The Obama administration is making significant efforts to make government more accountable and participatory in launching data.gov. The site will also allow applications to help average citizens sort and analyze information provided by the government. -DB

San Jose Mercury News
Commentary
July 2, 2009
By Frank Davies
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Want to give the Obama White House an earful on how to open up government? Want to sort through the latest NASA images of Mars, use a text message to donate to Pakistani refugees or help transportation officials design new bus stops?

Your government now has the tools to let you do that.

Want to know which airports have the most bird strikes, where the latest food recall is or how much your county is getting in stimulus money?

Web 2.0 government is making it easier for citizens to download and search data, slice it and dice it, and talk back to the government about it.

And if some agencies are slow to sign on, help is on the way. The new data.gov Web site allows the private sector to build applications that will help citizens sort through and analyze information.

The Obama administration is pushing hard for the government to use social networking and other Web 2.0 tools so citizens can get more information, hold government accountable and participate in more decisions.
“This is about changing the way government works and how we make decisions,” said Beth Simone Noveck, the administration’s deputy chief technology officer. “We can create a viral movement that really opens up government.”

Noveck is part of several new media teams in the White House that are drafting open-government rules and initiatives with a lot of outside input. They’re testing ideas and taking chances.

When President Barack Obama held the first online town hall, the White House used Google Moderator to sort questions and allow the public to vote on their popularity. Backers of legalizing marijuana in effect stuffed the ballot box, forcing pot questions to the top of the list.

“There are risks, but the new administration is willing to take some risks like that, even if it doesn’t work,” said Kevin Merritt, the CEO of Socrata, a private company and social network that uses government data.

Obama’s team “genuinely feels that if you get the data out there, people will do interesting things with it, and good things will follow,” Merritt added. He compared recent developments to the 1980s, when weather data and GPS technology led to all sorts of applications, services and businesses.

While the White House is leading the charge on many Web 2.0 efforts, many ideas are coming directly from agencies and departments.

The State Department recently launched a text-message campaign that made it easy for users to donate $5 to a U.N. fund for Pakistani refugees in the Swat region of that country.

“We had the idea on Thursday and the White House approved it on Tuesday,” said Alec Ross, senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “The government was moving at Internet speed.”
Last week the National Archives announced it will start a YouTube channel featuring some of its video archive, including rare World War II footage.

And on Tuesday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a new mapping tool to track the stimulus money spent on housing programs. Santa Clara County will receive $29.7 million for 34 programs.
But serious obstacles remain to using some of the new tools in the federal government. The cultural inertia of some bureaucracies, the absence of technical know-how and strict federal rules on privacy, security and access for the disabled make it harder to adopt tools for direct public participation.

“It’s not enough to put something up on a Web site. You’ve got to have a feedback loop people can use, and that’s a culture shift for some in the government,” Noveck said.

Ross, speaking at a recent forum, said some of the restrictions on new media are “analog-age laws” that may need to be changed.

Not all federal Web sites are user-friendly. Critics say some are designed to be read and used only by specialists, or by the industry an agency regulates. Senators last week criticized the Federal Communications Commission Web site along those lines.

Blogger Nancy Scola of techpresident.com agreed: “The FCC’s Web site is a case study in obfuscation through ugliness, an unequal political playing field tilted worse by horrid user interface.”

Many of the government’s online efforts are in their early stages, and the jury is still out on how they will develop, said Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media and the man who popularized the term “Web 2.0.”
“Social media is a messy space,” he said. “Government doesn’t always lend itself to messy spaces.”

Whitehouse.gov/open has an extensive blog brainstorming ideas for open government.

Data.gov contains lengthy data sets, with searchable data catalogs.

Recovery.gov tracks spending from the stimulus bill around the country

Copyright 2009 San Jose Mercury News

China’s attempts to strengthen control over the content on the Internet was stalled when they backed down after harsh international criticism of their plan requiring new filtering software for new computers. China is expected to renew efforts at some later date. -DB

Rueters India
July 1, 2009
By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s ambitions to strengthen control of the Internet with filtering software became a show of the limits of its power on Wednesday, as activists and industry groups welcomed an abrupt delay of the contentious plan.

The surprise climbdown was reported late on Tuesday by Xinhua news agency, which said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology would “delay the mandatory installation of the controversial ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers”.

Officials said the software was intended to stamp out Internet pornography, and computer companies had originally been told that from Wednesday they had to bundle “Green Dam” with any personal computers heading to stores for sale in the country.

But the order was assailed by opponents of censorship, industry groups and Washington officials as rash, politically intrusive, technically ineffective and commercially unfair. PC companies have mostly avoided making firm public statements on the issue.

“This shows that social pressure can’t be ignored,” said Zhou Ze, a Beijing lawyer who challenged the legality of the plan.

“They tried to control public opinion to back the plan by creating a fuss about pornography, but that failed, and they will have learnt to be more careful next time.”

The decision was the latest turn in a see-saw battle between the ruling Communist Party, wary of the Internet as a conduit of political dissent and objectionable values, and social and commercial forces pressing to use the Internet as a channel for more unfettered expression.

Google has also been caught in recent controversy over censorship, and the stakes for citizens and companies can be high.

China has about 300 million Internet users. About 42.6 million personal computers will be sold across the country this year, according to the data research firm Gartner.

The country’s largest PC brand is homegrown Lenovo, though global players such as HP, Dell and Acer have made considerable headway in the market in recent years.

Internet professionals and activists were divided over whether the plan will drift into oblivion after the indefinite delay. Controversial past efforts to further control Internet blogs and bulletin boards have died quiet deaths without being officially revoked.

Chinese Internet enthusiasts crowded an art centre on the outskirts of Beijing on Wednesday to celebrate the last-minute halt to the filtering plan, and demand freedom of expression in the one-party state. Many wore t-shirts mocking Green Dam.

“It has not been cancelled, just put back, so it’s possible that after a certain amount of time it will be pushed back out,” said Liu Xiaoyuan, one of the party-goers.

U.S. PRESSURE

In a statement on its website (http://www.miit.gov.cn), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology rejected claims that the filter plan threatened free speech, violated international trade rules or was chosen without proper tender processes. It said use of the software was optional.

But Ed Black, president of the Washington-based Computer and Communications Industry Association, said the backdown showed that the U.S. government still has some sway in Beijing.

“This shows that when U.S. trade officials get involved, they get results,” Black said in a statement sent by email.

“Internet censorship is a widespread problem, and for too long, companies have been left on their own to negotiate with other countries,” he said.

Computer companies have been coy about directly criticising the plan, perhaps reflecting their big stake in China’s market, and they remained so on Wednesday.

Taiwan-based Acer, the world’s third-largest personal computer maker, said it would seek clarification from the Chinese government and would meet any new deadline.
“There’re differing opinions on the policy, but we’re just a PC seller, and we don’t make the rules,” said Acer spokesman Henry Wang.

Chen Yongmiao, a Beijing-based rights activist who has campaigned against Green Dam, said the government’s reversal would make it more cautious in enforcing Internet controls.

“This will embolden Internet users,” said Chen. “They have become more confident and more united thanks to the fight against Green Dam.”

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, Emma Graham-Harrison and Yu Le in Beijing and Kelvin Soh in Taipei)

Copyright 2009 Thomson Reuters

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation facilitating discovery of electronically stored information in civil cases. Among other things, the bill which goes into effect immediately requires documents to be produced in usable formats. -DB

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
July 1, 20009
By a MetNews Staff Writer

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation implementing new rules for electronic discovery in civil cases.

The governor’s office said late Monday that he had signed AB 5, by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, the Electronic Discovery Act. The bill was co-authored by Sens. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro and Tom Harman, R-Costa Mesa, and Assembly members Mike Feuer- D-West Hollywood, and Van Tran, R-Costa Mesa.

A similar bill passed the Legislature last year, but was among a number of bills vetoed because the governor said his attention had been devoted to the state budget crisis and he could only sign bills that were of the highest priority.

This year’s version passed both houses unanimously and takes effect immediately as an urgency measure.  

The bill largely adapts existing Civil Discovery Act  provisions regarding production of documents to the discovery of electronically stored information.

Among other things, the bill:

•Generally requires that electronically stored information be  produced in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a form that is reasonably usable.

•Provides that if a party requests that data be disclosed in a particular form and the opposing party objects, the opposing party must specify the form in which it intends to produce each type of information requested.

•Allows a party to object to production on the ground that the material is not reasonably accessible because of the undue burden or expense. The objecting party must bear the burden of demonstrating the validity of the objection, but even if the burden of production is shown to be great, the court may order discovery on a showing of good cause, with appropriate limitations.

•Applies existing rules on sanctions to electronic discovery, but prohibits imposition of sanctions for failure to provide electronically stored information that has been lost, damaged, altered, or overwritten as the result of the routine, good faith operation of an electronic information system.
 
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company

The Sunlight Foundation has launched Transparency Corps, a service that helps illuminate government information. -DB

National Journal
June 30, 2009
By Eliza Krigman

In an effort to make civic engagement easier by leveraging technology, the Sunlight Foundation announced the creation of Transparency Corps today, a Web service that allows citizens to perform small tasks as part of a group effort to illuminate government data.

Sunlight encourages other organizations to use the open-source code behind Transparency Corps, “Sunlight and future partners can provide micro-tasks that when aggregated, help solve research and data analysis problems when computers alone cannot properly scrutinize government information,” said Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the organization.

Presently, Transparency Corps allows interested citizens to participate in two campaigns organized by Sunlight. One is simply to upload a photo of yourself with a sign showing your support for Congress to post bills online before consideration, a long-time goal of Sunlight’s. The other campaign asks volunteers to read earmark requests and fill out a form with key information to contribute to the group’s earmark database.

Copyright 2009 National Journal Group Inc. 

Newspapers around the country are setting up blog networks to increase traffic on their websites with the prospect that they will be able to attract advertising to make the effort pay off. -DB

MediaShift
July 1, 2009
By Simon Owens

Recently, those who visited the front page of the Miami Herald’s website began seeing a sidebar item labeled simply “Your Blogs.” If you clicked on the link it would take you to a page containing a series of headlines and little snippets of opening paragraphs in a news feed format. If you clicked on one of the links, it would take you to an independent blog not affiliated with the Miami Herald, written by someone who lives somewhere in South Florida. Many of the blogs, though not all, have a regional bent. Some of the links would take you to film or music reviews, or commentary on national politics.

This blog news aggregator is a joint project between the Miami Herald and BlogNetNews, a company founded by David Mastio. For years now, Mastio has been pushing the idea that newspapers should be fostering closer relationships with local bloggers, linking to their content and in effect exposing their readerships to a wider range of media. Lately, he’s been meeting with publishers from local newspapers, alt weeklies, and radio and TV stations to set up such networks using his own software.

Mastio’s project is part of a trend in recent years of newspapers trying to team up with local bloggers. In 2006, the Washington Post launched a new ad network in which the newspaper’s ad reps would sell advertising on local blogs and split the proceeds with the bloggers. I couldn’t find any reference to the blogroll on the Post’s front page and old permalinks to it no longer work. (I exchanged several emails with Washington Post publicity and advertising representatives, but couldn’t get anyone to go on record before deadline.)

More recently, the Chicago Tribune launched a blog aggregator called ChicagoNow, which aggregates “50 blogs and growing.” Newspapers and bloggers hope that such efforts could lead to mutually beneficial relationships, but the jury is out on whether those relationships enrich the business of either party.

A READER ON-RAMP

In terms of teaming up with traditional news companies, Mastio has worked with organizations in Bowling Green, Ky.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Atlanta, among others. In addition to this, BlogNetNews has separate landing pages aggregating political blogs in all 50 states. He said that the basic idea when working with news outlets is to build an “on-ramp” for readers to find out what’s going on in local blogs.

“What we do is use all the blogging services out there to find as many of the local blogs as we can—that are somehow identified by geography, no matter what they’re writing about,” he said. “And then our system checks them every hour and runs excerpts of the latest posts, and makes all those blogs searchable in a narrow local blog search. We [include] a topic cloud that tracks what people are talking about in the last 100 posts. And we keep an archive of those topic clouds based on an entire day’s blogging, so you can see what people were talking about yesterday, or six months ago or whatever you want.”

Mastio explained that bloggers are linking to their local newspapers every day, so it seems selfish in some sense not to recognize the value in linking back. He said that doing so would provide a service that would be mutually beneficial for both the news organizations aggregating the blogs and the blogs themselves. These blog feeds would, in essence, create more content for the news site while at the same time sending valuable traffic to the blogs.

He didn’t have precise numbers, but based on some click-through counts for one of the networks he set up in Tennessee, he estimated blogs shown on the newspaper site received 10,000 click-throughs a week.

MONETIZING BLOGS

But what about monetary benefits? Mastio said that right now the main advantage to creating such a network is increased traffic, though he does have plans for future monetization.

“It’s our plan that we’re eventually going to use these networks to create local advertising networks so we’ll be able to sell an ad that runs on the site and on blogs within its network,” he said. “And in turn we would be able to share the revenue with the bloggers, but that’s not something we’re able to do quite yet.”

Tracy Samantha Schmidt, editorial director for ChicagoNow, said that the bloggers on the site will get a share of the revenue based on page views. Unlike other newspaper attempts to monetize or aggregate off-site blogs, the Chicago Tribune actually approached dozens of Chicago bloggers and offered them contracts to blog on the ChicagoNow website non-exclusively.

“If the bloggers say, ‘Sure, sign me up,’ we pair them up with a community manager,” she said. “We have four of them, and one of the managers will work one-on-one with them to get them trained on our system—we use Movable Type—and then we give them all sorts of support if they need training in social media. Whether it’s training in SEO or building community, our managers will do that with them.”

The team rolled out the beta site on May 25 and since then it has amassed over 600,000 page views. Schmidt said they have bloggers in several niches, from sports blogs to a blog about the city’s parking tickets. Though many of the blogs are written by already-established bloggers, they’ve also invited some local celebrities and well-connected business types who have never blogged before.

I asked Schmidt why they didn’t simply put the bloggers on the Chicago Tribune site.

“We are run by the Chicago Tribune, but we’re calling it a flanker brand, because really what we want to do is be a separate website off the Chicago Tribune and have as little crossover between the Chicago Tribune and ChicagoNow as possible,” she said. “Because we really want to reach readers that the Chicago Tribune hasn’t been able to reach online. So that’s why we’re creating the separate brand.”

In addition to traditional brand advertisement, Schmidt said the plan is to eventually launch “adverblogs,” allowing local businesses—in a “completely transparent way”—to blog for the site. They will also create events around their bloggers and allow organizations and companies to sponsor them. At some point they want to open a classifieds section of ChicagoNow as well.

POSTS, NOT BLOGS

I spoke to Tony Pierce, the blog editor for the LA Times who first gained popularity in the blogging world by writing for his own personal site and then later for LAist. Pierce manages writers for several dozen of the LA Times’ blogs, but though the newspaper has a few local LA blogs on some blogrolls, it hasn’t adopted any kind of feed or network with local blogs. But surely someone who came from the local blogging scene could appreciate the potential for such a network?

“I think it really matters how good the local blogs are and how well they relate to the content in the newspaper,” he told me. “I mean, you can have some really great blogs in your town, but if they’re mostly personal or fragmented in their direction, then I don’t know how it’s going to play on a newspaper site. But if you have a city where you have a whole bunch of people writing about sports or politics or local events, then it would be ideal. As someone who competed with a lot of the local blogs in LA, I would say there’s only about three or four that would really fit into a kind of a blogroll if we had that at the LA Times.”

Pierce thought that simply creating a scrolling feed of every blog in the area wasn’t exactly engaging in the medium. Instead, he thought that newspapers should put more focus on actually reading local blogs and linking to individual posts. For instance, several of the blogs he manages do daily link “round-ups,” linking to blog posts within their niche. He often encourages his bloggers to click through their blogrolls and find more obscure content rather than simply linking to the latest Gawker piece.

“For the most part, this whole citizen journalism concept is fine for about three or four people per town, but that’s about it,” he said. “And most of those people are not journalists for a reason. Either they’re crappy writers or they’re crazy, which makes for sometimes interesting blog posts, but is that something that a major newspaper would link to? I mean, even my personal blog is certainly nothing I would have expected the LA Times to link to. I was swearing a lot, it was mostly very personal, plus I say on it that it’s full of lies.”

But if the newspaper didn’t feel comfortable linking to all the local content, should it at least try to sell advertising on these sometimes highly specialized blogs, creating an advertising network that benefits everyone?

“It’s just that if you have a whole lot of blogs getting 5,000 page views a day, you’re going to need a lot of them, a whole lot of them,” he said. “And even if you have a whole lot of them, where do you put that ad that it’s going to be really valuable? It’s a really tricky situation, and I might come across as kind of a snob—I mean, I love blogs more than any other person—but I’ll be the first to tell you that most of them are crappy. Which isn’t to say that individual posts can’t be great, and I think that’s where newspapers should focus.”

Pierce said he thinks blog networks are only the first step toward true engagement. Despite the hype over Web 2.0, not all content deserves to be highlighted for a newspaper’s readership. To be truly innovative, he said, editors are going to have to roll up their sleeves and wade through drivel to find the gems.

Simon Owens is a former newspaper journalist and an associate editor for MediaShift.

Copyright 2009 Public Broadcasting Service

The Antelope Valley Water District threatened employees with disciplinary action and possible termination if they shared any information about their financial crisis with Antelope Valley Press reporter Alisha Semchuck. -DB

DigitalJournal.com
Commentary
June 21, 2009
By Sandy Sand

California’s Public Records Act requires utilities to disclose all documents when requested, said a journalism advocacy group, yet the Antelope Valley water district has threatened to fire any employee doing so or speaking with the press.

In this case, employees aren’t waiting for an official request from a news organization.

The Antelope Valley water district is drowning in debt and mismanagement, and memos sent to employees by management regarding the utility’s current situation are being leaked to the Antelope Valley Press faster than water streaming out of a broken water main.

According to City News Service:

The Antelope Valley Press says its staff was singled out by Palmdale Water District general manager Randy Hill for a press blackout after the manager met with a newspaper editor Friday.

Hill, accompanied by an assistant, complained to the editorial board that his memo about:

…budget shortfall contingencies, that include possible layoffs or even bankruptcy, had been covered as news before he was ready.

One memo in question written by Hill, which was immediately leaked, said:

“Effective immediately while working for the PMD no employee is to converse, or share information in any way with Antelope Valley Press reporter Alisha Semchuck. Failure to follow this directive will subject an employee to disciplinary action up to and including termination.”

The Antelope Valley Press has been reporting details of the leaked memos written by Hill including the fact that the water district has only about $140,000 left in reserve from it $25 million a year budget.

To date, the district has raised water rates by between 65- and 140-percent, cut the pay of its employees by 10 percent, and possibly most disturbing, the fact that Hill has offered to:

…take a pay cut of 7 percent but keep his controversial $1,000 per month vehicle use reimbursement untouched.

In a subsequent memo, which was also immediately leaked, Hill said the informant:

“has broken trust with all of us and made it more difficult to share openly with all employees in the future. What a shame.”

Shame, indeed! But all the shame belongs to Hill.

Every day we hear how duplicitous and corrupt politicians, corporate heads, utility company leaders and those who wield a modicum of power are these days.

This isn’t just about one tiny utility, which is small potatoes compared to what goes on in Washington, D.C., at the state level and in large urban cities. This is about general corruption and mismanagement everywhere...in every aspect of government and the people’s right to know.

Releasing the memos to the press was not a breach of trust to Hill or the utility.

To not have released the memos would have been a greater breach of trust to the people who pay for the utility through their taxes and water rates.

The public deserves no less than full disclosure on how their money is being mismanaged—literally stolen from them—and what undeserved perks CEOs are getting.

Disclosing the facts won’t necessarily change anything, as with the corruption and mismanagement that goes on daily in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, but any and all information gleaned by the press makes it all the easier to try to effect changes whenever and wherever possible.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com

Copyright 2009 digitaljournal.com  

The Citizen Media Law Project, YouTube and other news organizations has opened the YouTube’s Reporters’ Center to train neophyte reporters to cover breaking stories with camera in hand. -DB

Citizen Media Law Project
June 29, 2009
By David Ardia

As part of today’s launch of YouTube’s Reporters’ Center, which features how-to videos on news reporting, the Citizen Media Law Project created a short video addressing some of the newsgathering and privacy issues people are likely to face as they head out with camera in hand to cover the news.  The two-part series of newsgathering videos (the first video is embedded below, the second video should be up later this week) describe the legal and practical issues you may encounter as you gather documents, take photographs or video, and interview others. 

The YouTube initiative aims to educate budding videographers on a wide array of issues associated with news reporting, such as how to fact check stories, avoid breaking the law while reporting, and adhere to journalistic principles.  According to YouTube’s press release:

In partnership with several top news and media organizations, YouTube announced today the launch of the YouTube Reporters’ Center (http://www.youtube.com/reporterscenter), a dedicated channel that features how-to videos on news reporting created by some of the industry’s most respected journalists and media experts. A one-stop-shop for journalism training online, the YouTube Reporters’ Center covers a wide range of topics, from preparing for interviews, to fact-checking, to journalistic ethics. . . .

“For the first time on YouTube, veteran journalists are making themselves openly available to aspiring reporters around the world who want to report on the news and events happening around them,” said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube. “As current events demonstrate on a daily basis, citizen-reporting on YouTube is a critical part of today’s media landscape—and the YouTube Reporters’ Center will help foster an even more productive relationship between professionals and these aspiring reporters.”

Visitors to the center can browse through over two dozen how-to videos made by the experts for the Reporters’ Center. Citizens with reporting experiences are invited to share the lessons they’ve learned by adding their own how-to videos for inclusion on the site.

A number of organizations are participating in the project, including the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, CBS Evening News, Associated Press, Politifact, The Washington Post, and the Huffington Post.
  
With the help of CMLP/Berkman interns Lee Baker, Courtney French, Andrew Moshirnia, and Andrew Sellars and Berkman Digital Media Producer extraordinaire Dan Jones, we created two short videos (part 2 is coming later this week) addressing the legal issues that impact your ability to document news events through video and still photography, including attending governmental meetings, reporting at crime scenes, filming political rallies or protests, and interviewing others.

For those who want more specific information, we’ve got a lot of resources available in our legal guide, including sections that address Entering the Property of Others, Gathering Private Information, Recording Phone Calls, Conversations, Meetings and Hearings, Acquiring Documents and Other Property, Documenting Public Proceedings and Events, and Protecting Sources and Source Material. All of these topics can be accessed via the Newsgathering and Privacy page in our legal guide.

Copyright 2009 Citizen Media Law Project

An official of the Department of Education is meeting with the N.C.A.A. to discuss charges that, with the excuse of protecting players’ privacy rights, college athletic department are withholding records damaging to their programs. -DB

The New York Times
June 30, 2009
By Katie Thomas

Universities that deny requests for records about athletes may be interpreting too broadly a federal education law that protects the privacy of students’ academic records, a federal education official said Monday.

The official, Paul Gammill, said the Department of Education was taking a closer look at how universities carried out the privacy law, known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (Ferpa), in the wake of a series of articles published recently in The Columbus Dispatch that found the law was often misused by college athletic departments seeking to withhold documents from public scrutiny that could be damaging or embarrassing. The reports also found wide disparities in the types of information that universities released.

“There seems to be some difference in the way the law is interpreted,” said Gammill, who oversees compliance with the federal law. He also plans to meet next month with the N.C.A.A. to discuss their compliance with the law.

Student-athletes sign waivers that permit universities to disclose personal data — like race and gender, grades, high school transcripts and other information — to the N.C.A.A.

Reporters for The Columbus Dispatch found that while some universities released unedited documents, several others censored or redacted materials including flight manifests and information about summer jobs held by football players.

Some, including coaches and boosters who broke recruiting rules, cited the law in refusing to release documents that seemingly had little connection to the privacy rights of students. University lawyers told the reporters that they tried to be transparent but were bound by the limits of the law.

Universities’ use of the federal privacy law to deny information requests has long frustrated journalists and other free-press advocates, who say it was never intended to be broadly interpreted when it was passed 35 years ago. Frank D. LoMonte, the executive director of the Student Press Law Center, said the law originated as a way to grant parents access to their children’s school records while ensuring that the documents would not be released to the public. James L. Buckley, the former senator who wrote the privacy law in 1974, told The Columbus Dispatch that it was being used in ways he never intended.

“Over the years, Ferpa has morphed into kind of a catch-all excuse for schools and colleges to deny just about any open-records request that they’re motivated to refuse,” LoMonte said. Colleges and universities have cited the law, he said, in denying everything from parking-ticket records to the minutes of government meetings.

LoMonte and others say they hope that with a new administration in place, the Department of Education will take another look at the way universities are interpreting the law. A handful of public officials, including the Ohio attorney general, Richard Cordray, and Senator Sherrod Brown, have called for the law to be revised.

Gammill said that he merely advised institutions on compliance, and that any changes would have to be made by Congress.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

A bankrupt public hospital in Sebastopol has authorized an investigation into whether the governing board violated the Brown Act open meeting law in a failed attempt to get the chief executive to resign. -DB

THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
July 1, 2009
By Robert Digitale

Sharply divided directors of Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol have authorized an investigation into whether a majority of the governing board violated state law in a behind-the-scenes effort to force the chief executive to resign.

CEO James Russell, who said he rebuffed a board member’s demand to step down, was placed on paid administrative leave in a 3-2 vote of the board last Friday.

Board President Dan Smith did not announce the vote until Tuesday, a day after The Press Democrat reported that the state public meeting law requires the board to publicly state the results of such a vote.

Smith and board members Stephen Murphy and Linda Johnson voted to place Russell on leave. Board members Frank Mayhew and Nancy Dobbs dissented. It was the third closed session meeting in two weeks on Russell’s fate.

Palm Drive, a publicly owned hospital supported with tax dollars, is buffeted by controversy even as it tries to exit bankruptcy protection.

In a June 22 letter, Russell and three top administrators alleged unspecified violations of the state meeting law, commonly known as the Brown Act.

And in a lengthy statement at a June 23 board meeting, Russell said that the week before a board member “came to my office and stated unequivocally that the board wanted my resignation.” The board member, Russell said, “represented himself as speaking for the board.”

Three days later, at the same meeting when Russell was placed on leave, board member Stephen Murphy acknowledged that he was the board member to whom Russell was referring, though he has not shared publicly his version of what transpired.

One of Russell’s attorneys, Leila Narvid of San Francisco, said Wednesday that Russell and his attorneys have “strong suspicions that Brown Act violations did occur” in regard to discussions some board members held before Murphy met with Russell.

Another source said the investigation will examine whether a majority of the board members decided outside of a properly noticed board meeting to ask for Russell’s resignation. The Brown Act prohibits a majority of a legislative body from taking such action, including doing so through serial meetings or conversations between two or more members.

On Wednesday two board members, Mayhew and Dobbs, denied that they had engaged in any conversations with other board members outside the regular meetings in regard to seeking Russell’s resignation.

Two other members, Smith and Murphy, said they couldn’t comment because the matter is under investigation. The fifth member, Johnson, was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

Mayhew said he wants the board to respond to the allegations in public session.

“The public deserves an explanation,” he said, “and the public has told me so.”

Murphy said an attorney may make a report to the board on the investigation next week. He said the board members should let “this necessary process transpire before we make any statements about it.”

The board was scheduled to meet on the issue this week, but has postponed its next meeting to sometime next week.

Besides the allegations raised by Russell and other administrators, Smith said, the board also authorized an investigation into management issues connected to the board’s decision to place Russell on leave.

Those issues are believed in part to relate to contracts that the hospital entered into without competitive bidding or board approval.

Copyright 2009 The Press Democrat

Pointing to advances in the private sector, youthful techies say the government needs to do even more to make information accessible to the voting public. –DB

NextGov
June 29, 2009
By Robert Brodsky

NEW YORK City—Technology enthusiasts on Monday gathered at a jazz concert hall in Manhattan to plot ways to increase government transparency and accountability.

The young and technocratic audience at the sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum—virtually every participant was working on a laptop or iPhone or Tweeting—generally gave the Obama administration credit for moving the transparency ball forward with sites such as Recovery.gov and Data.gov.

The speakers, however, agreed that the new platforms are only the first step in a revolutionary change that will sweep across government in much the same way Craigslist and Wikipedia changed the private sector.

“We need for transparency to be the default government,” said Jeff Jarvis, a columnist and blogger and the author of What Would Google Do? (Collins Business, 2009). “We need a government that is searchable, clickable and linkable.”

But, to serve its purpose, Jarvis suggested the government needs to operate honestly, offer greater specialization and take more risks. The Freedom of Information Act should not be necessary because data should already be readily available to all citizens, he said.

“We must give the government permission to fail,” he said. “And, that needs to come from us.”

The nonprofit government transparency group Sunlight Foundation recently began an online series where it critiqued federal Web sites and created mockups of an alternative version. Many of the redesigns included cleaner content, more consolidated links and greater use of mapping.

In general, the group found that federal Web sites should be more responsive to users, cost less and look better.

“But, it’s not always about aesthetics,” said Ali Felski, Sunlight’s senior designer. “It’s about the user experience.”

One of the problems for federal agencies, Felski said, is private sector Web sites such as ESPN.com have improved so rapidly in terms of organization, linking and garnering citizen feedback that federal sites appear outdated in comparison.

“Industry is racing ahead and the gap is widening for government,” she said.

Government attendees did not dispute the criticism, but stressed that progress is being made, despite budgetary and regulatory constraints.

“The key is for government not to be defensive and for this not to be a gotcha moment,” said Sheila Campbell, the team leader for the USA.gov government Web best practices team.

Campbell pointed to the Transportation Security Administration’s TSA Blog, which is known not only for its interactivity but also for welcoming complaints, as a good example of the direction government Web sites should be heading.

On May 21, Obama began the first phase of his participatory government initiative with the launch of Data.gov, a free site that provides raw federal statistics in formats that can be downloaded and analyzed.

While the site has a limited data available, administration officials have said additional data feeds will be posted in the coming months.

Vivek Kundra, the administration’s chief information officer, and Beth Noveck, deputy chief technology officer, will address the conference on Tuesday. According to the administration, Kundra will announce the launch of an information technology dashboard on USASpending.gov that would provide citizens with access to federal technology spending information, project status updates and evaluation reports.

Copyright 2009 NextGov

The first chief information officer has launched a new spending dashboard on Data.gov to bring transparency to government information technology projects. -DB

Wired
June 30, 2009
By Shelley Dubois

America’s first chief information officer Vivek Kundra launched the new spending dashboard on his website Data.gov Tuesday, which should bring transparency to government-funded information technology projects. Kundra, who previously demo’d the platform at Wired’s first-ever business conference on June 15th, announced it again Tuesday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in Manhattan.

The purpose of the spending dashboard is accountability. Viewers will be able to track the progress of government-funded IT progress.  More than that, they’ll be able to point fingers. There’s a little thumbnail picture of the CIO and contact information next to each project’s page. People who are unsatisfied with the way things are moving can write in.

At this stage, Kundra and his team have thrown the data up, and hoped that America will work out the kinks. “This is version 1.0, we’ve launched it in beta and we’re going to continue to innovate and ad more and more features.” One feature that he emphasized was a feedback loop, so that the site won’t just be about exposure, but also creating a dialogue.

It’s going to need to create one quickly. The first “Uncle Sam Wants You to wiki” task is to do some serious editing.

“You could go through the site and find where it’s broken and find data that isn’t exactly right,” White House Director of New Media Macon Phillips said.

“Far too often people wait two to three years and they try to perfect rather than starting and launching these platforms,” Kundra added.

More than 1,000 journalists, technologists and political practitioners interested in politics and technology attended the two-day conference.

Copyright 2009 Condé Nast Digital

A U.S. reporter based in Israel says that a truer picture of the nature of the Iranian people has emerged from the images projected by the social networks during the recent uprising. He argues that the Western media should have tuned into Iranian bloggers some time ago. -DB

MediaShift
Commentary
June 30, 2009
By Jaron Gilinsky

Like many people, I have been watching this so-called “Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, [Insert New Media Application] Revolution” unfold in Iran from the comfort of my own home. Watching the dizzying and horrifying images that have emerged on the Internet has triggered a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts.

I was shocked and outraged by the death of Neda. I felt a sense of awe watching a group of women defiantly walking the streets without head coverings as if they were in a Pantene shampoo commercial.

I often felt bewildered watching these videos, for I consider myself to be somewhat worldly, and while I always assumed there to be Iranian dissenters, I had precious little knowledge about them. It turns out I’m not the only one who was in the dark. The image that most of the world has been getting about Iran just does not match up with the one that we’ve only recently been receiving via social media. But the tools for ordinary Iranians to get their stories out have existed for a while—so why is it only now that Iranian citizen journalists are using them? And how is the work of citizen journalists in Iran changing the way the world sees their country?

WHAT THE WORLD SEES

Being a citizen of the U.S. currently based in Israel, I am generally shuttling back and forth between Iran’s two greatest enemies.

While it can be expected that Iran would cast both “Big and Little Satan” as a monolithic evil entity in its media, I doubt that either the U.S. or Israeli media do a much better job showing Iran for what it actually is: a culturally rich country with an educated populace with varying political and social views.

I find this a bit disturbing, especially in this day and age.

This formula sums up what the average Israeli knows about Iran:

Iran = Ahmadinejad = Crazy = Holocaust Denier = Hamas and Hezbollah Financier = Finger on Red Button = Nuclear Armageddon = Mommy, I’m Scared = Vote for a Right Wing Government to Assuage Fears

Of course, Iran does a great job bolstering this viewpoint, by acting the part of a maniacal regime bested only by North Korea.

Yet in Israel, one gets the sense that the snake has finally been let out of the bag, and it’s not that big and bad and poisonous after all.

While many Israelis I’ve spoken to are using the current events to validate their claims that the Iranian government is out of its mind, the overriding sense is one of surprise that the Iranian people are saner than previously thought.

Who knew that most Iranians support women’s liberation, a more compassionate Islam, and a free press?

A month ago, most Israelis couldn’t name one Iranian besides Ahmadinejad. Now some here have actually started wearing green in solidarity with Mousavi and company. Israelis are now realizing that they actually have a lot in common with Iranians, which I imagine is true across much of the world.

WHY NOW?

The big question I have is why did it take so long?

Couldn’t these iReporters, as CNN calls citizen journalists, have uploaded anonymous stories a month or a year ago? Why did it take a fraudulent election and street riots to get the world’s attention about the repressed majority in Iran?

I suppose the answer might have to do with the “if it bleeds it leads” business model in news journalism.

Iranian bloggers have long been the only truly independent journalists Iran has to offer, yet they have been largely ignored by the Western media as either not credible or not relevant. It’s funny how quickly breaking news and street riots mitigate both of these factors.

The Iranian government, on the other hand, has always taken bloggers very seriously. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent non-profit organization, Iran is considering passing a law that would make the creation of blogs promoting “corruption, prostitution, and apostasy” punishable by death. To date, millions of websites have been blocked, and hundreds of bloggers have been arrested. In March, cultural blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi died in prison under suspicious circumstances. He was only 29.

If these intrepid citizen journalists are willing to sacrifice their lives to report from Iran, the least we can do is extend them a hand and publicize their work as much as possible, even if it’s not about violent or sexy topics.

In general, it would be nice to read and see reports from despotic regimes during times of peace, so that we can have a window into their world before the blood spills. (One good example of seeing into the lives of people in a war zone is the “Gaza Sderot” video show that I profiled on MediaShift.)

Let this be a wakeup call for the Western media that has been collectively hitting the snooze button on Iran since 1979.

TAPPING INTO CITIZEN JOURNALISM

It’s high time to tap into the plentiful and natural resource known as citizen journalists. The advantages are numerous: There’s no need for an expensive bureau. They’re already on the ground. Plus, they speak the language.

It should also be a stern warning to other governments that forcefully control their people and their outlets for free expression. From here on out, the relationship between press freedom and citizen journalism campaigns will be inversely proportional.

Whether it be China, Egypt, Cuba, or Burma, totalitarian states should note the futility in stripping the powers of professional journalists, because citizen journalists have the tools, the resolve, and the tenacity to fill the void.

Kudos to the brave citizen journalists of Iran who have used their cell phone cameras to finally give us a more complete picture of their country. While this may not be the revolution many Iranians were waiting for, we will look back at the events of 2009 as a watershed of sorts for citizen journalists across the globe, who got the attention of the wider global audience.

Thank you. We’ve gotten the message. And now let the draconian regimes of the world get theirs: If you don’t change your ways, the revolution will be uploaded to the Internet, and then televised.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem.

Copyright 2009 Public Broadcasting System

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the Department of Justice for the release of the guidelines used by the FBI to investigate U.S. citizens. -DB

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Press Release
June 24, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit against the Department of Justice today, demanding the public release of the surveillance guidelines that govern investigations of Americans by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI’s Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines went into effect in December of 2008 and detail the Bureau’s procedures and standards for implementing the Attorney General’s Guidelines on approved surveillance strategies.

“The Attorney General’s Guidelines are troubling, allowing for open investigative ‘assessments’ of any American without factual basis or reasonable suspicion,” said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. “The withholding of the Operational Guidelines compounds our concerns. Americans have the right to know the basic surveillance policies used by federal investigators and how their privacy is—or is not—being protected.”

The FBI’s general counsel has acknowledged that “the expansion of techniques available [to the Bureau] has raised privacy and civil liberties concerns.”

Investigations can include the electronic collection of information from online sources and computer databases, as well as the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain telephone and email subscriber information. Other recent policy changes allow the FBI to engage in free-ranging investigation of Internet sites, libraries, and religious institutions.

EFF’s lawsuit comes after the Department of Justice failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a complete copy of the Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines. The suit demands the immediate release of the guidelines, as they are being withheld in violation of federal law.

“These policies have been in effect for more than six months and could have great impact on ordinary Americans’ lives,” said Sobel. “The FBI must follow the law and release these guidelines to the public.”

For the full complaint:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/FBI_guidelines/fbi_diog_complaint_fina…

Citing security concerns, a federal appeals court ruled that death row inmates in federal jails could not meet with reporters. -DB

Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press
June 25,2009
By Louis Tanglen

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a regulation barring prisoners on death row in the federal system from meeting with reporters. In doing so, a majority of Seventh Circuit judges set a low bar for determining when an inmate’s constitutional rights can be infringed upon, over the objections of several dissenting judges.

The majority opinion in Hammer v. Ashcroft, written by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, based its decision heavily upon the concept that the news media has “no constitutional right of access to prisons or their inmates beyond that afforded to the general public,” citing Pell v. Procunier. However, in Hammer it was not a reporter, but a prisoner, who asserted a right to interview.

Death row inmate David Hammer sued Bureau of Prisons officials in 2001, after he was denied face-to-face interviews with the media. Between August and December 1999, Hammer participated in three interviews at a prison in Terre Haute, Ind. In 2000, he learned the prison had changed its rules and wouldn’t allow him to speak in-person to members of the press.

The new rule was implemented after Timothy McVeigh spoke with 60 Minutes in March 2000 about the Oklahoma City bombing. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and former BOP director Kathleen Hawk-Sawyer announced a policy banning federal death row inmates from giving in-person interviews.

Hammer lost by summary judgment in a district court, meaning his case did not get a full trial. But in January 2008 a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit revived the case, saying more information was needed to determine whether the policy was motivated by a valid security concern. The entire Seventh Circuit then decided to review the panel’s ruling.

The majority in Thursday’s decision said only a “rational basis” was required to justify the regulation, and again cited Pell in asserting that “a no-interview policy is ‘reasonably related to legitimate security interests.’”

Hammer contended that the rule was based on content discrimination, which would be forbidden by the First Amendment. Hammer cited Sen. Byron Dorgan’s reaction to the McVeigh interview, in which the lawmaker wrote a letter to Hawk-Sawyer saying a convicted killer should be prevented from using television interviews to “advance his agenda of violence.” Hammer also pointed to Ashcroft’s comments days before the policy was put in place, when he said, “As an American who cares about our culture, I want to restrict a mass murderer’s access to the public podium.”

The majority decided that even if the motive behind the no-interview rule were suspect, that did not spoil the rule’s reasonable connection to legitimate security purposes. In defending that connection, the majority discussed the potential problem of an inmate becoming a “celebrity” as a result of media contact, which makes crime more attractive and allows criminals to encourage others to commit crimes.

The majority dismissed Hammer’s assertion that he wanted to talk to the press about “prison conditions, his current professed respect for life, and what he sees as misconduct by guards and wardens.” The court said he still had an outlet for those views, because he could converse with reporters by phone or by mail. The majority said problems in the prison system could be revealed to the public when a prisoner filed a lawsuit over them.

A dissent written by Judge Llana Rovner said the government had not done enough to establish a legitimate interest to justify the no-interview policy. Rovner wrote: “[T]oday’s opinion holds that a ban on face-to-face interviews in the prison system is justified if a judge can ‘imagine’ a legitimate basis for its existence, glosses over facts regarding the application of the relevant policies, and concludes with the astonishing proposition that the government may limit a prisoner’s access to the media based on its distaste for the anticipated outcome of the prisoner’s speech.”

Rovner cited a Supreme Court case largely ignored by the majority, Turner v. Safley, to establish that a rule infringing on a prisoner’s constitutional rights must be “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” The “jailhouse-celebrity” concern might not be a legitimate security concern, but rather a “convenient explanation to justify a policy designed to control the speech content of a particular subset of prisoners,” Rover wrote.

Rovner was especially troubled by the majority’s apparent lack of concern over Ashcroft’s comments indicating a belief that American culture is corroded when a death-row inmate’s words are broadcast outside the prison. Rovner wrote: “First Amendment jurisprudence is grounded in the idea that the government may not prevent a person, including a prisoner, from speaking merely because it disapproves of the speaker or what the speaker might say.”

In arguing that even potentially offensive words from a prisoner’s mouth must be protected by the First Amendment, Rovner used Easterbrook’s own comments from an opinion he wrote in 1985: “Racial bigotry, anti-semitism, violence on television, reporters’ biases ... all is protected as speech, however insidious.”

Rovner accused the majority of generously construing Ashcroft’s statement to encompass a legitimate interest in preventing criminals from being rewarded for their actions with publicity. The judge wrote that a trial court should have a chance to interpret Ashcroft’s words.

Rovner did not call for the no-interview policy to be immediately overturned, but for a trial court to hear more facts and then make a judgment on the “legitimacy of the security rationale.”

Judge Diane Wood also wrote a dissent, saying the majority opinion was based on unsupported assumptions, such as that Hammer’s had access to uncensored communications with the press by phone and mail.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, urging the court to overturn the trial court’s decision.

Copyright 2009 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

A Stars and Stripes reporter was banned from his embedded post in Mosul, the military saying that among other errors and omissions that the reporter “refused to highlight” good news about the war. -DB

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
June 24, 2009
By Caitlin Dickson

A reporter for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes has been banned from returning to his embedded post with an Army unit in Mosul, Iraq, on the grounds that he “refused to highlight” good news about the war, according to media reports.

Stars and Stripes editorial director Terry Leonard said the military did approve an embedded position for the paper but with one caveat—the reporter assigned to it could not be Heath Druzin, who followed the same unit on tours in February and March. Leonard said several reasons were given, including claims that Druzin wrote imbalanced reports and misquoted people.

Stars and Stripes quoted a written statement by an Army public affairs officer, Major Ramona Bellard, who asserted that Druzin had refused to focus on favorable news coming out of Mosul, “despite the opportunity (for him) to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police, and Iraqi police displayed a commitment to partnership.”

Stars and Stripes is a military-authorized paper.

Leonard told the Reporters Committee that Stars and Stripes declined both of the offers they did receive to either embed Druzin in another area or embed another reporter with the unit in Mosul.

“I don’t see a compromise. As long as a commander and not me decides what reporter I assign to a story, I don’t think I have editorial independence,” Leonard said. “We’re not abandoning our coverage of Iraq by any means, but we’re not sending a reporter to an embed that’s cherry-picking our reporting.”

Copyright 2009 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.