|
|
|
|
|
|
|
;-) |
Database News, Data News, Databases News |
|
|
|
 TIA:
Total Information Awareness
A-Z Art / Museums Books+ BusinessNews Censorship Comics / Links ComputerNews Consumer Dictionaries Directories Education Energy Entertainment Environment FIND Free-Speech Genealogy Government.gov Guides Health Medical History Humor I.P. IntellectualProperty Intelligence Labor Language Law / Legal >Law Enforcement Library Links Linux Maps Media Military Music & MP3s NET / WEB NEWS-STAND NoteWorthy Nuclear Opinion Parents People Politics Privacy Radio/ Online Reference Science & Tech Search/Engines >SpecialEngines Seniors Space Sports Terrorism Travel TV /Channels U.S. Vocabulary Weather Webcasting Women World |
|
|
|||
|
. |
Karl
Rove
- 
Political
- 
Government
- 
Computer
- 
E-Mails
- 
Communications
- 
Archives
- 
Laws
- Presidential
Records Act Law - Hatch
Act Law - 
History
- Data
- Censorship
- 
Investigation
- "GOP
Halts Effort to Retrieve White House E-Mails." ...
"After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands
of e-mails sent by [Republican President Bush] White House officials, the
Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no
longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup
tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday." ... "The move increases the
likelihood that an untold number of RNC [RNC=Republican National Committee=Republican
Party] e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first
term of the Bush administration -- including many sent or received by former
[Republican President Bush] presidential adviser Karl Rove -- will never
be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates." ... "Administration
officials have acknowledged that Rove and many other White House officials
routinely used RNC accounts for government business, despite rules [Laws:
the Presidential Records Act Law and the Hatch Act Law] requiring that
they conduct such business through official communications channels. The
RNC deleted all e-mails until 2004, when it exempted White House officials
from its e-mail purging policy." ... "About 80 White House aides used RNC
accounts for official government business, committee staff members said.
Rove, for example, sent or received 140,000 e-mails on RNC servers from
2002 to 2007, and more than half involved official ".gov" accounts, the
panel has said." ... "The RNC dispute is part of a broader debate over
whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory
requirements to preserve official White House records -- including those
reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions -- for history and
in case of future legal demands." ... "The committee is investigating allegations
that vast stores of official Bush administration e-mails have also gone
missing from the White House, which scrapped a [former Democratic President]
Clinton-era archiving system and has struggled with data retention problems."
-By Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost
Drug
- Safety
- 
US
- 
China
- Manufacturers
- 
Corporate
- Government
- Database
- Politics
- 
Michigan
- "FDA
Says It Approved The Wrong Drug Plant: Heparin Probe
Sends Inspectors to China." ... "The Chinese facility that supplies the
active ingredient of the widely used blood thinner heparin was never inspected
by the [Republican President Bush's] Food and Drug Administration because
the agency confused its name with another just like it, agency officials
said yesterday." ... "More than 350 adverse reactions to the drug have
been reported to the FDA since the end of 2007, including a dangerous lowering
of blood pressure, breathing difficulties and vomiting. Four patients who
took the drug died. One of its two manufacturers, Baxter International,
stopped selling its multiple-dose vials of heparin earlier this month,
and yesterday the FDA advised doctors to prescribe alternatives." ... "Millions
of people each year are given the drug during dialysis or to prevent complications
from surgery, but the FDA has never checked the Chinese plant where the
active ingredient is made." ... "[Michigan Democratic Representative John]
Dingell noted that the agency seems uncertain even of the number of foreign
drugmakers, with one database saying there are 7,000 while another counts
3,000." -By Marc Kaufman
-WashingtonPost
Dick
Cheney
- US
- 
Iraq
- 
Military
- Government
- 
Intelligence
- Politics
- Language
- Database
- History
- "Bush
Administration Lied 935 Times About Iraq Before Invasion:
Study: President [Republican President Bush] cited as most frequent liar,
with 259 false statements about weapons of mass destruction and more."
... "For years, the [Republican President] Bush administration has faced
charges that it bent the truth or flat-out misled the public about Iraq's
alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the
2003 invasion of the country. Now, a study by two nonprofit journalism
organizations claims that President Bush and top officials in his administration
issued nearly 1,000 false statements about the security threat posed by
Iraq in the wake of 9/11." ... "Relying on what it described as a "massive
database" of information that fed the results of the project, the authors
said their research was based on juxtaposing what President Bush and the
top officials in his administration said in public against what was known,
"or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis." The searchable database
includes public statements drawn from both primary sources like official
transcripts and secondary sources like the reporting of major news organizations
over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also used information
from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews."
... "An example given in the report is a portion of an address given at
the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August 26, 2002,
during which Cheney said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing
them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." According
to the report, former CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] Director George
Tenet later said Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments
at the time, and another CIA official, referring to the speech, told a
prominent journalist, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff
from?' "" ... "As for criticism that the report does not have any new information
but rather rehashes already-reported facts, [Center for Public Integrity
spokesman Steve] Carpinelli said, "The difference is that while there have
been many intelligence reports that came out that contradicted a lot of
statements from administration officials, there's been nothing that could
show you how it was a coordinated effort." The report is accompanied by
a bar graph that Carpinelli said shows how the false statements reached
their peak in the months prior to the March 2003 launch of the Iraq war
and how they tapered off soon after." -By Gil Kaufman
-MTV.com
Chris
Dodd
- Secret
- Telecom
- Industry
- Government
- 
Spying
- Politics
- 
Net
- E-Mails
- Data
- 
Iowa
- 
Connecticut
- 2008
Election - "Dodd
out of Iowa for Senate filibuster." ... "With just
weeks until the pivotal Iowa caucuses, [2008 Election] presidential candidate
and Democratic [Connecticut Senator] Sen. Chris
Dodd has abandoned the Hawkeye State to lead a filibuster against
a controversial measure that would give special legal protections to the
telecom industry." ... "The Connecticut Democrat has criticized the proposed
renewal of government spying powers, insisting it gives too much power
to secret agencies and lets large telecommunications firms off the hook
for handing over reams of private data on American phone calls and e-mails."
... "Under the measure being considered this week, telecom firms would
be given legal immunity from invasion of privacy lawsuits that result from
the release of this information to government officials." -By
Lisa Desjardins and Rebecca Sinderbrand -CNN
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- 
Accounting
- Politics
- 
Terrorism
- Crime
- Database
- "What
Defines a Killing as Sectarian? U.S. Military Teams
Analyze and Tally Each Civilian Death." ... "On Sept. 1, the bullet-riddled
bodies of four Iraqi men were found on a Baghdad [Iraq's capital] street.
Two days later, a single dead man, with one bullet in his head, was found
on a different street. According to the U.S. military in Iraq, the solitary
man was a victim of sectarian violence. The first four were not." ... "Such
determinations are the building blocks for what the [Republican President]
Bush administration has declared a downward trend in sectarian deaths and
a sign that its war strategy is working. They are made by a specialized
team of soldiers who spend their nights at computer terminals, sifting
through data on the day's civilian victims for clues to the motivations
of killers." ... "Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in
the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian
casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last
week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top
commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional
testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon
combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater.
Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding
this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations
escalated this summer." ... "The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus
used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed "Average
Daily Casualties" on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers."
... "In an Iraq assessment released this month, the Government Accountability
Office said it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined"
since the U.S. troop buildup began in the spring and saw no decrease in
overall attacks against civilians as of the end of July." ... "The U.S.
intelligence community considers more than numbers in making its war assessments.
"What the Iraqis perceive" about their country and their daily lives "may
be more important than what the numbers are," said a senior intelligence
official, who discussed the subject on the condition of anonymity. Even
so, he said, intelligence officials found contradictions in the available
statistics as they wrote last month's National Intelligence Estimate on
Iraq, whose conclusions were somewhat less optimistic than the military's."
(1, 2)
-By Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost
Government
- Electronic
- Surveillance
- Data
- Travelers
- 
Flying
- 
Driving
- 
Reading
- 
People
- Civil
Liberties - US
- 
International
- San
Francisco - 
California
- 
Alaska
- Terrorism
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Law
- "Collecting
of Details on Travelers Documented: U.S. Effort More
Extensive Than Previously Known." ... "The U.S. government is collecting
electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly,
drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they
travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys,
and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents
obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government
officials." ... "The personal travel records are meant to be stored for
as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort
to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country.
Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated
Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists
from innocent people entering the country." ... "Officials yesterday defended
the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked
to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged
that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms
about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people.
The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are
generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not
created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any
errors, activists said." ... "The activists alleged that the data collection
effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering
of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights,
such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate.
They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used
to impede their right to travel." ... ""The federal government is trying
to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties
activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity
Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska.
The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions.
. . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it
with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and
without our consent."" (1, 2)
-By Ellen Nakashima with contributions by Julie Tate
-WashingtonPost
US
- International
- Secret
- Government
- Phone
- Wiretapping
- Internet
- Intelligence
- Database
- 
Technology
- Law
- San
Francisco - California
- "NSA
Judge: 'I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland'."
... "Spectators lined up outside the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco [California] starting at noon to guarantee a seat at a much-anticipated
legal showdown over the government's secret wiretapping program." ... "The
hearing involves two cases: one aimed at AT&T for allegedly helping
the government with a widespread datamining program allegedly involving
domestic and international phone calls and internet use; the other a direct
challenge to the government's admitted warrantless wiretapping of overseas
phone calls." ... "Jon Eisenberg, (right [photo at Wired.com]) an Oakland-based
[California] attorney, is arguing on behalf of a now-defunct Islamic charity
Al-Haramain and its lawyers, who claim to have been accidentally given
a Top Secret log of their own phone conversations, which they say proves
the government illegally eavesdropped on them without warrants." ... "The
courtroom filled quickly with more than 20 attorneys in the courtroom well,
and 80 spectators seated and standing. Another 40 filed into
an overflow courtroom, including Mark Klein, the former AT&T engineer
who provided internal company documents to the EFF. Those documents allegedly
show that AT&T built a secret spying room for the NSA in its San Francisco
internet switching center. " ... "The government says the purported log
of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American
lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it
is "secure compartmented information." That designation usually applies
to surveillance information" -By Kevin Poulsen
-Wired
Google Search: National Practitioner Data Bank
Google Search: database
GuideStar.org - "The National Database of Nonprofit Organizations."
|
|
