Gov't Sites Fail FOIA Info Rules
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A study shows 79 percent of federal agencies are violating a Freedom of Information Act amendment requiring they post records online and help citizens request info via the internet. In 27B Stroke 6.
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Britain's top transport official said Monday that a disk drive containing personal information on three million driving test candidates has been lost in the United States  -  the latest in a series of government blunders over data
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A recent federal judge rejected the Justice Department's request to force a defendant to cough up his PGP passphrase. We unsuccessfully asked the agency to elaborate.
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When contact info for Republican delegates got posted on the web, the Department of Justice subpoenaed an ISP, but now seems to be backing off. Ann Harrison reports from New York.
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It had to happen. A Web site set up to  encourage anonymous leaks of controversial government secrets  has been exposed before its launch.
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The search site still lacks the right stuff.
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A US federal appeals court yesterday upheld a district court ruling in favor of an individual whose e-mail records were copied by government investigators from servers at Yahoo and another ISP. In so doing, the court may have prevented the government from loosely applying a key tool in its ability to obtain e-mail records without a warrant: the Stored Communications Act.
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A Web site operated by Ron Harper Jr. was misidentified in a story in Friday's Intelligencer Journal. The Web site is 5thEstate.com.           The Intelligencer Journal wants to correct substantive errors of fact.
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(InfoWorld) - Many of the Web sites for members of the U.S. Congress lack basic information such as information on office hours or where to go if the reader has problems with a federal agency, according to a report released Monday. The overall state of congressional Web sites is "disappointing," said the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonprofit group advocating for a more effective Congress. The group gave only about 14 percent of the 615 lawmaker and congressional leadership Web sites it surveyed A grades for user friendliness. The top group of A-graded sites earn CMF's Gold Mouse award. Thirteen percent of the congressional sites received F grades, and another 25 percent received D's. "It's things that are missing, things that aren't updated," said Beverly Bell, CMF's executive director. In many cases, congressional offices seem to see Web sites as one-way communication mediums, she said. About 49 percent of the sites did not include sufficient information on how to contact the office about a problem with a federal agency, CMF said in its report. Just over 26 percent told visitors the best way to communicate with their offices, and 32 percent did not include links to sponsored or cosponsored legislation. Just 11 percent of House Web sites and 5 percent of Senate Web sites posted their office hours. "It's how you view your Web site," Bell added. "Are you seeing your Web site as a service center for constituents? There's not as much of that as we'd like to see. Or, are you seeing it as one big press release for yourself?" CMF produced two previous reports, in 2002 and 2003. Only three lawmakers have received awards in each of the Gold Mouse Reports: Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat representing part of Silicon Valley in California, Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, and Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat known for his interest in tech issues. But overall, Republican sites scored higher than Democratic sites, with 66 percent of Republican sites scoring at least a C compared to 56 percent of Democratic sites. In some cases, lawmakers seem to believe that Web sites create more work for their staffs, and congressional staffs haven't substantially increased in size since the 1970s, Bell said. But a well-designed Web site can reduce workload by cutting telephone calls from constitutions about information such as sponsored legislation or visitor tours, she said. The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the University of California-Riverside, and Ohio State University assisted CMF with the report.
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HARTFORD, Conn. - More than 1,700 state workers recently learned that some of their personal information, including their names and Social Security numbers, had been inadvertently posted on the Internet.
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The U.S. government on Friday lost a court bid to prevent terrorism detainees gaining access to all readily available documents about them as they challenge their indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.
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Update Slammed for touting unavailable but unlicensed content
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WASHINGTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs says a computer hard drive missing in Alabama since last month was not encrypted, the latest in an embarrassing series of data breaches sparking concern in Congress.
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The Internet's key oversight agency has rejected a proposed search service to help guide people who mistype ".travel" Web addresses or seek nonexistent ones.
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ON THE NET: An Associated Press survey of file transfer protocol servers run by several government agencies and contractors affiliated with the military found dozens of documents that officials deemed sensitive to U.S. troops.
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Federal agencies have dragged their feet on implementing 10-year-old law that requires them to use the Internet to make government documents easily available, a new study says.
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Ministers are forced to admit they do not know exactly what information has been lost by nine NHS trusts