Executive Power 2.0

Obama Relaxes Presidential Secrecy

2009-01-28T14:46:00.001-07:00

Check out the story here on American Libraries.

More War? Help the ACLU Stop Mukasey

2008-07-30T11:58:00.007-06:00

http://action.aclu.org/mukasey
Attorney General Mukasey wants Congress to issue a new declaration of war that would make the entire globe -including the US- a "battlefield." Under the proposal, the current or next president could declare anyone an enemy combatant and lock them up indefinitely without a trial. Can you tell Congress they should pass over this dangerous plan? Click here. Thank you.

Shameless plug and kudos

2008-05-09T12:05:00.004-06:00

For those interested in investigating government information further, one of your greatest resources is hosted by the Government Publications Library at University of Colorado at Boulder (full disclosure: I work for CU Boulder's Libraries).

Not only have the librarians and staff of CU's Gov Pubs department produced an excellent blog on all matters of government information, found here: http://cubgovpubs.blogspot.com/

The blog includes weekly updates of Congressional Research Service reports released (where many of us find out about the Executive Branch's misadventures), GAO releases, and information about how to research topics in the news. It is one of the most frequently linked blogs in the Government Publications world.

On top of that, a few weeks ago, ResourceShelf a blog where "dedicated librarians and researchers share the results of their directed (and occasionally quirky) web searches for resources and information" highlighted the Gov Pubs subject guides as well:

Resource of the Week: Subject Guides from the UC-Boulder Government Publications Library
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

If you’re one of our regular readers, you already know how fond we are of government documents. So you can imagine how our virtual pulse quickened when we encountered this large and beautiful collection of government-oriented subject guides covering everything from Acronyms to Worldwide Demographic Information.

Mixed in with the actual guides are links to such key resources as The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance and earthquake/seismic info from the U.S. Geological Survey. But sometimes, when you expect a direct link to a resource, you get a nice surprise. For example, click on the link for the Government Accountability Office, and you are taken to a page that explains what it is, what it does, and how to use it, including integration with the local OPAC.

The subject guides themselves comprise collections of links to agencies, databases, reports and other items, with brief annotations. There are some unusual collections here, including:
+ Ask an Expert!, including links to “Ask an Expert” pages at many different agencies, including the Census Bureau, the National Park Service, and NASA. This unusual aggregation is a clever idea.
+ Kids Pages from various agencies (including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Who knew?)
+ Declassified Documents, from the U.S. and other countries.
+ Statistical Information by State
+ Technical Reports — a nice compendium, which also includes links to subscription databases accessible to the university community.

Just cruising through some of these guides, we reacquainted ourselves with valuable resources that we haven’t visited for awhile. For example, in the Charities guide, we found a link to the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics, which we’d quite forgotten about. And the Religion Statistics guide is an excellent compendium of sites we know about and use regularly — e.g., Adherents.com — and The Pluralism Project at Harvard University, which we think is new to us. (Look at this collection of “in-depth profiles of individual religious centers,” which can be sorted by state or by religious tradition.)

Be aware that not every link in every subject guide is to an official government agency. But research institutions, think tanks, etc., also provide valuable information, and we’re glad to see that they were included as well.

And don’t leave this site without checking out the ginormous database of library-created research and subject guides and tutorials. Says here that the three “most request[ed] guides” are:
+ History Course Web Pages
+ Aerial Photography and Satellite Imagery
+ Religious Studies Subject Guide

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FBI Withdraws Unconstitutional National Security Letter After ACLU and EFF Challenge

2008-05-08T18:44:00.000-06:00

Gag Order Lifted on Internet Archive, Allowing Founder to Speak Out for First Time

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush's lost e-mails

2008-05-01T00:49:00.002-06:00

I'm surprised there isn't more buzz on the net about this:

A federal magistrate judge on Thursday chastised the Bush administration for failing to fully answer questions related to a long-running dispute over missing White House emails.

Story at ars technica:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/bush-lost-e-mails.ars

Feds Searching Laptops @ US Borders

2008-04-29T15:47:00.001-06:00

Yahoo Tech is running a story about virtual rummaging at the US border. The scoop's here.

FBI wants widespread monitoring of 'illegal' Internet activity

2008-04-24T08:46:00.002-06:00

I found this one on News.com:

WASHINGTON--The FBI on Wednesday called for new legislation that would allow federal police to monitor the Internet for "illegal activity."

The suggestion from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which came during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, appears to go beyond a current plan to monitor traffic on federal-government networks. Mueller seemed to suggest that the bureau should have a broad "omnibus" authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks as well.

The surveillance should include all Internet traffic, Mueller said, "whether it be .mil, .gov, .com--whichever network you're talking about." (See the transcript of the hearing.)

The rest of the story is here:

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9926899-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Everything old is new again....

2008-04-24T08:29:00.003-06:00

Internet Censorship Coming to Russia

via ReadWriteWeb:

Russia, which is home to almost 30 million of Europe's 350 million Internet users may begin to extend its strict media censorship laws to the Internet, according to a report in the AFP. State newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported today that Russia's prosecutor's office wants to toughen its "anti-extremism" laws on the web. Most newspapers and television are already under some form of governmental control, which makes the Internet one of the last places for free press in the country. New proposals would begin to erode the last bastion of press freedom in the country.

Read the rest of the story here:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/internet_censorship_coming_to_russia.php

Book Groups Defend Reader Privacy from National Security Letters

2008-04-09T17:26:00.001-06:00

Here's the story.

Misinformation- The War in Iraq

2008-04-09T17:24:00.001-06:00

The video says it all:

Bush Administration's Anti-Abortion Stance Almost Trumps Scientific Inquiry

2008-04-05T14:37:00.004-06:00

We were appalled to discover this story yesterday. Bush resurrected a Reagan administration policy that prevented USAID from funding any projects that offered abortions or encouraged abortion as a form of birth control. This has been termed by opponents as "The Global Gag Rule" and there have been several attempts to reverse the decision by both houses of Congress.

From the Ala's Office for Intellectual Freedom:

Controversy arose this week when librarians discovered that they could no longer use the word 'abortion' on POPLINE, a reproductive health database maintained by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

When informed about the restriction, Dr. Michael J. Klag, the Dean of the Bloomberg School, reversed the decision and restored full access to the POPLINE database.

Loriene Roy, President of the American Library Association, issued the following statement on the controversy:

"We applaud Dr. Klag's swift action to restore full access to the POPLINE database. We are dismayed, however, at the circumstances that caused the administrators running the POPLINE database to begin blocking any and all searches on the word "abortion." Any federal policy or rule that requires or encourages information providers to block access to scientific information because of partisan or religious bias is censorship. Such policies promote ideology over science and only serve to deny researchers, students, and individuals on both sides of the issue access to accurate scientific information."

While critics had decried this policy for years as damaging both to efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and to slow the growth of world population, this latest incident is the most Orwellian yet. In this case, it was not an order that came down from the executive branch- but rather the over-eagerness of a mid-level employee to ensure compliance with the policy (not law).

ALA Disappointed in Passage of FISA Amendments Act

2008-02-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

"The American Library Association is deeply disappointed that earlier today, the U.S. Senate passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act (S. 2248), without important civil liberties amendments that would have added some privacy protections to the surveillance standards in FISA."

ALA Opposes National Security Letters Gunning for Access to Library Records

2008-01-29T11:25:00.000-07:00

http://capwiz.com/ala/issues/alert/?alertid=9755706&queueid=1698581406

Congress Approves a Strengthened FOIA Bill

2008-01-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/currentnews/newsarchive/2007/december2007/foiareform.cfm

Obama's Proposal for Open Government

2007-11-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama has just released his technology and innovation plan that focuses on open government and information technology. The article, available here, highlights five key points:

Ensure the full and free exchange of information among Americans through and open internet and diverse media outlets
Create transparent and connected democracy
Encourage the deployment of a modern communications infrastructure
Employ technology and innovation to solve our nation's most pressing problems
Improve America's competitiveness

The details of his plan include things like open meetings with government officials and agencies available via live feeds, net neutrality, subsidies to promote broadband development, and prohibitions against big telecoms leasing bandwidth they will not use in the attempt to shut out the "little guys". Let us hope that this announcement will, at least, start a dialogue among the candidates that deals with open government and the free flow of information.

Poster Session at CAL '07

2007-11-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

On November 10, the Liberscholars presented at the Colorado Association of Libraries conference. You can view some of the elements of our Executive Power 2.0 poster here.
We got our picture taken with Gwen Alexander, Emporia's new Dean at the School of Library & Information Management. Photo courtesy Rhonda Altonen.

2007-11-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

Our Poster Abstract:
What happens when a crisis of national security is used to justify a unilateral consolidation of power by the executive branch? This presentation demonstrates how information systems begin to break down at local, national, and international levels. We look at core issues and documents, such as Executive Order 13233, the Freedom of Information Act, the Patriot Act, manipulation and redaction of government records and research; as well as the consequences for libraries, and their reactions and strategies. These changes in the dynamic between the federal government and institutions have a direct impact upon the pursuit of, access to, and reliability of information within civil society.