Librarians on the vanguard of the anti-surveillance movement

The American Library Association's code of ethics demands that library professionals "protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality" and they've been taking that duty seriously since the first days of the Patriot Act.

The history of libraries in the post-9/11 fight is a proud and honorable one, with librarians putting their jobs and honor on the line to stand up for the right of people to conduct intellectual inquiry without government surveillance, and to stand against secret wiretaps that come with perpetual gag orders.

More from BoingBoing.

Designing Social Media Policy for Government

Government agencies in the United States and around the world are increasingly looking to leverage social media to improve the quality of government services and enable greater citizen engagement. One central challenge that has emerged is the blurring line between the three types of social media use by government employees, namely agency use, professional use, and personal use. In this brief, the Center for Technology in Government at the University at Albany draws on its research on social media to clarify these different use types and why they matter for designing social media policy.

White House Pushes for Warrantless Access to Internet Records

Attorney speculates data could include Facebook friend requests

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act currently states that companies are required to provide basic subscriber data to the FBI, but lists only the four kinds of information that might be found on phone bills -- customer's name, address, length of service, and toll billing records

The Presidential Signing Statements Controversy and Its Implications for Library Professionals

Schoolhouse Rock Is No Longer Enough (PDF).

Presidential signing statements, a potent but previously little-discussed lawmaking device, have recently become the focus of fierce controversy both inside and outside the academy. The author presents an overview of the debates, identifies informational gaps that characterize the subject area, and reviews practical and policy implications for library professionals.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

From Resource Shelf: Regarding the public availability of Congressional Research Service reports: maybe the situation will be different in the new administration. Maybe these valuable, taxpayer-funded documents will finally be posted online BY the Congressional Research Service AS THEY ARE ISSUED. In our opinion, there is no logical reason for the hoop-jumping necessary to pry these things loose from the CRS...

The sheer volume of government information now available online is amazing, and has made life infinitely easier not only for researchers, but for the average citizen. We have not yet heard a compelling reason why the Congressional Research Service — a division of the Library of Congress — remains a black hole. This Washington Post story, from February 2007, blames “a wall erected by lawmakers” who regard the agency “as an extension of” their own staff.

We’re not buying that excuse. Equivalent agencies in other countries routinely place their reports online...

The mild-mannered Librarians who took on the Patriot Act... and WON!

From the Daily Kos.

Federal data goes unpreserved

An appaling story for librarians and data users.

In Digital Age, Federal Files Blip Into Oblivion
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: September 12, 2008


WASHINGTON Countless federal records are being lost to posterity because federal employees, grappling with a staggering growth in electronic records, do not regularly preserve the documents they create on government computers, send by e-mail and post on the Web.

Federal agencies have rushed to embrace the Internet and new information technology, but their record-keeping efforts lag far behind. Moreover, federal investigators have found widespread violations of federal record-keeping requirements.

Many federal officials admit to a haphazard approach to preserving e-mail and other electronic records of their work. Indeed, many say they are unsure what materials they are supposed to preserve.

This confusion is causing alarm among historians, archivists, librarians, Congressional investigators and watchdog groups that want to trace the decision-making process and hold federal officials accountable. With the imminent change in administrations, the concern about lost records has become more acute.

We expect to see the wholesale disappearance of materials on federal agency Web sites, said Mary Alice Baish, the Washington representative of the American Association of Law Libraries, whose members are heavy users of government records. When new officials take office, they have new programs and policies, and they want to make a fresh start.

More here.

Dingell Examining Closure of Hopkins Health Database

The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is investigating why a government-funded, reproductive health database operated by the Johns Hopkins University briefly blocked searches using the term abortion two weeks ago.

The POPLINE database is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and run by Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Bloomberg's dean ordered all searches restored after he learned that an administrator had made it difficult to find abortion-related scientific material on the POPLINE Web site. The restriction lasted several days.

"I am concerned that the restriction of certain search terms in the POPLINE database is an ideological decision and not in line with the spirit of free scientific inquiry intended by the creation of such a database," Rep. John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, wrote in a letter yesterday to USAID's administrator.

The congressman requested the names of the officials who were involved in the decision to make abortion a "stop word" - one that a search engine will ignore.

More here.

U.S. Funded Health Search Engine Blocks 'Abortion'

By Sarah Lai Stirland April 03, 2008 5:55:57 PM
Categories: Censorship
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/a-government-fu.html

A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of providing foreign aid, including health care funding, to developing nations.
The massive database indexes a broad range of reproductive health literature, including titles like "Previous abortion and the risk of low birth weight and preterm births," and "Abortion in the United States:
Incidence and access to services, 2005."
But on Thursday, a search on "abortion" was producing only the message "No records found by latest query."
Stephen Goldstein, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins, said he wasn't aware of the censorship, and couldn't immediately comment.
Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."
A librarian at the University of California at San Francisco noticed the new censorship on Monday, while carrying out a routine research request on behalf of academics and researchers at the university. The search term had functioned properly as of January.
Puzzled, she contacted the manager of the database, Johns Hopkins' Debbie Dickson, who replied in an April 1st e-mail that the university had recently begun blocking the search term because the database received federal funding.
--------------------------------------
The complete article may be read at the URL above.

Depository Libraries-GIO: Ask a Librarian

by Barbara Quint

A formal agreement between the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO; www.gpo.gov) and a network of 20 depository libraries has relaunched and expanded the scope of a virtual reference service called Government Information Online: Ask a Librarian (GIO; http://govtinfo.org). Be careful about using the dot-org. Typing "govtinfo.gov" will switch you to the USA.gov site. That may not be too much of a mistake in time. One of the primary strategies of the GIO service is to promote its existence through links from other leading dot-gov sites, such as USA.gov and Thomas. The engineering of such linkages falls mainly to GPO. The depository library participants, led by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and managed by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC; www.cic.net), will handle providing the free chat- and email-based virtual reference service.

Reference librarians from 20 academic, state, and public depository libraries will be available to direct users to information from government agencies, in particular federal, but state, regional, and local agencies as well. The federal government coverage should be consistently strong, as all the libraries involved are federal depositories. Coverage of state and local collections will vary, along with other expertise. John Shuler, project manager and bibliographer for urban planning and government information at UIC, describes the expertise of participant library collections and staff as stretching outside the GPO collection. "We draw on multiple sources and all levels, including specific local expertise. While all have generalized expertise for the federal

[ MORE]

New York State Commission on Local Government Efficiency & Competitiveness

From the New York State Library via NYLINE:

The New York State Commission on Local Government Efficiency & Competitiveness, referred to on page 8 of his State of the State' address on January 3, 2007, was established by Governor Eliot Spitzer with executive order number 11 on April 23, 2007. The Commission is charged with reporting a plan to "consolidate New York's multiple layers of local government."

Details just released by the Commission are available online at here. Materials released by the Commission will also be collected in New York State Library's digital media management system. A final report will be issued in 2008.

Fact Sheet: Department of Justice Actions on FBI Use of National Security Letters

This is from March 2007, but still relevant:

Source: U.S. Department of Justice
“The Attorney General commends the work of the Inspector General (IG) in uncovering serious problems in the FBI’s use of National Security Letters (NSLs). The Attorney General has told the Director of the FBI that such mistakes will not be tolerated and has ordered the FBI and the Department to restore accountability and to put in place safeguards to ensure greater oversight and controls over the use of national security letters.”