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San Francisco Chronicle Keep federal archives open IN A RECENT meeting with Chronicle reporters and editors, John Dean, White House counsel under President Nixon and author of the new book, "Worse than Watergate," accused the Bush administration of excessive secrecy. Within months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, for example, President Bush used executive orders to issue strict regulations on Freedom of Information Act requests for government information and gave himself veto power to seal papers that are protected by the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Such efforts to override congressional legislation have limited the public's access to government documents and presidential archives. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/06/EDGRA6FNFH1.DTL New York Times F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements By MATTHEW L. WALD Published: May 6, 2004 WASHINGTON, May 6 — At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said today. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/national/06CND-TAPE.html? ( GCN 04/26/04; Vol. 23 No. 9 Capturing Content By Joab Jackson GCN Staff To get most from Web sites, feds turn to content management apps What’s the advantage of having a content management system for online information? Ask the IRS. Its Web content management system has brought kudos, not complaints, from the General Accounting Office. “GAO does an audit every year of the IRS filing season, and part of that is looking at what is on the Web site,” said George Coffin, chief of the tax agency’s public portal. “For several years, GAO found outdated content.” http://www.gcn.com/23_9/news/25687-1.html Newark Advocate County needs clean sweep By KENT MALLETT Advocate Reporter NEWARK -- The county's storage of old records may be much like the system many residents use in their homes. Some important papers are in a dusty, dirty attic. Some documents could have been thrown away years ago, but are still gathering dust. Organizing the records is a major headache that's been avoided for years. http://www.newarkadvocate.com/news/stories/20040506/localnews/366025.html ( Shawnee News-Star First deputy court clerk logs court documents People You Should Know By Kimberly D. Morava SNS Staff Writer Reta Head, Pottawatomie County First Deputy Court Clerk, sits in a courtroom this week in preparation to take court minutes. http://www.news-star.com/stories/050604/New_17.shtml ( Las Vegas Review-Journal Inmate accounts vulnerable Jail records show how theft, fraud could go undetected By JULIET V. CASEY REVIEW-JOURNAL The North Las Vegas jail's systemic weaknesses and a lack of controls left inmate accounts vulnerable to theft and fraud, according to audits and personnel records obtained by the Review-Journal. The findings of a nine-month criminal investigation of the jail's finances uncovered more than $400,000 missing from inmate accounts and on Tuesday prompted North Las Vegas police to file a complaint with the Clark County district attorney alleging fraud, forgery and theft. http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/May-06-Thu-2004/news/23822855.html The Mercury Lions accept fine By Greg Denham 06may04 BRISBANE yesterday did an about-face and decided not to appeal against their $260,000 fine for administrative breaches of the rules relating to player contracts. http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9483668%255E23209,00.html Haaretz Land registration and lien data missing By Ziv Maor Consumers seeking to purchase apartments and homes in Israel may face missing and incomplete property registration and incomplete lien records, according to an investigation by the state comptroller in the Haifa and central districts. According to Israel Lands Administration records, it is unclear who owns 20,000 apartments and houses. The investigation, which relied on a scientific sampling, found no files at all for 3,800 properties. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/424220.html ( stuff Floods damage hospital records 07 May 2004 Hutt Hospital doctors will have to work with incomplete medical records in some cases after the February floods damaged more than 10,000 stored files and 10,000 X-rays. Because of space limitations, the hospital has a contract with Total Records Management to store and retrieve closed medical files. The hospital has revealed that more than 370 boxes of records stored at the company's Seaview facility were damaged in the February deluge. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2899711a7144,00.html United Kingdom: Data Protection Case Study: Request for Access, Know What to Send 05 May 2004 Article by Sarah G Staines http://www.mondaq.com/i_article.asp_Q_articleid_E_25837 Scotsman.com Search for Your Family's Black Sheep ... By PA News Reporter People were today invited to check for skeletons in the family cupboard by researching their origins at the National Archives. They will be able to look for criminal ancestors by accessing a website available during â€oefamily history week― which starts on Saturday. Use of the criminal archive HO 47 will enable people to see how a relative’s past mistake may have influenced the entire family’s history, including moving it from one country to another, a spokesman for the Archives, based in Kew, west London, said. http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2889005 WTVF Nashville NewsChannel 5 Investigates: Tape Missing, Includes Discussion About State Contract A key piece of evidence uncovered in our "Friends in High Places" investigation of insider state contracts is missing. It's a tape that may help link a questionable contract directly to the office of former Gov. Don Sundquist. The tape may be the only tape-recorded discussion of how friend-of-the-governor John Stamps was given an exclusive, no-bid contract that would be worth almost $2 million. http://www.newschannel5.com/content/investigates/4959.asp ( Jeffconews Open records to cost citizens by Teresa Chamberland write the author The Jefferson County commissioners adopted a resolution that will require citizens to pay research and printing fees when requesting public information. http://www.jeffconews.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2004-05-06&-token.story=83326.112112&-nothing Akron Beacon Journal Posted on Thu, May. 06, 2004 State inspector general approves of new policies JOHN McCARTHY Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - The state utility watchdog's new policy on the keeping of public records is a move in the right direction from her predecessor, whose office's document destruction led him to resign, the state inspector general says. http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news/state/8599540.htm The Prague Post Worker privacy in the EU By Edward Asu For The Prague Post (May 6, 2004) For years, various national courts have struggled with the rights of employees to a reasonable expectation of privacy in internal and external e-mails and voice messages versus an employer's legitimate interests in recording and reviewing employee communications. Employers have long held the right to monitor activities on the job, including phone calls and the use of e-mail, the Internet and computer files. Employers say they need this right to prevent exposure to criminal acts by outsiders and to employee crime. http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/0506/busi5.php CNN CDs, DVDs not so immortal (AP) -- Dan Koster was unpacking some of his more than 2,000 CDs after a move when he noticed something strange. Some of the discs, which he always took good care of, wouldn't play properly. Koster, a Web and graphic designer for Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, took one that was skipping pretty badly and held it up to the light. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/05/06/disc.rot.ap/index.html ( The Mac Observer Got CD Rot? You'd Best Check Your Collection by Vern Seward, 8:00 AM CDT, May 6th, 2004 Vinyl produces a warm sound, but CDs are immortal, or so we were led to believe: Barring fire, teething babies, and aunts who mistake you favorite CD for a newfangled hot pad, CDs are suppose to last a lifetime with minimum care as compared to vinyl records. http://www.macobserver.com/article/2004/05/06.4.shtml http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_story.asp?category=1700&slug=Disc%20Rot%20Glance ( Online Newshour ELECTRONIC VOTING May 5, 2004 The commission Congress created to investigate the security of electronic voting machines said the software is not reliable enough for use in the 2004 presidential election. Spencer Michels looks at the controversy in California over electronic voting methods. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june04/voting_05-05.html ( New York Times A Minuscule Drive, Except for the Memory By ANDREW ZIPERN Published: May 6, 2004 .S.B. drives seem to get ever smaller, but now a new model from Pretec claims to be the tiniest ever. Less than two inches long and weighing less than a quarter of an ounce, the folding iDisk Tiny 2.0 has a surface area slightly smaller than that of a United States quarter. Compatible with machines running the newer Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, this diminutive flash drive requires no external power source and can pack away up to a gigabyte of data. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/technology/circuits/06driv.html New York Times Playing Old Records (No Needle Required) By ANNE EISENBERG Published: May 6, 2004 HE traditional way to preserve old sound recordings is to play them, typically with a stylus, and then convert the sound into a file that can be stored digitally. But two physicists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California have developed a new way to preserve the contents of old discs and wax cylinders: they take pictures of the groove instead of dropping a needle into it. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/technology/circuits/06next.html ( GCN 04/26/04; Vol. 23 No. 9 Managing the deluge New tools can help you keep control over the flood of e-mail records E-mail has generated a whole new category of electronic records. The messages have enormously variable sizes and difficult-to-classify subject matter, and can carry attachments, nonstandard formats and viruses. You can have uncertainty regarding their true origins and the true intended recipients. And it exists in a paradigm in which the precise sequence and time stamps of messages could be critical to placing a message’s content in proper context. http://www.gcn.com/23_9/buyers_guide/25678-1.html ( Peter A. Kurilecz CRM, CA Richmond, Va [log in to unmask]