Police Infiltrate Protests, Videotapes Show
By JIM DWYER
Published: December 22, 2005
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war,
bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.
Bloggers’ Favorite Books of 2005
Here’s a nice little list of books that bloggers were reading this year just in case you’re in need of last second gifts for the laz staff!
At F.B.I., Frustration Over Limits on an Antiterror Law
This article is intriguing, but only tells about half the story. While FBI agents decry “radical militant librarians” perhaps they should be looking at what exactly they are doing. Perhaps agents are not given permission to apply USAPA so broadly because — rather than it being a PR problem — the things they are doing go *way* beyond legal constitutional limits.
Another thought that is not brought out in this story is the fact that, despite not being able to apply USAPA’s draconian measures to spy on US citizens, there have not been *any* terrorist atttacks in the US in the last 4 years. On the other side, history tells us that our government has a nasty habit of abusing police powers when there is no oversight (remember COINTELPRO ?).
I would argue that USAPA needs to sunset NOW! Congress is currently discussing renewal of USAPA. Please call your representatives and tell them enough is enough!
One internal F.B.I. message, sent in October 2003, criticized the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Justice Department, which reviews and approves terrorist warrants, as regularly blocking requests from the F.B.I. to use a section of the antiterrorism law that gave the bureau broader authority to demand records from institutions like banks, Internet providers and libraries.
“While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR’s failure to let us use the tools given to us,” read the e-mail message, which was sent by an unidentified F.B.I. official. “This should be an OIPR priority!!!”
Tag It: Acqusition, Yahoo Acquires del.icio.us
Yahoo.licio.us? That’s right, Yahoo has acquired del.icio.us the social bookmarking, social software web service for storing and sharing web bookmarks.
National Security Archive 20th Anniversary: Celebrating 20 Years of Keeping Government Honest
The National Security Archive celebrates its 20th anniversary today with a special event at George Washington University, headlined by Bill Moyers, with Seymour M. Hersh, Tina Rosenberg, Scott Armstrong, Geneva Overholser, Walter B. Slocombe, Morton H. Halperin and Sherry Jones. You can download audio of Bill Moyers’ keynote address as well as the panels with the other speakers. Moyers once again does an amazing job! If you haven’t heard him talk (and even if you have!!), you’re in for a real treat.
For this month’s BOTM we feature another blog that some of us maintain:
FreeGovInfo. We’ve
never featured it here and, since we often post things there that
we used to post here, we thought it important to mention it!
Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.
Learning from THE WEB,
by Adam Bosworth,
ACM Queue vol. 3, no. 8 - October 2005.
Bosworth, who has worked for Microsoft, BEA, and now Google draws interesting conclusions from
how people use the web and how and why the web
works. Although he doesn’t address libraries directly, he does compare and contrast the way the web functions with how databases function — and that has relevance to libraries and how we do things. His first few points tell
a lot of his story:
This article is in an ACM magazine and the article makes free use of terms like latency, asynchrony, and “loosely coupled.” Nevertheless, Bosworth uses simple examples that even the non-technically oriented person can understand, though he is making very technical points.
A related article that makes some of the same points is
The two-way data web, By Jon Udell,
InfoWorld, November 23, 2005, in which
he discusses how the Atom and RSS syndication formats are evolving into tools for creating loosely coupled databases on Internet scale.
Cities Explore Wireless Possibilities, by Chloe Albanesius, National Journal’s Technology Daily [subscription required]
Issue Of The Week: Monday, December 05, 2005.
In the wake of Philadelphia’s decision to build its own wireless network, cities large and small have explored similar projects to boost competition and tourism.