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/tpp-why-it-matters-usa

US Isolated In Opposition To WIPO Treaty For The Blind, Group Says
“The United States now stands alone in its opposition to a World Intellectual Property Organization treaty on copyright exceptions for blind and and other print-disabled readers, the World Blind Union (WBU) said today.”
http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/12/03/us-isolated-in-opposition-to-wipo-treaty-for-the-blind-group-says/

International Outlook

European Commission Embarks On Process To ‘Modernise’ Copyright
“The European Commission today (5 December) agreed on a process to ensure copyright is best suited for the digital age with the aim of possible legislative reform in 2014. Commissioners in a meeting decided to launch a stakeholder dialogue immediately, and to complete market studies, impact assessment and legal drafting work.”
http://www.ip-watch.org/2012/12/06/european-commission-embarks-on-process-to-modernise-copyright/

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.

The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

By Judy Bolstad, Editor

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Ari Kleiman shares that this year, his temporary job as Patient Health Librarian at UCSF received permanent funding from the Medical Center. He is enjoying what he calls his feel-good job, doing research for patients and teaching them about using authoritative resources. The UCSF Patient Health Library is open to the public and research services are available in-person, by email and by phone. If folks want to know more, they can visit the web site at UCSFPatientHealthLibrary.org.

After a long absence from the music world, Ari also joined a chorus in San Francisco, called Resound Ensemble. It’s a mixed chorus (men and women) that sings an eclectic mix of modern choral music peppered with some interesting surprises. He is having fun, being challenged and pleased to be immersed in beautiful music in the company of a group of very nice people! (http://www.resoundensemble.org).

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After a year of research and team collaboration, Chris Orr (Information Services Manager) and Paul Atwood (IT and Records Manager) successfully launched a web-based document and email management system (DMS) for the General Counsel of the University of California, at the UC Office of the President in Oakland, where they are based. The system is a cloud solution from NetDocuments (http://netdocuments.com). They brought all their information skills to bear in vetting the service for security, promoting user adoption, designing metadata structure, scheduling training and facilitating installation. They are happy to report that attorneys and staff have embraced the DMS, using it every day for their voluminous work product on behalf of the University. Their next challenge is to share the NetDocs love with UC counsel on the ten campuses of the system, not one of them alike in systems and tech experience!

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Jaye Lapachet exhibited a quilt at the Pacific International Quilt Festival in the New Quilts of Northern California exhibit, which was held October 10-14 in Santa Clara, California. The New Quilts of Northern California exhibit is juried and this is the second year one of Jaye’s quilts has been selected for exhibition. You can see the quilt at: http://artquiltmaker.com/blog/2012/09/finished-renewed-jelly-roll-race/

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Dana Kittrelle announces that InfoArmy just raised $17.3 million dollars in Series B venture funding from Norwest Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures! They plan to use the money to continue building their ‘Army’ of researchers.

Press Release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/10/prweb10042325.htm
TechCrunch Article:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/23/data-2-0-goes-large-infoarmy-raises-17-3m-to-build-out-its-crowdsourced-competitive-intelligence-platform/

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Nancy Crossfield of Owen Medical Library, Saint Agnes Medical Center, in Fresno, moved outside the box to serve as a Revenue Buddy during her hospital’s 2-week electronic medical record go-live in October. She was in a team that worked with clinical departments to ensure proper charging and revenue posting in the new system. It was challenging!

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Deb Hunt and David Grossman presented a half day workshop titled “Tech Skills Boot Camp,” where upwardly mobile information professionals came from as far away as Barbados to attend at the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey. They continue to receive an enthusiastic response to their popular series of “Expanding Your Career Potential” workshops and webinars attended by librarians and information professionals from around the world. They use the workshop venue to challenge and motivate their colleagues to expand, strengthen and more effectively utilize their individual portfolios of business, information management, interpersonal and technical skills and to continually “think outside the box” and seize every opportunity for career advancement.

Deb says, “It’s exciting to see that light bulb suddenly switch on as our colleagues recognize the enormous value and transferability of their existing skills within a wide variety of traditional and non-traditional settings.” Deb and David also coach workshop participants to develop their own customized plans to acquire any additional skills required to take their careers to that next step and beyond. Many “Expanding Your Career Potential” workshop alumnae stay connected to their colleagues and the ongoing conversations by joining Deb’s free Career Sustainability group http://linkd.in/pqkjzp on LinkedIn, now approaching 300 members.

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Dear readers:

The next submission deadline is January 25.

Please continue to send me your news. I look forward to hearing from you!

Judy Bolstad, Editor, Mosaic column, jbolstad@library.berkeley.edu

Intellectual Property Issues

Survival of the biggest: Concern about the clout of the internet giants is growing. But antitrust watchdogs should tread carefully

The four giants of the internet age—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—are extraordinary creatures. Never before has the world seen firms grow so fast or spread their tentacles so widely. Apple has become a colossus of capitalism, accounting for 4.3% of the value of the S&P 500 and 1.1% of the global equity market. Some 425m people now use its iTunes online store, whose virtual shelves are packed to the gills with music and other digital content. Google, meanwhile, is the undisputed global leader in search and online advertising. Its Android software powers three-quarters of the smartphones being shipped. Amazon dominates the online-retail and e-book markets in many countries; less well known is its behind-the-scenes power in cloud computing. As for Facebook, if the social network’s one billion users were a country, it would be the world’s third largest.

The digital revolution these giants have helped foment has brought huge benefits to consumers and businesses, and promoted free speech and the spread of democracy along the way. Yet they provoke fear as well as wonder. Their size and speed can, if left unchecked, be used to choke off competition. That is why they are attracting close scrutiny from regulators.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21567355-concern-about-clout-internet-giants-growing-antitrust-watchdogs-should-tread

Digital Rights Activists Gather in Auckland, New Zealand Next Week for the 15th Round of TPP Negotiations

Next week, the 15th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) negotiations will begin in Auckland, New Zealand. Hundreds of delegates and private representatives from the now 11 participating nations will gather at a luxury casino to discuss this multi-faceted trade agreement. EFF, KEI, and the Stop the Trap coalition will also join dozens of other public interest groups to sound the alarm over the TPP’s intellectual property (IP) chapter that could likely prompt countries to enact restrictive copyright enforcement laws that would have huge ramifications for users’ access to digital content and information. As we mentioned previously, countries continue to join the negotiations with no end in sight.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/digital-rights-activists-gather-auckland-new-zealand

Another fair use victory for libraries

We knew some time ago that the second complaint filed in the copyright infringement case brought against UCLA by the the trade association AIME over streamed digital video had been dismissed. But last week Judge Consuelo Marshall filed her order that explained the grounds of that dismissal (PDF). What we have learned is that this case is a slight victory for fair use in libraries.  On the specific issue we do not have clear guidance, just an affirmation that fair use arguments for streamed digital video are not unreasonable or obviously wrong.  But it is helpful to see this ruling as part of an overall picture, one in which all three cases claiming copyright infringement by academic libraries which were defended on the basis of fair use have now been decided at the trial court level and NO INFRINGEMENT HAS BEEN FOUND.

http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/

Public Policy

Senate Passes Amendments to Shed Light on Contractor Misbehavior

The Senate has approved several amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 3254), which will bring greater transparency and accountability to federal contracting. The amendments would strengthen whistleblower protections for federal contractors and grantees, require the Defense Department to publish its "revolving door" database of senior department officials who seek employment with defense contractors, and require the Defense Department to conduct an annual study on defense contracting fraud.

http://www.ombwatch.org/senate-passes-amendments-to-shed-light-on-contractor-misbehavior

Open Access

Scientists Seek New Credibility Outside of Established Journals

The Open Access movement continued gaining steam in 2012. A third iteration of the Research Works Act was quashed, the number of universities adopting official open access policies continued to grow, dozens of new open access journals were launched, and a petition calling for public access to all federally funded research gathered enough signatures to get the attention of the White House. But Open Access is only one part of a larger shift taking place in the academic world—particularly the sciences—says Richard Price, founder and CEO of academia.edu. Price argues that academia is moving toward a system where the credibility of research, publications, and ultimately researchers themselves, is gauged not by the prestige of the journal in which works are published, but by the usage, citations, and professional feedback that the works generate online.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/11/research/scientists-seek-new-credibility-outside-of-established-journals/

United Nations Development Programme opens data on over 6,000 projects in transparency drive

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today launched a new online portal allowing open, comprehensive public access to data on UNDP’s work in 177 countries and territories, fulfilling a commitment to full transparency by 2013 above and beyond international standards. The new portal, open.undp.org, comprises comprehensive programmatic information – from income and expenditures to activities and results – on more than 6,000 active UNDP projects, as well as those that financially closed in 2011, along with more than 8,000 outputs or results.  Users can sort projects by focus areas, funding sources, and locations and extract detailed data related to budgets, implementing organizations, and targeted results in areas from governance and rule of law to crisis prevention and recovery.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2012/11/29/undp-opens-data-on-over-6-000-projects-in-transparency-drive/

Privacy Issues

Heart Gadgets Test Privacy-Law Limits

The small box inside Amanda Hubbard’s chest beams all kinds of data about her faulty heart to the company that makes her defibrillator implant. Ms. Hubbard herself, however, can’t easily get that information unless she requests summaries from her doctor – whom she rarely sees since losing her insurance. In short, the data gathered by the Medtronic Inc. implant isn’t readily accessible to the person whose heartbeat it tracks. The U.S. has strict privacy laws guaranteeing people access to traditional health files. But implants and other new technologies – including smartphone apps and over-the-counter monitors—are testing the very definition of medical records. At the same time, companies including Medtronic are pushing to turn the data into money. The company is contemplating selling the data to health systems or insurers that could use it to predict diseases and possibly lower their costs. At a July industry event, a senior Medtronic executive, Ken Riff, called these kinds of data "the currency of the future."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203937004578078820874744076.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

NASA Suffers More Data Breaches

NASA has announced that the theft of an unencrypted laptop has compromised the personal information of a "large number" of NASA employees and contractors. A similar theft earlier this year exposed the data of thousands of Kennedy Space Center employees. The federal agency said that by the end of the year all NASA laptops must have full-disk encryption. The recent developments follow a 2010 United States Supreme Court case, NASA v. Nelson, in which a federal contractor challenged NASA’s overly broad collection of personal information. EPIC filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) in support of the contractor Robert Nelson, arguing that there were insufficient legal protections and that NASA’s systems are vulnerable to data breaches. Robert Nelson is among the employees and contractors who this week received a notice from NASA about the data breach. For more information, see EPIC: NASA v. Nelson and EPIC: Privacy Act.

http://epic.org/2012/11/nasa-suffers-more-data-breache.html

Leahy Reaffirms Strong Support of Warrants for Content

Senator Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has released a manager’s amendment (PDF) that reaffirms the underlying premise of the legislation that the Judiciary Committee will mark up on Thursday: Law enforcement officials need a warrant in order to access the contents of electronic communications. (A section-by-section summary of the manager’s amendment is here.) If the manager’s amendment is adopted the Leahy bill will establish a clear, consistent, easy to apply warrant rule. It will protect consumer privacy, remove the uncertainty law enforcement currently faces, and foster the growth of U.S. cloud computing companies, which will be able to promise their clients that the information they store in cloud will be as secure against government access as information stored locally.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/greg-nojeim/2711leahy-reaffirms-strong-support-warrants-content

Digital History

Building a Digital Public Library of America

The Boston Public Library, America’s first publicly funded municipal library, will host a celebration in April, 2013 to launch the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): an ambitious, broad-based effort to establish a new library platform for our digitally-mediated age.

In its first iteration, the DPLA will bring together digital resources that are today distributed around the country and make them easily accessible and useful. Today, digital library materials are scattered in ways that no single librarian or patron could find them all. It would be prohibitively expensive for the DPLA to bring together materials from every single library, archive and museum in the country. Instead, the DPLA plans to connect existing state infrastructure to create a system of state (or in some cases, regional) service hubs, each offering standardized digital services to local institutions, including digitization and metadata services, and serving as an on-ramp for all by aggregating metadata and data from local institutions to feed into a new DPLA network.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/11/digital-libraries/building-a-digital-public-library-of-america/

International Outlook

Syrians Use Old and New Tools to Stay Online During Internet Shutdown

Information coming out of Syria has slowed to a trickle in the wake of Thursday’s country-wide communications shutdown, which included nearly all Internet traffic and intermittent cellular network and landline outages. Earlier today, Renesys reported that the last five networks that had survived the initial outage were off the air. In the meantime, experts have cast a skeptical eye on the Syrian Ministry of Information’s claims that the outage is the result of sabotage by "terrorists," a term that the Assad regime has frequently used to describe the opposition.

Even under these adverse conditions, some Syrians have found ways to get online, stay in touch with family and loved ones abroad, and keep the world appraised of events on the ground at a time when fighting has escalated and reliable intelligence is scarce. Dlshad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT specialist, estimates that the number of people online in Syria at the moment is probably "less than 1,000," yet Global Voices reports that videos of protests are still finding their way online.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/day-2-syrias-internet-shutdown

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The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.