Freedom of Information

Sunshine Week in Review
“As Emily recently shared, last week marked the ninth annual Sunshine Week, a time to reflect on the state of public access to government information and work together to make our government more transparent. In addition to the release of two new reports to which AALL contributed, we were busy celebrating Sunshine Week at events across Washington, DC.  Read on for event recaps and a few exciting legislative developments.”
http://aallwash.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/sunshine-week-in-review/

NASA Technical Reports Database Goes Dark
“This week NASA abruptly took the massive NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) offline.  Though no explanation for the removal was offered, it appeared to be in response to concerns that export controlled information was contained in the collection. “Until further notice, the NTRS system will be unavailable for public access. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and anticipate that this site will return to service in the near future,” the NTRS homepage now states. NASA Public Affairs did not respond yesterday to an inquiry about the status of the site, the reason for its suspension, or the timeline for its return.”
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/03/ntrs_dark.html

One Step Forward, One Step Missed: House Committee Approves Limited FOIA Improvements
“Yesterday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform approved the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act (H.R. 1211), sponsored by the committee’s chair and ranking member, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD). The bill would take steps to improve agency compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and require agencies to post more public information online. However, more reforms will be needed to address fundamental flaws in the current FOIA system.”
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.113hr1211 http://www.foreffectivegov.org/one-step-forward-one-step-missed-house-committee-approves-limited-foia-improvements

Tester offers e-filing amendment to budget bill
“Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., has this evening introduced an amendment to the Senate budget bill that would require senators to electronically file campaign finance reports, the Center for Public Integrity has learned. The move comes a month after Tester re-introduced legislation toward the same goal. Senate campaign committees are the only federal political committees not required to file their financial disclosure reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission. As a result, it can take weeks, if not months, to get detailed information about who is bankrolling senators and Senate hopefuls.”
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/03/22/12377/tester-offers-e-filing-amendment-budget-bill

Congress Makes a Law and the Pentagon Redacts It
“National Security Archive staffers have seen all sorts of responses from U.S. government agencies, often routine, sometimes extraordinarily helpful, but once in a while absurd. A recent Pentagon mandatory declassification review action falls into the “absurd” category: Pentagon reviewers censored language from a U.S. public law and a unclassified report to Congress.”
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/congress-makes-a-law-and-the-pentagon-redacts-it/

Intellectual Property

German Parliament Votes To Protect News Snippets From Republishing
“A controversial update to German copyright law providing for an auxiliary protection for tiny extracts from press articles has been finally passed by the German Upper House (“Bundesrat”). What has been characterised and campaigned against as a “lex Google” not only by Google, but also by Germany’s industry associations, journalist associations and activists alike shall prevent internet platforms from using publishers’ content without licensing (and payment) except for “single words” or “minimal extracts”.”
http://www.ip-watch.org/2013/03/22/german-parliament-votes-to-protect-news-snippets-from-republishing/

Copyright Office Calls for Major Reforms To Copyright Law
“Could the copyright policy debate be turning another significant corner? For years, the dominant focus of the debate has been enforcement of current law – essentially, a debate about how to catch, punish, and deter “pirates.” The fight over SOPA and PIPA started out as a stark example of the single-minded pursuit of copyright enforcement. It ended up, however, as a powerful demonstration that copyright law has a much wider circle of stakeholders than just rights holders and pirates. Now, Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante has issued a call for Congress to launch a fundamental review aimed at modernizing copyright law for the digital age. In a recent speech and congressional testimony yesterday, she suggests a broad agenda, including possible reforms aimed at challenges facing not just major copyright holders, but other stakeholders and the public as well. There’s no guarantee that Congress will heed the call, but it’s a potentially significant development.”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/david-sohn/2103copyright-office-calls-major-reforms-copyright-law

Updating the Copyright Act? It’s up to all of us.
“On Wednesday, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office is going to testify to Congress and call for an update to U.S. copyright law. If Congress takes up the challenge, supporters of free expression and the promise of digital technology will have a great opportunity to forge a copyright law that reflects our fundamental values. Of course, a major reform of copyright law could lead the other way – back towards SOPA and beyond to a world of more centralization, censorship, and technology regulation.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/updating-copyright-act-its-up-to-all-of-us

Library Copyright Alliance Statement on Supreme Court Decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley—Total Victory for Libraries and Their Users
“Today the US Supreme Court announced its much-anticipated decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, a lawsuit regarding the bedrock principle of the “first sale doctrine.” The 6-3 opinion is a total victory for libraries and our users. It vindicates the foundational principle of the first sale doctrine—if you bought it, you own it. All who believe in that principle, and the certainty it provides to libraries and many other parts of our culture and economy, should join us in applauding the Court for correcting the legal ambiguity that led to this case in the first place. It is especially gratifying that Justice Breyer’s majority opinion focused on the considerable harm that the Second Circuit’s opinion would have caused libraries.”
http://www.arl.org/news/pr/lca-statement-on-supreme-court-decision-kirtsaeng-v-wiley.shtml http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf

Privacy Issues

Victory for Transparency: Microsoft Releases Report on Law Enforcement Requests for User Data
“In January of this year, EFF was part of a coalition led and organized by Nadim Kobeissi that called for Microsoft to release publish a report on government requests for Skype user data. The letter pointed out that with 600 million users worldwide, Skype is effectively one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. Many users rely on Skype for secure and private communications and for some of them—whether they’re activists working in states governed by authoritarian regimes or journalists communication with sensitive sources—the stakes are high. We are pleased to see that Microsoft has not only answered that letter on behalf of Skype, it has answered on behalf of the entire company.  Yesterday the company released its first transparency report, which covers all law enforcement requests and court orders received in 2012 related to all of their online and cloud services, including Hotmail/Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Microsoft Account, and Messenger.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/victory-transparency-microsoft-releases-report-law-enforcement-requests-user-data

Senate “Dream Team” Introduces ECPA Reform Bill
“Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) today introduced a bill that would reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). This Senate “Dream Team” will give ECPA reform a strong boost: Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and original author of the 1986 ECPA, is joining forces with Mike Lee, a Tea Party favorite, and a strong voice for Constitutional rights when the Committee marked up a nearly identical bill last year. The Leahy-Lee bill would amend ECPA to require government officials to obtain a warrant in order to require ISPs or other online service providers to disclose the private communications of their users (except, of course, in emergency cases).”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/greg-nojeim/1903senate-dream-team-introduces-ecpa-reform-bill

Tell your Representative to Oppose CISPA
“The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives (H.R. 624) and contains the same dangerous provisions that would allow companies to liberally share sensitive personal information with the government for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity and without meaningful oversight. Last year, CISPA passed the House of Representatives but was not taken up in the Senate. The White House threatened to veto CISPA in 2012. AALL has joined a coalition of groups dedicated to government openness and accountability to encourage Congress to oppose CISPA. Please write your Representative today and urge him/her to oppose CISPA, which would create a gaping new exemption to existing privacy law.”
http://aallwash.wordpress.com/2013/03/20/tell-your-representative-to-oppose-cispa/

International Outlook

From Canada – Federal librarians fear being ‘muzzled’ under new code of conduct that stresses ‘duty of loyalty’ to the government
“Federal librarians and archivists who set foot in classrooms, attend conferences or speak up at public meetings on their own time are engaging in “high risk” activities, according to the new code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada. Given the dangers, the code says the department’s staff must clear such “personal” activities with their managers in advance to ensure there are no conflicts or “other risks to LAC.” The code, which stresses federal employees’ “duty of loyalty” to the “duly elected government,” also spells out how offenders can be reported.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/15/library-and-archives-canada/

Library and Archives Canada Code of Conduct
“The Canadian Library Association urges Library and Archives Canada to revisit its Code of Conduct in order to strike a more even balance between the duty of loyalty to the Government of Canada that all public servants have and the freedom of expression that is imperative to the work of librarians in a strong democracy.”
http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News1&CONTENTID=14028&TEMPLATE=%2FCM%2FContentDisplay.cfm

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

Sunshine Week: In Celebration of Open Government
“As President Barack Obama has stated, “Openness will strengthen our democracy, and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.” This week, we celebrate Sunshine Week — an appropriate time to discuss the importance of open government and freedom of information, and to take stock of how far we have come, and think about what more can be done.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/11/sunshine-week-celebration-open-government

Sunshine Week: A Round-up of EFF’s Year in Transparency
“This week, EFF once again joins a coalition of national and local transparency and press organizations in celebrating Sunshine Week as a way to bring attention to the importance of public records and the need to remain vigilant despite government push-back. Forty-seven years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law, giving the public the right to access records pertaining to government activities. Pronounced “foy-yah” by those who regularly employ it, the law serves as a sort of citizen subpoena process; if you ask for a record that doesn’t fall under a confidentiality exemption, the government has to produce it. Each day this week, EFF will be sharing details about our efforts to hold the government accountable using this crucial tool, including our successes and challenges. To kick it all off, here’s a breakdown of our greatest transparency hits since the last time Sunshine Week rolled around.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/sunshine-week-year-transparency

Open States: Transparency Report Card
“Today we’re making available our Transparency Report Card, a byproduct of the work we did in producing Open States. In the course of writing scrapers for all 50 state legislatures, our Open States team and volunteers spent a lot of time looking at state legislative websites and struggling with the often inadequate information made available.  Impossibly difficult to navigate sites, information going missing and gnarly PDFs of tabular data have become daily occurrences for those of us working on Open States. People are always curious to know how their state stacked up compared to others — in fact one of the most frequent questions we have been asked has been “so which state was the worst?”  That question got us thinking:  How could we derive a measure of how “open” a state’s legislative data was?”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/03/11/openstates-report-card/ http://openstates.org/reportcard/ http://openstates.org/

Governor Cuomo Launches Open.NY.Gov Providing Public Unprecedented User-Friendly Access to Federal, State and Local Data
“Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today launched “open.ny.gov,” a new and comprehensive state data transparency website that provides – for the first time – user-friendly, one-stop access to data from New York State agencies, localities, and the federal government. The website, featuring economic development, health, recreation, and public services information, was unveiled today during Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative designed to raise awareness about the importance of open government.”
http://www.governor.ny.gov/press/03112013open-data http://open.ny.gov/

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Background and Policy Options for the 113th Congress
“This report provides background on FOIA, discusses the categories of records FOIA exampts from public release, and analyzes statistics on FOIA administration. The report also provides background on severla legal and policy issues related to FOIA, including the release of controversial records, the growth in use of certain FOIA exemptions, and the adoption of new technologies to improve FOIA administration. The report concludes with an examination of potenital FOIA-related policy options for Congress.”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R41933.pdf

Bipartisan Bill Aims to Beef Up FOIA Compliance
“The Republican and Democrat sitting atop Congress’ top watchdog panel unveiled joint proposed legislation Tuesday that would mandate a single online portal for all Freedom of Information Act requests across government. The 2013 FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act would direct officials to look closely at FOIA Online, a 5-month old joint FOIA Portal for the Commerce Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and a handful of other agencies. It would leave the door open for the governmentwide FOIA system to be built elsewhere, though, according to a press release from sponsors Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.”
http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2013/03/bipartisan-legislation-aims-beef-foia-compliance/61821/

Freedom of Information Act Performance, 2012: Agencies Are Processing More Requests but Redacting More Often
“A building block of American democracy is the idea that citizens have a right to information about how their government works and what it does in their name. However, citizen access to public information was only established by law in 1966 with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The law has since been strengthened and improved over the years, and FOIA currently requires federal agencies to formally respond to requests for information within 20 working days or potentially face a lawsuit. While there are exemptions that agencies can use to avoid the disclosure of sensitive information or information that violates privacy rights, agencies processed over half a million FOIA requests in 2012. In about 41 percent of these cases, the information requested was released “in full” with no parts “redacted” – i.e., clean, complete documents with no blacked-out parts were provided to the person who requested the information. How does this compare to past years and past administrations? How well has President Obama met his goal of being the most transparent administration in history with regard to access to public information? This report examines the processing of FOIA requests from 25 major federal agencies in 2012 and reviews the processing of FOIA requests by agencies since 1998.”
http://www.foreffectivegov.org/freedom-information-act-agencies-are-processing-more-requests-but-redacting-more-often

Whither whistleblowing: Where have all the leaking sites gone?
“More than two years ago, a flurry of new WikiLeaks clones sprung up around the world inspired by the world’s most famous transparency-driven organization. They had all kinds of names: QuebecLeaks, BaltiLeaks, EnviroLeaks, and more. PirateLeaks (based in the Czech Republic), BrusselsLeaks (Belgium) and RuLeaks (Russia) all did not respond to Ars’ requests for comments. HonestAppalachia’s Jimmy Tobias wrote to Ars to say the group was “active indeed, and working on a variety of projects.” To date, HonestAppalachia has yet to publish anything, despite receiving a $5,000 grant from the Sunlight Foundation nearly a year ago. Most of these clones never got very far and appear to have all but shut down. Balkanleaks seems to be just one of a handful still actively receiving and publishing new documents. “I think this points to the fact that what WikiLeaks did was fairly unique and probably a few years ahead of its time,” said Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. So how does Balkanleaks thrive where others haven’t?”
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/whither-whistleblowing-where-have-all-the-leaking-sites-gone/

Aaron Swartz to receive posthumous ‘Freedom of Information’ award for open access advocacy
“Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz is slated to receive posthumous recognition in Washington for his efforts promoting free access to taxpayer-funded research. The James Madison Freedom of Information Award is administered by the American Library Association, and recognizes “individuals who have championed, protected and promoted public access to government information and the public’s right to know national information.”"
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/13/4099792/aaron-swartz-to-receive-posthumous-freedom-of-information-award-for

Senator Tester Champions Government Transparency; Reintroduces POIA
“Today, Senator Jon Tester reintroduced The Public Online Information Act (POIA) a bill that would take already public government information out of file cabinets and put it online in user friendly formats.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/03/12/senator-tester-champions-government-transparency-reintroduces-poia/

National Security Letters Are Unconstitutional, Federal Judge Rules
“A federal district court judge in San Francisco has ruled that National Security Letter (NSL) provisions in federal law violate the Constitution. The decision came in a lawsuit challenging a NSL on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In the ruling publicly released today, Judge Susan Illston ordered that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stop issuing NSLs and cease enforcing the gag provision in this or any other case. The landmark ruling is stayed for 90 days to allow the government to appeal.”
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/national-security-letters-are-unconstitutional-federal-judge-rules

Shining a Light on FOIA Practices
“In celebration of Sunshine Week, a number of organizations released Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reviews. These reviews, conducted by National Security Archives, the Center for Effective Government, Cause of Action, Associated Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org, indicate how agencies measure up when it comes to providing the public with information. Although the studies indicate that agencies on the whole increased their responses to FOIA requests in 2012, disparities remain between agencies on things like response time, compliance with the 2007 Open Government Act and 2009 Guidance from the White House, cost of responding, fee waivers, and backlog reductions. A majority of responses to FOIA requests in 2012 were only partial responses, and use of exemptions to withhold or redact information increased. The following snapshots contain some of the highlights of each review.”
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/03/20130315-shining-a-light-on-foia-practices.html

Public Policy

2013 World Press Freedom Index: Dashed hopes after spring
“After the “Arab springs” and other protest movements that prompted many rises and falls in last year’s index, the 2013 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index marks a return to a more usual configuration. The ranking of most countries is no longer attributable to dramatic political developments. This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term.”
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html

National Archives to Help Launch the Digital Public Library of America’s Pilot Project
“Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero announced today that the National Archives, as a leading content provider to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), will help launch its first pilot project. The DPLA is a large-scale, collaborative project across government, research institutions, museums, libraries and archives to build a digital library platform to make America’s cultural and scientific history free and publicly available anytime, anywhere, online through a single access point.”
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2013/nr13-72.html

Open Access

IMLS Director Susan Hildreth Supports Broad Access to Federally Funded Research
“The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today its continuing commitment to expanding public access to IMLS funded research. In a February 22 memorandum, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy directed agencies to develop plans to increase access to federally funded scientific research and improve the management of research data. The following is a statement from IMLS Director Susan H. Hildreth.”
http://www.imls.gov/imls_director_susan_hildreth_supports_broad_access_to_federally_funded_research.aspx

Intellectual Property

What Librarians Need to Know about the New Copyright Alert System
“Late last month, the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) launched its Copyright Alert System, creating a new effort by rights holders (including the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), such as Comcast, Verizon, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable) to curb online copyright infringement.”
http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013/03/new-copyright-alert-system-what-librarians-need-to-know/

Privacy Issues

Wimberly, Jasey Introduce “Reader Privacy Act” Bill Upgrading NJ Book Privacy for the Digital Age
“The rise in popularity of digital book purchasing, borrowing and concerns for individual privacy protections has prompted Assembly Democrats Benjie E. Wimberly and Mila M. Jasey to introduce legislation that would place readers and purchasers of books and electronic books –”e-Books”– under similar protections as library records by expanding reader privacy law. Wimberly and Jasey note the invention of digital books and e-readers has raised questions around the country about privacy and broadening protections to include new literary mediums. California enacted similar legislation in 2011 extending library privacy laws to include digital book records.”
http://www.politickernj.com/64006/wimberly-jasey-introduce-reader-privacy-act-bill-upgrading-nj-book-privacy-digital-age
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2012/Bills/A4000/3802_I1.HTM

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.

It’s Sunshine Week!

Celebrating Sunshine Week 2013
“Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative highlighting the importance of open government and accountability, will be held this year from March 10-16. Created by journalists in 2002, Sunshine Week is designed to educate people on their right to access public information in understandable, user-friendly formats to participate more effectively in democracy and to use such information to protect and improve their communities. Sunshine Week coincides with James Madison’s birthday on March 16. Madison is considered the “Founding Father of Freedom of Information.” During the week, news media, government officials, educational institutions, libraries, nonprofit organizations, individuals, and anyone with an interest in open and transparent government can take part in a variety of events and activities. Shedding new light on the latest developments in freedom of government information, these events will include conferences, panel discussions, and workshops. Here are some notable events that will take place in Washington, D.C., throughout the week”
http://www.foreffectivegov.org/blog/celebrating-sunshine-week-2013

Freedom of Information

It’s Time to Give the Public Access to CRS Reports
“Today, Representatives Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) reintroduced legislation that will make it easier for the public, the media, and government employees to better understand the important policy matters facing Congress. The bipartisan “Public Access to Congressional Research Service Reports Resolution of 2013″ would ensure that these reports, which are often cited by courts and the media and sold by third parties for $20 per copy, are freely available to the public on a website maintained by the House Clerk.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/03/07/its-time-to-give-the-public-access-to-crs-reports/

Data transparency advocates register lobbyist
“An upstart data transparency group run by a former congressional counsel has registered its first lobbyist, new U.S. Senate filings show. Hudson Hollister, a Republican who until last year served as counsel to the U.S. House’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, will lobby on behalf of the Data Transparency Coalition, which wants the federal government to institute “greater efficiency and better transparency by deploying consistent data standards.”"
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/03/06/12277/data-transparency-advocates-register-lobbyist

Google Transparency Report Highlights Just How Much We Don’t Know About National Security Letters
“In an unprecedented win for transparency, yesterday Google began publishing generalized information about the number of National Security Letters that the company received in the past year as well as the total number of user accounts affected by those requests. Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act, the National Security Letter (NSL) power provided by five statutory provisions is one of the most frightening and invasive. These letters–the type served on communications service providers such as phone companies and ISPs and are authorized by 18 U.S.C. 2709–allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens’ private communications and Internet activity without any prior judicial review. To make matters worse, recipients of NSLs are subject to gag orders that forbid them from ever revealing the letters’ existence to anyone.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-about-national-security-letters-google-transparency-report

In Maine, ‘sunshine’ law’s fate looks dim
“The public’s access to government information is under attack in Maine. The Legislature will take up several bills this session that would further puncture the state’s open-government law, snatching from public view information that is now considered part of the public’s right to know. If approved, the measures will reinforce Maine’s national reputation as a place where transparency and government accountability rank behind privacy and other powerful interests.”
http://www.pressherald.com/politics/sunshine-laws-fate-looks-dim-in-maine_2013-03-03.html

Obama’s Legacy of Transparency is Unfinished
“In a report released today, the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) examines the Obama administration’s progress on open government during the president’s first term. The review finds that the administration has issued important policy reforms, but that the implementation of White House policies has been inconsistent across federal agencies. The report, titled Delivering on Open Government: The Obama Administration’s Unfinished Legacy, reviews activity in three main areas relating to government transparency: creating an environment that supports transparency, improving the usability of government information, and reducing secrecy related to national security.”
http://www.foreffectivegov.org/obamas-legacy-of-transparency-is-unfinished
RSVP for a related Sunshine Week panel discussion and webcast on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time!  The webcast will also be archived at: http://www.youtube.com/foreffectivegov

Public Policy

GPO Celebrates 152 Years of Keeping America Informed
“Today is the 152nd birthday of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). The agency first opened its doors for business on March 4, 1861, the same day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th President, with a mission based on the requirement in Article I, section 5 of the Constitution that “each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings and from time to time publish the same.” Since Lincoln’s time GPO has produced the official version of every great American state paper and an uncounted number of other Government publications, forms, and documents, including the Emancipation Proclamation, Social Security cards, Medicare and Medicaid information, census forms, tax forms, citizenship forms, military histories ranging from the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion to the latest accounts of our forces in Afghanistan, emergency documents like the ration cards and the “Buy Bonds” posters used during World War II, the Warren Commission Report on President Kennedy’s assassination, the Watergate transcripts, the 9/11 Commission Report, Presidential inaugural addresses, Supreme Court opinions, and the great acts of Congress that have shaped American society.”
http://gpo.gov/pdfs/news-media/press/13news08.pdf

Open Access

NIU Libraries launches Open Access Fund
“NIU Libraries has launched a pilot Open Access Fund that will provide small grants to faculty and graduate students to help defray the upfront costs associated with open access publishing. Grappling with the costs for expensive journal subscriptions, a number of universities nationwide, including Harvard and MIT, are promoting open access publishing. It provides unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed journal articles, thus broadening access to scholarly research. The NIU Open Access Fund seeks to advance the use of open access as a means of distributing the research and creative work of the Northern Illinois University community.”
http://www.niutoday.info/2013/03/04/niu-libraries-launches-open-access-fund/

Intellectual Property

Library Copyright Alliance Submits Reply Comments to Copyright Office on Orphan Works
“On March 5, the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA, of which the American Library Association is a member) filed reply comments (pdf) to the US Copyright Office in response to the office’s October 22, 2012, Notice of Inquiry about the current state of play with orphan works and mass digitization.”
http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013/03/library-copyright-alliance-submits-reply-comments-to-copyright-office-on-orphan-works/

Google Says Authors Guild Lawsuit Could Shred Modern Card Catalog
“A victory for the Authors Guild in its copyright infringement case against Google would do nothing less than destroy the “modern version of the card catalog,” the search company argues in new court papers filed this week. “This case is about whether Google’s modern version of the card catalog — a search tool that allows anyone with access to the Internet to search among millions of books — can continue to exist,” Google says. Google’s sweeping rhetoric comes in its latest round of papers stemming from its book digitization effort, which involves scanning library books and displaying snippets of some of them in its search engine, in response to queries. The company is currently appealing an order by U.S. Circuit Court Judge Denny Chin allowing the Authors Guild to proceed with its case as a class-action lawsuit.”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/195268/google-says-authors-guild-lawsuit-could-shred-mode.html#axzz2N6diKY28

Privacy Issues

CISPA is Back: FAQ on What it is and Why it’s Still Dangerous
“The privacy-invasive bill known as CISPA—the so-called “cybersecurity” bill—was reintroduced in February 2013. Just like last year, the bill has stirred a tremendous amount of grassroots activism because it carves a loophole in all known privacy laws and grants legal immunity for companies to share your private information. EFF has compiled an FAQ detailing how the bill’s major provisions work and how they endanger all Internet users’ privacy.”
https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

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

White House Regulatory Office Too Quiet About Its Activities, Study Finds
“A notable portion of meeting records, oral communications and public comments related to agency rulemaking are absent from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website, according to a new study that faults OIRA for less-than-full transparency during the last 12 years.”
http://www.govexec.com/management/2013/02/white-house-regulatory-office-too-quiet-about-its-activities-study-finds/61536/

Senator Tester Keeps Fighting the Good Fight for Transparency
“Today, Senator Tester announced that once again he has introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, (not yet online) a bill that would bring the Senate into the 21st Century by requiring senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/02/26/senator-tester-keeps-fighting-the-good-fight-for-transparency/

Public Policy

E-rate’s looming Fiscal Cliff
“While Congress and the White House debate how to prevent the looming across-the-board budgets cuts known as sequestration, those of us in the E-rate world are worrying about our own “fiscal cliff.” For the past several years E-rate applicants have been biting their nails waiting to see what totals are going to be requested from the capped fund and if there will be enough money to fund their applications. In 2012, we heard a collective gasp when the school and library applications showed that for the first time in the 15 years of the program there was not going to be enough money to cover all the priority one requests, with a shortfall of some $2.8 billion. After shaking out the couch cushions and emptying the penny jars, USAC was able to make up the deficit so that all of these applications could receive funding and the first tier of priority two applications would also receive funding.”
http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013/02/e-rates-looming-fiscal-cliff/

Open Access

SLA Supports Open Access to Federally Funded Research
“SLA, along with 11 other library, publishing, research and advocacy organizations, wrote a letter thanking U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden for introducing legislation titled “The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act” (FASTR). This bill, introduced on February 13, will provide an important mechanism to ensure that manuscripts of peer-reviewed scientific articles reporting on research funded by the U.S. Government can be freely accessed and fully used by all American taxpayers – including researchers, teachers, students and businesses.”
http://slablogger.typepad.com/sla_blog/2013/02/sla-supports-open-access-to-federally-funded-research.html

Internet Access

Internet Governance, Policy Up for Debate at UNESCO Meeting in Paris
“This week, Internet governance experts and advocates gather in Paris to start preparing for the ten-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2015. This week’s meeting is hosted by the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); CDT’s Leslie Harris and Matthew Shears will be appearing on several panels addressing questions of privacy, free expression, and cybersecurity – key issues in Internet policy that will shape governance debates over the next few years. The WSIS+10 event will give government, industry, civil society, academics, and the technical community an opportunity to continue conversations about Internet governance and policy that were features of the WCIT debates.”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/emma-llanso/2602internet-governance-policy-debate-unesco-meeting-paris

Digital History

Building the Digital Public Library of America
“The Digital Public Library of America will launch on April 18 after two and a half years of careful planning and preparation. The project known as DPLA is the first national effort that seeks to aggregate existing records in state and regional digital libraries so that they are searchable from a single portal. Up until now, the documents that tell the story of our nation’s history and cultural heritage have largely been siloed in state and local libraries, museums, and archives. Some institutions have the ability to digitize those valuable materials and put them online, but strained budgets mean that most do not. The project’s funding will also allow it to work with local communities to digitize their cultural-heritage—preserving them for the future and bringing them online as part of our first national digital library.”
http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2013/2/28/building-the-digital-public-library-america/

Intellectual Property

Copyright Alert System Launching Today
“The long-discussed Copyright Alert System (CAS) is launching today — but don’t expect any immediate fireworks.  It’s going to take some time to see how the system operates in practice; all that will happen this week is that some Internet users may receive initial informational alerts. Under the CAS, ISPs will send warning notices to subscribers that copyright holders have identified as engaging in copyright infringement on peer-to-peer networks.  In the optimistic scenario, this notification-centric approach will serve a largely educational purpose, informing users that their file sharing activity may be both illegal and observable by rightsholders.  Some users may not have been fully aware of that.  And in some cases, notices may clue parents in to illegal behavior they weren’t aware of, such as file sharing by the household teenager.  This is why CDT has said that the CAS has the potential to help reduce peer-to-peer copyright infringement while sidestepping the serious concerns raised by approaches that involve (for example) government mandates or the adoption of new snooping or filtering technologies. There are risks, however.”
https://www.cdt.org/blogs/david-sohn/2502copyright-alert-system-launching-today

New German Law Will Allow Free “Snippets” By Search Engines, But Uncertainty Remains
“The good news for search engines like Google is a proposed German copyright law won’t require them to pay to show short summaries of news content. However, uncertainty remains about how much might be “too much” and require a license. The new law is expected to pass on Friday.”
http://searchengineland.com/new-german-law-will-allow-free-snippets-by-search-engines-but-uncertainty-remains-150131

Privacy Issues

Supreme Court Dismisses Challenge to FISA Amendments Act; EFF’s Lawsuit Over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Remains
“Yesterday, the Supreme Court sadly dismissed the ACLU’s case, Clapper v. Amnesty International, which challenged the FISA Amendments Act (FAA)—the unconstitutional law that allows the government to wiretap Americans communicating with people overseas. Under the FAA, the government can conduct this surveillance without naming individuals and without a traditional probable cause warrant, as the Fourth Amendment requires. The court didn’t address the constitutionality of the FAA itself, but instead ruled that the plaintiffs—a group of lawyers, journalists, and human rights advocates who regularly communicate with likely “targets” of FAA wiretapping—couldn’t prove the surveillance was “certainly impending,” so therefore didn’t have the “standing” necessary to sue. In other words, since the Americans did not have definitive proof that they were being surveilled under the FAA—a fact the government nearly always keeps secret—they cannot challenge the constitutionality of the statute.”
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/supreme-court-dismisses-challenge-fisa-warrantless-wiretapping-law-effs-lawsuit

International Outlook

German National Data Portal Launched
“Wednesday saw the launch of the German national data portal. While the portal had been longtime expected, in the last days before the launch the German open data community has been vocal in its criticism of the introduction of a newly created national license framework, which includes the option to limit re-use to non-commercial use forms. The portal will also hold non-open data as well as data in closed formats. This in the expectation that once data is published in some shape or form the pressure on the data holder will rise to provide the data as really open data as well.”
http://epsiplatform.eu/content/german-national-data-portal-launched

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

Freedom of Information

Justices consider Va. limits on access to public records

The Supreme Court’s justices suggested Wednesday that state laws limiting access to government records to their own state residents might be pointless, but the justices seemed not to be persuaded that the laws are also unconstitutional. Lawyers for two men who had sought government records from Virginia – joined by a broad group of media organizations and professional data miners – asked the court Wednesday to invalidate those restrictions, arguing that they discriminated against out-of-state residents in ways that violated two separate constitutional limits.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/20/supreme-court-state-access-laws/1932847/.

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Intellectual Property Issues

Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal judge today to protect the free speech rights of an online archive of laws and legal standards after a wrongheaded copyright claim forced the removal of a document detailing important technical standards required by the federal government and several states. Last month, the association of Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors (SMACNA) claimed an online post of a federally-mandated 1985 standard on air-duct leakage violated its copyright and demanded the post be removed. After a threat of legal action from SMACNA, the document was taken down.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/free-speech-battle-over-publication-federal-law.

Public Domain, My Dear Watson? Lawsuit Challenges Conan Doyle Copyrights

Some 125 years after his first appearance, Sherlock Holmes remains a hot literary property, inspiring thousands of pastiches, parodies and sequels in print, to saying nothing of the hit Warner Bros. film starring Robert Downey Jr. and such television series as "Elementary" and the BBC’s "Sherlock."

But according to a civil complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Illinois by a leading Holmes scholar, many licensing fees paid to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate have been unnecessary, since the main characters and elements of their story derived from materials published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/public-domain-my-dear-watson-lawsuit-challenges-conan-doyle-copyrights/.

DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, "Big Six" Publishers

Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold. The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers. The complaint centers on digital rights management, or DRM, the technological lock that prevents consumers from transferring any ebook they buy on an Amazon Kindle onto, say, a Nook or Kobo ereader.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/drm-lawsuit-independent-bookstores-amazon_n_2727519.html.

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Internet Access

Oxford Blocks Google Docs in Response to Phishing Scams

The University of Oxford temporarily blocked Google Docs on Monday in an attempt to make its students and professors more aware of an increase in phishing scams that use the Web service. In a blog post, Robin Stevens, a communications programmer at Oxford, said university officials had decided to take "extreme action" after what they perceived to be Google’s inaction on the issue.

In the schemes, attackers, often pretending to be from Oxford, send out Google Doc forms that ask users to enter their personal e-mail passwords. Students and faculty members deceived by the form then freely type in that information, unwittingly lending their account to the attacker. "Almost all the recent attacks have used Google Docs URLs, and in some cases the phishing e-mails have been sent from an already-compromised university account to large numbers of other Oxford users," said Mr. Stevens.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/oxford-blocks-google-docs-in-response-to-phishing-scams/42401.

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Public Policy

33% of Seafood Mislabeled in Grocery Stores, Restaurants & Sushi Venues

Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, uncovered widespread seafood fraud across the United States, according to a new report (PDF) released today. In one of the largest seafood fraud investigations in the world to date, DNA testing confirmed that one-third of the 1,215 fish samples collected by Oceana from 674 retail outlets in 21 states were mislabeled. Among the report’s other key findings include:

• Only seven of the 120 red snapper samples collected nationwide were actually red snapper
• 84 percent of the white tuna samples were actually escolar, a species that can cause serious digestive issues for some individuals who eat more than a few ounces
• Fish on the FDA’s "DO NOT EAT" list for sensitive groups such as pregnant women and children because of their high mercury content were sold to customers who had ordered safer fish

Oceana is calling on the federal government to require traceability of all seafood sold in the U.S. Tracking fish from boat to plate would not only significantly reduce seafood fraud and help keep illegally caught fish out of the U.S. market, it would also give consumers more information about the fish they purchase, including the species name, where, when and how it was caught, if it was farmed or previously frozen and if any additives were using during processing.

http://oceana.org/en/news-media/press-center/press-releases/oceana-study-uncovers-widespread-seafood-fraud-nationwide.

Research – Public Reporting of Hospital Infection Rates

Health-care associated infections (HAIs) kill about 100,000 people annually; most are preventable, but many hospitals have not aggressively addressed the problem. In response, twenty-five states and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services require public reporting of hospital infection rates for at least some types of infections, and other states and private entities are implementing such reporting. We report on work in progress, in which we assess the quality and suitability of different state websites and reports for different target audiences and the extent to which they meet best practices for online communication.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032662.html.

White House Open Access Memo Strong, Could Be Stronger

Today [Feb. 22], the White House released a memorandum (PDF) in support of a more robust policy for public access to research, making the results of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research freely available online. The memorandum gives government agencies six months to detail plans to ensure the public can read and analyze both research and data, without charge. Both open access and open data are key to promoting innovation, government transparency, and scientific progress. This comes on the heels of Congress’ introduction of FASTR (Fair Access to Science & Technology Research), a bill that sets into law many of the same goals as the memorandum. There are, however, some key differences.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/white-house-open-access-memo-strong-could-be-stronger.

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Privacy Issues

Mobile Device Security: Boosting Confidence and Trust in Health IT

Mobile devices like laptops, smartphones and tablets have the potential to increase the quality and efficiency of health care by, among other things, making it easier for health care providers to access patient information when and where they need it. Because health care providers are increasingly using these devices, the HHS recently released a new set of online tools to help providers comply with their obligations under HIPAA when using mobile devices. Mobile devices pose unique risks to the security of health information; the biggest cause of health information breaches is theft and loss of laptops and other portable media.

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/features/2013/mobile-device-security-boosting-confidence-and-trust-in-health-it.aspx.

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Digital History

Kerala State Central Library Starts Digitizing Hundreds of Rare Books

The Kerala State Central Library, which happens to be one of the oldest in India, has made the big leap to the digital age by having digitized hundreds of books, some which dates back hundreds of years. During the initial phase, 707 rare documents which includes 644 English and 63 Malayalam books comprising 3,28,268 pages were added to the Digital Archive. 480 more English books comprising a total of 1,84,321 pages were added in the second phase in 2012.

http://www.librarystuff.net/2013/02/22/184-year-old-kerala-state-central-library-starts-digitizing-hundreds-of-rare-books/.

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

Take Action!

Call to action: Tell Congress you support the Bipartisan Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)

Today (February 14, 2013), Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Yoder (R-KS), and Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, a bill that will accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation by making articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research freely accessible online for anyone to read and build upon.

Every year, the federal government funds over sixty billion dollars in basic and applied research. FASTR will make these articles freely available for all potential users to read and ensure that articles can be fully used in the digital environment, enabling the use of new computational analysis tools that promise to revolutionize the research process.

Act Now!

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/news/FASTR_calltoaction.shtml.

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Open Access

Open Access Journal PeerJ Publishes First Articles

Multidisciplinary Open Access journal publisher PeerJ announced the publication of its first 30 peer-reviewed articles today. Co-founders Jason Hoyt, formerly chief scientist and VP for research and development for Mendeley, and Peter Binfield, formerly publisher of the Public Library Of Science (PLOS), launched PeerJ in June 2012. They quickly garnered support for the project, ultimately assembling an Editorial Board of 800 academics and an advisory board of 20 – five of whom are Nobel Laureates. PeerJ is now hoping that its business model can help make academic publishing more efficient and less expensive for both researchers and libraries.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/02/publishing/open-access-journal-peerj-publishes-first-articles/.

California bill to release the state’s building codes online for free

Assemblyman Brian Nestande of California has introduced Assembly Bill 292, which would open source the California Code of Regulations (including the Building Codes!!). The summary reads: "This bill would provide that the full text of the California Code of Regulations shall bear an open access creative commons attribution license, allowing any individual, at no cost, to use, distribute, and create derivative works based on the material for either commercial or noncommercial purposes."

http://freegovinfo.info/node/3869.

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Public Policy

New GPO report suggests charging taxpayers twice for government info

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recently released their congressionally mandated report, Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age.  NAPA’s five-member panel spent ten months conducting an audit of the Government Printing Office (GPO). The panel’s lengthy 166 page report does present some interesting, and at times, troubling thoughts.

On one hand the panel definitely grasps the difficult position that GPO is in considering that, with 97% percent of today’s federal documents are born digital, the GPO has had to make many changes over the past two decades. While much of the report is reasonable and responds to the needs of libraries, the public, and GPO itself, the section in Finding III-5, Government Information Dissemination and Access, is cause for concern. It gives some ideas on how GPO might ensure funding for FDsys in the future. One of these ideas is that "now might be the time to revisit charging the public for access to FDsys content."

http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013/02/new-gpo-report-suggests-charging-taxpayers-twice-for-government-info/.

What’s the Difference Between an Executive Order and a Directive?

The Obama Administration issued policy statements this week on critical infrastructure protection and cyber security, including measures to encourage information sharing with the private sector and other steps to improve policy coordination.  Curiously, the Administration issued both an Executive order and a Presidential directive devoted to these topics.

"There are probably two significant differences between an EO and a PD, at least to my understanding," said Harold Relyea, who served for decades as a Specialist in American National Government at the Congressional Research Service. "First, in almost all cases, for an EO to have legal effect, it must be published in the Federal Register. Second, is the matter of circulation and accountability. EOs are circulated to general counsels or similar agency attorneys, which can be readily accomplished by FR publication. Again, a PD may be more selectively circulated, and this is done through developed routing procedures."

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/02/eo_pd.html.

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Privacy Issues

CISPA is Back; All Your Data Are Belong to Us

Barely a year after the defeat of SOPA, Congress is back to testing the waters for legislation that many internet users believe to be in violation of their fundamental rights to privacy and free expression. CISPA, a bill that would make it easier for corporations and the government to share internet users’ personal data, was officially re-introduced in the House on Wednesday. It’s already being rushed forward in the legislative process. The House Intelligence Committee is holding a full hearing on the bill today [Feb. 14] at 10 am. They will hear from four witnesses – all from the business sector and all known supporters of CISPA. No experts with concerns about privacy issues in the bill were invited to address the committee.

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2527-CISPA-is-Back-All-Your-Data-Are-Belong-to-Us.

Mandatory Black Boxes in Cars Raise Privacy Questions

The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today to include strict privacy protections for data collected by vehicle "black boxes" to protect drivers from long-term tracking as well as the misuse of their information.

Black boxes, more formally called event data recorders (EDRs), can serve a valuable forensic function for accident investigations, because they can capture information like vehicle speed before the crash, whether the brake was activated, whether the seat belt was buckled, and whether the airbag deployed. NHTSA is proposing the mandatory inclusion of black boxes in all new cars and light trucks sold in America. But while the proposed rules would require the collection of data in at least the last few seconds before a crash, they don’t block the long-term monitoring of driver behavior or the ongoing capture of much more private information like audio, video, or vehicle location.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/mandatory-black-boxes-cars-raise-privacy-questions.

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International Outlook

Egyptian Court Orders 30-Day Ban On YouTube Over Hosting "The Innocence of Muslims" Video and There’s Plenty of Blame to Go Around

This weekend, the Cairo Administrative Court issued a 30-day ban order on YouTube and all other websites that host or link to content from the anti-Islam film "The Innocence of Muslims," which was protested worldwide after footage from the trailer was shown on Egyptian television. The court’s ruling may force the hand of the National Telecom Regulation Authority and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which have refrained from pursuing such a ban themselves.

It is unclear what the court hopes to gain by temporarily blocking access to YouTube. YouTube had voluntarily blocked access to the video in Libya and Egypt in mid-September – a clear breach of Google’s own policy of only removing content if it is found to be in violation on their Terms of Service or in response to a valid court order.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/egyptian-court-orders-30-day-ban-youtube-over-hosting-%E2%80%9C-innocence-muslims%E2%80%9D-video.

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Freedom of Information

Congress Asking the Right Questions on FOIA

A recent letter from Congress to the Justice Department represents a positive development toward strengthening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The letter (PDF), sent Feb. 4 by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asks what steps the government is taking on a number of key transparency improvements. The reforms, if implemented, could significantly improve the public’s access to information about critical topics such as food safety, compliance with environmental standards, and special interest influence in government decision making.

Open government advocates praised the letter. The Sunshine in Government Initiative said the letter asks "pointed questions," and the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott wrote that it "could be the most comprehensive congressional review [of FOIA] in three decades."

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/congress-asking-right-questions-foia.

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.

Intellectual Property Issues

The Orphan Works Problem: Time to Fix It

Can Congress embrace and enact sensible copyright policy? Four years ago, for a brief shining moment, it seemed the answer might be yes, as various interested stakeholders rallied around long-overdue legislation that would have helped to fix the orphan works problem. Orphan works are those whose owner cannot be located. Consequently, those who would like to use and share these works may hesitate to do so out of fear that they could later be found liable for copyright infringement because they didn’t get permission. In 2008, a variety of interested parties managed to come up with a way to limit that liability. It wasn’t perfect, but it represented real progress. Sadly, that effort collapsed. In the past several months, however, momentum started slowly building once again toward a solution.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/orphan-works-problem-time-fix-it.

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Public Policy

Law Library Sues San Francisco for Breach of City Charter

The San Francisco Law Library filed a lawsuit today against the City and County of San Francisco, alleging that since 1995 the city has violated a City Charter provision that requires it to provide proper funding and adequate space for the Law Library. Since 1995, the Library has been housed in a cramped, leaky and damaged upper room of the San Francisco Veterans War Memorial building. The Veterans building is set to close for renovation in May 2013, meaning that if the city continues to violate the Charter and fail to meet its obligations, the Law Library will then be homeless.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/02/06/4600104/law-library-sues-san-francisco.html.

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/eb27d3e0-698b-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html.

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Open Access

Researchers opt to limit uses of open-access publications

Academics are – slowly – adopting the view that publicly funded research should be made freely available. But data released yesterday suggest that, given the choice, even researchers who publish in open-access journals want to place restrictions on how their papers can be re-used – for example, sold by others for commercial profit.

http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-opt-to-limit-uses-of-open-access-publications-1.12384.

NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata and Indicators

NISO [National Information Standards Organization] voting members have approved a new project to develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles with respect to how "open" they are.

Many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other names; the terms offered vary both between publishers and within publishers by journal, and in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. Adding to the potential confusion, a number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are &quotopen&quot while the rest of the journal’s content are available only by subscription or license. No standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is openly accessible and what re-use rights might be available to readers. Visual indicators or icons indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher.

http://www.niso.org/publications/newsline/2013/newslinefeb2013.html#report2.

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Privacy Issues

In a Major Privacy Victory, Seattle Mayor Orders Police to Dismantle Its Drone Program After Protests

In an amazing victory for privacy advocates and drone activists, yesterday, Seattle’s mayor ordered the city’s police agency to cease trying use surveillance drones and dismantle its drone program. The police will return the two drones they previously purchased with a Department of Homeland Security grant to the manufacturer. EFF has been warning of the privacy dangers surveillance drones pose to US citizens for more than a year now. In May of last year, we urged concerned citizens to take their complaints to their local governments, given Congress has been slow to act on any privacy legislation. At least thirteen states are now considering legislation to restrict drone use to protect privacy, and there are also members of Congress on both sides of the aisle pushing the same thing.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/major-privacy-victory-seattle-mayor-orders-police-not-use-surveillance-drones.

Security fears slow cloud progress: Concern over government stopping companies from using the cloud

Almost half of IT professionals are deterred from keeping sensitive data in the cloud because of fear of government intervention and possible legal action. The survey, which looked at IT and cloud experts’ attitudes to storing data in the cloud, revealed that government and legal interference puts 48% of them off from entering the cloud environment. These figures highlight that IT managers are deterred from the Cloud, because they are unsure if their organisation’s sensitive data is adequately protected and will therefore pass IT security audits or indeed government regulatory checks which hosted cloud environments are subjected to.

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-management-and-technology/3011477/Security-fears-slow-cloud-progress.

Obama wants your immigration story – and personal data

Writing from a BarackObama.com email account, self-described "undocumented immigrant" Jose Magana last night shared his personal immigration story with the masses. Magana said he came to the United States from Mexico at age 2. He slept on a couch for much of his young life. He worked hard and excelled in school but lived in fear of being deported to a country he barely knows.

"Everyone has a story – I’m sure you do, too," Magana wrote in touting immigration policy reform on behalf of Organizing for Action, President Barack Obama’s new nonprofit advocacy organization that sprung from his campaign committee. "Will you share your immigration story? Organizing for Action will use these stories to move the conversation forward."

What isn’t immediately evident to people inclined to submit their names, emails, ZIP codes, photo and personal immigration story through a provided online form: that the group reserves the right to use submissions "for any purpose whatsoever at the sole discretion of OFA, including without limitation any political, advertising or commercial use of any kind."

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/07/12166/obama-wants-your-immigration-story-and-personal-data?utm_source=iwatchnews&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=rss.

The FTC and Mobile Privacy: Be Careful in Collecting User Data, or Face the Consequences

The FTC’s announcement late last week of a settlement with a mobile app developer and the Commission’s simultaneous release of a mobile privacy report highlighted the agency’s focus on protecting consumer privacy in the popular mobile space. Moreover, the Commission’s actions provided a pointed reminder to app developers that they must consider privacy at the earliest stages and in all phases of creating their innovative products.

The settlement was with Path, a social networking company, arising out of alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC Act. With respect to COPPA, the company had not actually targeted children, but it collected birthdates in the enrollment process and that, the FTC concluded, was enough to give the company knowledge that it was collecting data from children under 13.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/gs-hans/0702ftc-and-mobile-privacy-be-careful-collecting-user-data-or-face-consequences.

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Digital History

Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) independent study of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age (PDF), was released January 2013.

"Over the past two decades, the shift from an industrial age to an information age has affected the way both public and private sector organizations operate. For GPO, the demand for federal print products has declined by half over the past twenty years, but the demand for information that government creates has only increased. While conducting this review, the Panel determined that GPO faces challenges in dealing with the movement to the digital age that are shared across the federal government. Critical issues for the federal government include publishing formats, metadata, authentication, cataloging, dissemination, preservation, public access, and disposition. The Panel believes that the federal government needs to establish a broad government-wide strategy to manage digital information through all stages of its lifecycle. The absence of such a strategy has resulted in a chaotic environment with significant implications for public access to government information—and, therefore, the democratic process—with some observers describing federal digital publishing as the "wild west." Now that approximately 97 percent of all federal documents are "born digital," many important documents are not being authenticated or preserved for the future, and the public cannot easily access them. GPO has a critical role to play along with other agencies in developing a government-wide strategy that streamlines processes, clearly defines agency responsibilities, avoids duplication and waste, and effectively provides information to current and future generations."

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032568.html.

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

Library of Congress has archive of tweets, but no plan for its public display

In the few minutes it will take you to read this story, some 3 million new tweets will have flitted across the publishing platform Twitter and ricocheted across the Internet. The Library of Congress is busy archiving the sprawling and frenetic Twitter canon — with some key exceptions — dating back to the site’s 2006 launch. That means saving for posterity more than 170 billion tweets and counting, with an average of more than 400 million new tweets sent each day, according to Twitter.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/e4db1c24-55d4-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_story.html

Old school bookstore thrives in NYC

http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2012/12/07/sbiz-old-bookstore-the-strand-new-york.cnnmoney

Rapid DNA: Coming Soon to a Police Department or Immigration Office Near You

In the amount of time it takes to get lunch, the government can now collect your DNA and extract a profile that identifies you and your family members.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/rapid-dna-analysis

Extension Gives You More Control Over Your Facebook Privacy

Facebook Messages has a feature that tells you when a chat recipient has seen a message. This “read receipt” is, in true Facebook fashion, both nifty and unsettling. And it brings with it tons of potential for abuse. Unfortunately, there’s no built-in method to opt out.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/extension-gives-you-more-control-over-your-facebook-privacy

2012 in Review: Digital Rights Activism Around the World

Just as in the United States, where a multi-pronged campaign against SOPA and PIPA killed the freedom-restricting bills, activism for digital rights saw great successes—and innovations—in 2012. While not every campaign was as successful in quashing efforts to restrict rights, it was nonetheless a great year worldwide for digital activism. Here are a few highlights:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/2012-review-international-digital-activism

Public Policy

Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close

At the bustling public library in Arlington Heights, Ill., requests by three patrons to place any title on hold prompt a savvy computer tracking system to order an additional copy of the coveted item. That policy was intended to eliminate the frustration of long waits to check out best sellers and other popular books. But it has had some unintended consequences, too: the library’s shelves are now stocked with 36 copies of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/us/libraries-try-to-update-the-bookstore-model.html

Privacy Concerns

Alan Moore’s Neonomicon censored by US library

The removal of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon from the shelves of a library in South Carolina has been described as “censorship” by free speech campaigners.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/06/alan-moore-neonomicon-censored-library

Intellectual Property

Scanning Documents? Patent Trolls Want You To Pay Up

Earlier this week, Ars Technica profiled a particularly atrocious group of patent trolls who are demanding payments from small businesses for committing the egregious, shameful act of… scanning documents to email? Yes, the latest in a string of absurd patent-related stories involves the everyday act of using a networked scanner.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/scanning-documents-patent-trolls-want-you-pay

International Outlook

Google backtracks on Chinese anti-censorship feature

Google appears to be backtracking on its once unshakeable anti-censorship stance, after removing a feature from its Chinese site designed to help users avoid getting cut off from the internet. The feature — which flagged up a warning message whenever a user began typing a censored word, then redirected them to a help page that explained how to avoid being cut off from the web — appears to have been disabled some time between 5 and 8 December 2012.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/04/google-china-anti-censorship-fail

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.

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.