The Privacy Foundation is sponsoring a day-long conference on The Corporate Perspective On Privacy, which those of you in Colorado may want to attend. See the complete details at their site.
The Southeast Investigators Conference, which gets under way in Atlanta in early November, will include a speaker on Internet research. More information.
The Washington State Attorney General is holding forums on Open Government throughout the state in September and October.
The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that state employee addresses are not “records” but merely “contact information”, therefore are not subject to the state’s Public Records Act. Read the article. Read the opinion.
Louisiana State University has launched a searchable online database of Hurricane Katrina evacuees housed at the Red Cross Emergency Shelters at LSUS and Hirsch Coliseum.
And here’s a site where you can search for Katrina’s victims.
UPDATE - September 8: There are an ever increasing collection of lists and databases for and about the victims of hurricane Katrina. A good starting point is this site.
Edgecombe County, North Carolina property and tax information, including spatial mapping, is now available online in a searchable database. Read the article or just go to the site.
You’ve probably made a request (many times) to remove your name from the marketing mailing lists. You can also opt out of pre-approved offer lists obtained from the consumer credit reporting companies. [Notice from the California government site: Office of Privacy Protection]
OpentheGovernment.org has released its 2004 Secrecy Report, Quantitative Indicators of Secrecy in the Federal Government, a slim, very readable pdf comparing the 2004 closure of records with prior years. Areas touched on are the Federal invocation of the “state secrets” privilege, classification of Federal documents and patents, the restrictions in public access to government committees and new privacy applications to state records. And the reasons given are not all under the umbrella of “terrorism”, as noted in this one example.
At least 62 new state laws expanded secrecy in 2004; Only 38 laws strengthened open government. One new law in Louisiana bars the use of electronic scanners to copy public documents. A homeland security measure?
No, the sponsor wanted the government to keep the revenue from those copying fees.
The inclusion of cell phone numbers in published directories is increasing in Europe and a majority of American wireless companies endorse the development of U.S. directory. Read the article
The Riverside County, California Court online index will now separate the family law and probate cases into two indexes, starting September 6, and all of the county’s probate records will be organized into one index.
The court site will be down for maintenance from September 2, 2005 at 5:15 p.m. until Tuesday, September 6, 2005, at 6:00 a.m.
Here’s a little technical tip to apply when you send someone a link to a web page. Sometimes those urls get exceedingly long, too long for one line. Go to DigBig.com (a short web address), enter a url, such as, http://www.forbes.com/2005/09/02/kodak-nikon-wifi-cx_cn_0902autofacescan08_print.html and get a conveniently sized url. This shortened address looks like this: http://digbig.com/4eknt
After intense lobbying by open government organizations the New Jersey attorney general will now recommend a task force withdraw restrictive changes to the Public Records Act that were scheduled to go into effect in September.
Instead of specifically stating which documents should legitimately be kept under wraps — such as blueprints, security and staffing plans of train stations and chemical plants — the groups said the rules would have given town clerks and other low-level government workers broad powers to determine whether public documents revealed national-security secrets. Read the article