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CPSR Newsletter on Freedom of Information
``` Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:06:19 -0600 From: marsha-w@uiuc.edu (Marsha Woodbury) Subject: Announcing the CPSR Newsletter
Announcing the Latest Edition of the CPSR Newsletter--an issue devoted to Freedom of Information. CPSR stands for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. To learn more about joining CPSR or obtaining this issue, email to cpsr@cpsr.org or check the Web, at
http://www.cpsr.org/lib/htdocs/home.html
*Computers, Government, and Access to Electronic Records*
Guest Editor: Marsha Woodbury, Director at Large, CPSR
Excerpts from the introduction:
The articles in this issue should update your knowledge of what freedom of information laws are, how these laws treat electronic records, and what we, as computer professionals and concerned citizens, should know about our responsibilities for creating, maintaining, and using databases. Our purpose herein is to discuss how computers and digitized records will change your access to government data. In order to focus on the topic, I left the issues of copyright, maintaining the integrity and authenticity of records, and protecting personal privacy for future editors to cover.
One piece of advice: always try to obtain information without resort to the law. Once you make a formal request, the government officials can find many reasons for not filling it, and you may wait for years. You can catch more bytes with honey than with vinegar, as it were. Freedom of Information...
Freedom of information, or "the right to know," is an emotional issue. The concept's undergirding philosophy recognizes that the public, as "the people" with a common interest in the common good, has "the right to know." In contrast, a totalitarian government doesn't even go through the motions of openness. Those who believe in the right to know hold that an informed public is a safeguard against governmental abuse of power; yet, no matter how open a government aspires to be, it can hardly avoid reining in access to and release of information, in order to govern.
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The articles should broaden our knowledge of what has been happening to federal, state, and local FOIAs as records are increasingly stored in electronic form.
The first article, by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, defines many of the issues and offers guidance about how to prepare a FOIA request. Next, David Morrisey, a professor in Colorado, writes about the lack of government preparation for electronic access. In the subsequent article, Eileen Gannon describes how the Environmental Working Group acquires and translates data in order to provide information to the public.
Archivists have many legitimate concerns about how the government stores its records electronically. The Society of American Archivists has written a position statement on archival issues to guide your planning. This statement is followed by the concerns of James Love, who fills us in on public and private networks in regard to the status of public records and open meetings under FOIA.
David Sobel has contributed an update on the CPSR and EPIC lawsuits, some of which concern FOIA issues. Joel Campbell gives some tips for starting a state freedom of information organi-zation. Dave Gowen relates his own experience in acquiring electronic data. Finally, we include a list of listservs, Gopher, web, and FTP resources for further information. I hope this newsletter will do three things:
1. Help you to obtain and use information stored in digital form, whether browsing it online, doing research, or monitoring the government.
2. Make us all more aware of the pitfalls and plusses of digital record-keeping, and how we can use our expertise to help others.
3. Lend support to the journalists, archivists, and activists who are working hard to insure our right to know. People who save a tree or historic building enjoy more publicityQtheir acts are visual and dramatic. A person who stops a mass "delete" or puts up government web pages earns little public acclaim. This newletter gives them the attention they deserve.
References
Scalia, Antonin. "The Freedom of Information Act Has No Clothes." Regulation 6(2) 1982: 14-19.
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Table of Contents
Access to Electronic Records 3 Will Washington Share Its Electronic Bounty? 5 Solving Environmental Problems with Information Technology 9 Archival Issues Raised by Information Stored in Electronic Form 11 Public and Private Networks, and the Status of Public Records, Open Meetings, and FOIA 13 CPSR and EPIC FOIA Cases: Current Status 14 FOI and First Admendment-related Resources on the Internet 16 Six Tips for Starting a State Freedom of Information Organization 19 CPSR Executive Director Search 20 Confidentiality and Availability of Public Information 21 Chapter Updates 22
Marsha Woodbury, Ph.D. Associate Director of Education, Sloan Center for Asynchronous Learning Environments (SCALE) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign marsha-w@uiuc.edu Director at Large, CPSR http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/marsha/ ```
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