Privacy Issues:
Insurers Using Patient Data From Health Kiosks To Target Customers
Health insurers are partnering with organizations that operate health-screening kiosks to obtain data that could help them target individuals for health plans, KQED’s “The California Report” reports. As insurers seek to enroll more individuals in health plans under the Affordable Care Act, some firms are turning to health-screening kiosk companies to assist in their marketing and outreach efforts. For example, California’s Anthem Blue Cross has partnered with SoloHealth to be the sole insurance company featured in SoloHealth’s kiosks in California. In addition, SoloHealth has agreed to sell Anthem consumer information obtained through the kiosks, including names; email addresses; and phone numbers.
http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2014/1/6/insurers-using-patient-data-from-health-kiosks-to-target-customers.
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Freedom of Information:
CIA Cuts Off Public Access to Its Translated News Reports
Beginning in 1974, the U.S. intelligence community provided the public with a broad selection of foreign news reports, updated daily. These were collected and translated by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which was reconstituted in 2004 as the Open Source Center (OSC). But the CIA has now terminated public access to those news reports, as of December 31. Instead of adapting and expanding its open source product line in response to the needs and wants of the interested public, this four-decade CIA experiment in public engagement is concluded.
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2014/01/fbis-wnc/.
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Intellectual Property:
Infringement Risk in Copyright-Intensive Industries
Notwithstanding the challenges of quantifying the impact of copyright infringement on particular companies or industry sectors, there is a useful neutral source of qualitative information on the likely impact of infringement: the reports prepared by investment advisors concerning publicly traded companies. These equity research reports make investment recommendations (e.g., buy, hold, or sell) based on the companies’ performance and the risks they face.
We have reviewed the equity research reports issued over the past 90 days for eight leading companies in copyright-intensive industries: two software firms (Microsoft and Adobe); two publishers (Pearson and Reed Elsevier); the owners of two major motion picture studios (Disney and Viacom, owner of Paramount); and the owners of two major record labels (Sony, owner of Sony Music Entertainment, and Vivendi, owner of Universal Music Group). In addition to Sony Music Entertainment, Sony owns Sony Pictures Entertainment (which in turn owns Columbia Pictures), while Vivendi also owns the Canal+ motion picture and television production and distribution company. We found that the overwhelming majority of the equity research reports did not mention copyright infringement as a possible risk factor.
http://infojustice.org/archives/31827.
Publisher cracks down on authors of academic articles
It seems to be common sense that the author of a journalistic paper or academic article should have the rights to host the material on his or her website, but that is precisely the argument at the core of recent legal squabbles between Elsevier — a publisher of scientific and medical literature based in Amsterdam — and the authors of Elsevier’s content.
In early December 2013, Elsevier began issuing massive numbers of takedown requests. Elsevier is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to claim that the academics who authored the articles in its journals do not have the right to repurpose the articles on their personal websites
http://www.insidecounsel.com/2014/01/10/publisher-cracks-down-on-authors-of-academic-artic.
Conan Doyle Estate Says Sherlock Not Free Yet
Is Sherlock Holmes truly a free man? Not so fast say attorneys for the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In a December 23 decision, an Illinois federal court held that Holmes and other characters and story elements in more than 50 Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain. But attorneys for the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle this week insisted that the complete characters of Holmes and Watson won’t be freed until the final 10 stories published after 1922 enter the public domain, in 2022.
In the case, the Conan Doyle Estate presented what Judge Ruben Castillo called a “novel argument,” essentially that the Holmes and Watson characters were not completed until the last of Conan Doyle’s stories was published in 1922.
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/60503-conan-doyle-estate-says-sherlock-not-free-yet.html.
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Public Policy:
GAO Oversight of NSA: A Neglected Option
Years ago, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conducted routine audits and investigations of the National Security Agency, such that the two agencies were in “nearly continuous contact” with one another. In the post-Snowden era, GAO could perform that oversight function once again. Today, the justification for restoring the type of on-site, investigative oversight of NSA that GAO could provide may be newly apparent– though no one seems to have noticed that GAO could actually provide it.
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2014/01/gao-nsa/.
Powerful National Security Letters Continue to Go Largely Unchecked
The intelligence review group President Obama created to address surveillance concerns recently submitted 46 recommendations for improving the federal government’s surveillance programs. FBI director James B. Comey spoke out against one in particular, which proposed requiring judicial approval for issuing national security letters (NSL). Insufficient judicial oversight has been a long-standing concern with NSLs, which demand business records from a wide array of organizations for national security investigations. The 2004 case Doe v. Ashcroft challenged the constitutionality of the letters, specifically their non-disclosure provisions, and the resulting ruling issued by Judge Victor Marrero found they NSLs violate the Fourth Amendment. This led to revisions of the USA Patriot Act, allowing for greater judicial review and clarifications to the non-disclosure clauses. However, there are still no requirements to seek approval or judicial review when sending an NSL, and the non-disclosure provisions prevent the full extent of the NSL program from becoming known.
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/powerful-national-security-letters-continue-to-go-largely-unchecked/.
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International Outlook:
Secret Memo Casts Doubt on Feds’ Claims for Science Library Closures
A federal document marked “secret” obtained by Postmedia News indicates the closure or destruction of more than half a dozen world famous science libraries has little if anything to do with digitizing books as claimed by the Harper [Canada] government. In fact, the document, a compendium of cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans mentions only the “culling of materials” as the “main activities” involved as the science libraries are reduced from nine to two.
Library closures took place in such a chaotic fashion that individuals who had books out on loan from Winnipeg’s Freshwater Institute library, for instance, were not even contacted or asked to return the books.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/30/Harper-Library-Closures/.
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Open Access:
Smithsonian Libraries Releases Courses on iTunes U
The Smithsonian Libraries today launched three courses of selected content on iTunes U that focus on topics in early aviation and space history. This release increases exposure of Libraries material and is an innovative way to reach new audiences. iTunes U is a dedicated area within iTunes that gives users public access to hundreds of thousands of free lectures, videos books, podcasts and courses from learning institutions all over the world. With the iTunes U app, users can download content directly onto their iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
For students, the courses include vocabulary and guided questions to help process more difficult materials. For teachers, the courses include learning goals, common core standards for grades 6–12, national history standards and a guided-inquiry section that suggests how the courses and materials can be effectively used in the classroom or school library. They are designed to be self-paced experiences, and it is up to the teacher or student to decide which parts of the course they use.
http://blog.library.si.edu/2014/01/smithsonian-libraries-releases-courses-on-itunes-u.
Historians clash over open access movement
If the open access movement can’t replace the traditional publishing model of scholarly journals, what problem is the effort trying to solve? Participants during a session titled “Open Access and Publishing in History and the Social Sciences: Opportunities and Challenges” at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting clashed over that question Friday afternoon as they debated the role of open access journals in promoting scholarly research.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/06/historians-clash-over-open-access-movement.
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The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.