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• News Archive: April 2009

News Archive: April 2009

The views represented in these articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, the Privacy Act Program, or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

THE SCOOP for April 30, 2009

• Can Lawyers Use Clients' E-Discoveries?
  LAW.COM - April 7, 2009
  "A suspicious wife accesses her husband's personal e-mail account on their mutually-owned computer... Her review of the e-mails proves that he has not been the faithful husband she thought he was. Wife files for divorce and forwards e-mails to you, her lawyer. Can you use those e-mails as proof in your case...?"

• CIA ordered to turn over documents relating to destroyed interrogation tapes
  Raw Story - April 24, 2009
  "A federal judge rejected the CIA's attempt to withhold records relating to the agency's destruction of 92 videotapes that depicted interrogation of CIA prisoners in a ruling Friday afternoon."

• Close call highlights need for overhaul of record-keeping
  Boston Globe - April 11, 2009
  "This frightening incident underscores the current need for patients to have electronic personal health records that they can easily access, understand, and share."

• Don't Mess With System Metadata
  LAW.COM - April 23, 2009
  "[C]omputers aren't always simply repositories of evidence. They may be the instrumentalities of a crime, tort or conduct under investigation, or carry clues to the origins and integrity of suspect electronic evidence."

• Dr. Robert Teague: Electronic records as is could be 'potentially dangerous'
  FierceHealthCare - April 28, 2009
  "The most egregious [assumption], and the one resulting in the greatest barrier to adoption, assumes the complex, cognitive task of diagnosis, and prescription can be reduced to a long list of check boxes."

• Feds Urge New Lender Record Keeping Requirements
  Housing Wire - April 6, 2009
  "The U.S. Justice Department is urging Congressional leaders to require mortgage lenders and servicers to retain borrower records for up to 10 years, as part of an effort to make it easier to prosecute fraud — alleging that regulators and law enforcement officials have had a tough time pursuing lenders for wrongdoing because of lax recordkeeping."

• FOIA Bill Introduced
  ARMA Washington Policy Brief - April 2009
  "The OPEN FOIA Act (S. 612) would require Congress to openly and clearly state its intention to provide for statutory exemptions to FOIA in proposed legislation. The Senate first passed similar legislation unanimously in 2006, and Leahy and Cornyn introduced the bill in the last Congress."

• US Lawmakers Target Deep Packet Inspection in Privacy Bill
  PC World - April 23, 2009
  "U.S. lawmakers plan to introduce privacy legislation that would limit how Internet service providers can track their users, despite reports that no U.S. ISPs are using such technologies except for legitimate security reasons."

• U.S. already at war in cyberspace, experts say
  Government Computer News - April 22, 2009
  "One of the greatest differences between the Cold War and the current cyber war is that we knew our Cold War adversaries. Today, we do not necessarily know the source of the cyberattacks that are hitting and sometimes penetrating our information systems.

THE SCOOP for April 22, 2009

• ACLU suit for torture memos prompts their release
  Reporters for the Committee for the Freedom of the Press - April 17, 2009
  "After years of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, four secret memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel were finally released Thursday by the Obama administration."

• CREW Asks Government Oversight to Rework Proposed Federal and Presidential Records Acts Bill
  MarketWatch - April 21, 2009
  "Today, in light of several federal and presidential records lawsuits and extensive study of the issue, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Govt. Reform, to make significant changes to HR 1387, the Electronic Message Preservation Act."

• DOD needs Web 2.0 strategy
  FederalComputerWeek - April 17, 2009
  "The Defense Department has a lot to gain from the use of social-networking technology, but only if it first develops a departmentwide Web 2.0 strategy to address operational, policy and technology concerns, according to a report sponsored by the National Defense University."

• E-discovery gets an F
  NetworkWorld - March 24, 2009
  "'E-discovery has always been an issue for lawyers to handle, but now there's that added complexity with wikis, Facebook, Twitter, and other new technologies,' said George Socha, a litigation attorney who works with the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) Project."

• Electronic Content Still out of Control
  AIIM - March 31, 2009
  "In its annual "State of the ECM Industry" research report, AIIM has found that managing electronic office documents is still a challenge for 47% of organizations, and that modern business communication channels—instant messages, text messages, blogs and wikis—are uncontrolled and off the corporate radar for 75% of businesses."

• F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases
  New York Times - April 18. 2009
  "Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent."

• HHS offers health IT privacy guidelines
  Government Health IT - April 20, 2009
  "HHS published guidance on April 17 that outlines the ways that health information can be protected from security breaches. It builds on rules in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)."

• New guidance from Justice on processing FOIA requests
  Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press - April 20, 2009
  "The Justice Department's Office of Information Policy issued new guidance Friday further implementing the attorney general's memo that gives direction to federal agencies regarding the Freedom of Information Act."

• Study: Privacy restrictions may slow rollouts of e-health systems
  ComputerWorld - April 20, 2009
  "Two researchers from MIT and the University of Virginia claim in a study publicly released last week that increased efforts to protect the privacy of health care data could hamper the deployment of electronic medical records systems."

THE SCOOP for April 15, 2009

• Bush library may be one of last housed in a building
  Dallas Morning News - March 31, 2009
  "The George W. Bush Presidential Library in University Park could be one of the last brick and mortar institutions of its kind. Congress is looking for ways to cut the expense of overseeing such buildings, and some researchers say the traditional library setup for keeping presidential documents is outdated in a digital world."

• E-discovery best practices
  SearchStorage - April 8, 2009
  "Here are some best practices, provided by analysts, vendors and users, for storage professionals to consider as they tackle e-discovery."

• E-Mail: Treat It as Just Another Record
  Advance - April 10, 2009
  "E-mail is no longer "just" a messaging system or the electronic equivalent of the Post-it note. It has become a record-generating, communication system vital to a health care organization's business processes."

• The Emerging Secrets of Guatemala's Disappeared
  Washington Post - April 11, 2009
  "Guatemalan human rights advocates describe the files as the largest such archive ever released in Latin America. Archivists believe there are more than 80 million documents. Many pages are in chaotic, unsorted piles, green and yellow with mold."

• Legal Holds: Watch the Door
  LAW.COM - April 13, 2009
  "Restructured companies are redistributing workloads and collecting documents, computers, PDAs and electronic files from departing employees. Unfortunately, these actions may contribute to a perfect storm of risk, leading to the destruction of evidence pertinent to an existing legal hold..."

• Obama Opens Some Reagan Records Kept Secret by Bush
  AllGov - April 13, 2009
  "Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, the documents were supposed to have been made available to the public after January 20, 2001; twelve years after Reagan left the White House."

• Standard electronic processing could ease FOIA backlog
  NextGov - April 14, 2009
  "A lack of standard electronic processing systems is contributing to a backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests at federal agencies, according to a report released on Monday by a coalition of media groups."

• State privacy laws may undercut electronic medical records
  Ars Technica - April 14, 2009
  "A study looks at correlations between stated medical privacy laws and the adoption of electronic record keeping by the hospitals within a state, and finds that an emphasis on privacy may decrease the rate of adoption of electronic systems."

• Tampa Bay mug shot site draws ethical questions
  Los Angeles Times - April 10, 2009
  "A new website that showcases mug shots of people arrested in several Florida counties is like a modern "Scarlet Letter." Some privacy activists are condemning the site, but what's an alleged bad boy (or bad girl) to do?"

• White House: Obama 'absolutely' stands behind effort to throw out warrantless wiretapping suit
  The Raw Story - April 10, 2009
  "President Barack Obama endorsed a Justice Department move to dismiss a case in which the National Security Agency is being sued over its warrantless wiretapping program, because he believes the case presents a risk to national security, the White House told Raw Story Thursday."

THE SCOOP for April 8, 2009

• Agencies not prepared for citizen input
  Federal News Radio - April 1, 2009
  "The support of President Barack Obama's goal to move to a more open and citizen engaged government is wide and gladly accepted by both industry and agencies. But one hitch in this goal is, how can agencies deal with the volume of comments coming in?"

• Archives officials urge caution on declassification policy
  Government Executive - March 16, 2009
  "Speaking at a conference kicking off Sunshine Week, NARA Information Security Oversight Office Director William Bosanko said if Obama truly wants to reverse his predecessor's "policy of secrecy," he could follow through on his campaign pledge to create a National Declassification Center as a starting point."

• FDA tests internal cloud for disaster recovery
  CNET - April 2, 2009
  "In early testing, Joe Klosky, a senior tech adviser at the FDA, was able to successfully restart applications and services within 45 minutes onto other, differently configured servers in their environment without issues using Cassatt Active Response, not people or outsourced services."

• Fusion Centers Should Be Dismantled, Expert Says
  Security Management - April 2, 2009
  "A constitutional and international lawyer told lawmakers yesterday that the United States should dismantle state-run intelligence fusion centers, which have grown dramatically since 9-11 with the assistance of the federal government."

• Google + Twitter = End of privacy
  ComputerWorld - April 6, 2009
  "Think Google knows too much about you already? If the company buys Twitter, you can kiss your privacy good-bye."

• NARA wants new catalog
  FederalComputerWeek - March 16, 2009
  "The National Archives and Records Administration has outgrown its centralized catalog of what it has in its repositories and is looking for new ways to share and manage its growing amount of data."

• Report Identifies Government's Most-Wanted Information
  ARMA Washington Policy Brief - April 2009
  "The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and OpenTheGovernment.org released 'Show Us The Data: The Most Wanted Government Documents,' a joint report based on an interactive, user-driven search to identify the most sought-after unclassified government documents and information."

• The Senate's Cyber Lightning Rod
  Forbes - April 1, 2009
  "A new Senate bill introduced Wednesday is poised to extend federal cybersecurity regulations further into the private sector than ever before, and it is already sparking confusion and criticism among watchdog groups."

• Watchdog Groups in Settlement Talks With White House Over Missing Bush-Era E-Mails
  The Public Record - March 31, 2009
  "Two watchdog groups that sued the Bush administration over the loss of 14 million e-mails filed court papers seeking a stay of their lawsuit while they negotiate a settlement with the Obama administration to resolve the matter."

• Web Site Provides Comprehensive View of Government Transparency Initiatives Across the Country
  Government Technology - March 26, 2009
  "The site offers links to online transparency, stimulus, and recovery initiatives and allows users to suggest additional content through a public feedback link. The site was created by NIC."

THE SCOOP for April 2, 2009

• California Rules to Amend Inaccessible ESI
  LAW.COM - March 27, 2009
  "This rule stands in stark contrast -- if not technically, then at least in theory and perspective -- to the corresponding federal rule. Under the federal rules, if ESI is inaccessible, the responding party simply doesn't need to produce such documents."

• CIA Updates Digital Archive, Restricts Access
  Secrecy News - March 26, 2009
  "The Central Intelligence Agency maintains a regularly updated electronic archive of declassified historical records that have been publicly disclosed, but it has effectively squandered the utility of digitizing these records by refusing to make them available online."

• Courts Pay Attention to New FOIA Policy
  Secrecy News - March 26, 2009
  "In one case, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a court to stay a proceeding and to order the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Justice to reconsider their denial of requested records by employing the new Holder guidelines... [I]n a March 23 opinion..., Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California granted the EFF motion."

• E-Mail Theft Case Sparks First-of-a-Kind Ruling
  LAW.COM - March 27, 2009
  "[A] panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently became the first circuit to hold that plaintiffs must prove actual damages in order to be eligible for an award of statutory damages under the federal Stored Communications Act."

• Group Calls for 'Next Generation' of Privacy in Health IT Policy
  ARMA Washington Policy Brief - April 1, 2009
  "The Health Privacy Project (HPP) at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) released a major policy paper calling for the adoption of "next generation" privacy policies to be built into the nation's rapidly advancing health information technology system."

• A How-To Guide to Keeping Medical Records Private
  New York Times - March 31, 2009
  "Today, the World Privacy Forum has released a plain-spoken online guide that can help people regain some control and a measure of privacy over their health records."

• Investigators say food tracing system full of gaps
  SF Gate - March 26, 2009
  "In the past, the food industry successfully lobbied against efforts to impose electronic record keeping and other requirements that may improve tracing. But the issue is sure to be revisited this year. President Barack Obama has launched a review of the government's fragmented food safety system. Several bills have been introduced on Capitol Hill."

• It's Time to Drop the 'Expectation of Privacy' Test
  Wired - March 26, 2009
  "Between the NSA's massive internet eavesdropping program and Gmail's content-dependent advertising, does anyone actually expect their e-mail to be private? Between calls for ISPs to retain user data and companies serving content-dependent web ads, does anyone expect their web browsing to be private?"

• Suit Challenges Army Contract Secrecy
  LAW.COM - March 23, 2009
  "The case highlights how difficult it can be to obtain federal contracts, even those that don't involve national security or sensitive technical information."

• VA's health record system cited as model for a national network
  NextGov - March 27, 2009
  "Medical information technology specialists and industry executives told Nextgov that the open-source version of the VA's electronic health record system ... could serve as a building block for e-health networks nationwide and provide a variety of plug-and-play medical applications that can be easily shared among clinicians."

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