From our Own Correspondent … the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) in Context: FoIA, Privacy and Public Records

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-113
Author(s):  
Dave Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Complete Picture ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Public Records ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
The Us ◽  
Public Record ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The U.S

The US Freedom of Information Act is a tool that can be used with success, but the current climate makes it less effective than it has been in the past. Privacy Acts are set up to protect the citizenry from untoward governmental scrutiny, but even with current legislation in place private collection of information from governmental public record resources and a variety of private resources can compile a relatively complete picture of many individuals in the U.S, from where Dave Rogers from Sidley Austin in Chicago sends us this report.

Abstract P183: 20-year Secular Trend of Cardiovascular Disease Comorbidities in the United States, 1997-2016

Circulation ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 137 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dianjianyi Sun ◽  
Tao Zhou ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Yoriko Heianza ◽  
Xiaoyun Shang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cardiovascular Disease ◽  
Secular Trend ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
Metabolic Conditions ◽  
Respiratory Conditions ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Chronic Comorbidities

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been the number one cause of death and disability in the US and globally for decades, and its comorbidity complicates the management of CVD. However, little is known about the secular trend of CVD comorbidities in national representative populations in the last 20 years. Methods: Prevalence of CVD and nine major chronic comorbidities was estimated using data from 1,324,214 adults aged 18 years and older in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 1997 through 2016, with age-standardized to the U.S. population in the year 2000. Results: CVD prevalence in the US adult population significantly declined in the past twenty years (from 6.6% in 1997 to 5.9% in 2016, P trend <0.01in Figure a). And such trend was shown in women and whites (P trend <0.01), but not in men and blacks (P trend >0.05). We ranked the nine major chronic comorbidities (high to low) in the CVD patients (Figure b.), including (1) hypertension, (2) respiratory conditions, (3) nervous system conditions, (4) digestive conditions, (5) diabetes, (6) cancer, (7) genitourinary conditions, (8) circulatory conditions, and (9) endocrine/nutritional/metabolic conditions. From 1997 to 2016, the prevalence of CVD comorbidities including hypertension (38.8% to 50.2%), digestive conditions (17.0% to 27.1%), diabetes (10.0% to 19.2%), cancer (9.4% to 12.8%), and genitourinary conditions (4.1% to 5.2%) continuingly increased (all P trend <0.01), while respiratory conditions declined (35.9% to 27.6%, P trend <0.01). Similar trends of CVD comorbidities were observed among subgroups stratified by gender or by race. Conclusions: CVD prevalence in the U.S. adults have declined significantly in the past two decades, but rates of CVD comorbidities including hypertension, digestive conditions, diabetes, cancer, and genitourinary conditions increased substantially.

The Colossus Rebuild

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Sale
Keyword(s):  
National Archive ◽  
Science Museum ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Post Office ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Cad System ◽  
The Us ◽  
First Time ◽  
Second World ◽  
Original Construction

In 1991, some colleagues and I started the campaign to save Bletchley Park from demolition by property developers. At this time I was working at the Science Museum in London restoring some early British computers. I believed it would be possible to rebuild Colossus, but nobody else believed me. In 1993, I gathered together all the information available. This amounted to no more than eight 1945 wartime photographs of Colossus (some of which are printed in this book), plus brief descriptions by Flowers, Coombs, and Chandler, and—crucially—circuit diagrams which some engineers had kept, quite illegally, as engineers always do! I spent nine months poring over the wartime photographs, using a sophisticated modern CAD system on my PC to recreate machine drawings of the racks. I found that, fortunately, sufficient wartime valves were still available, as were various pieces of Post Office equipment used in the original construction. In July 1994, His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent opened the Bletchley Park Museum and inaugurated the Colossus rebuild project. At that time I had not managed to obtain any sponsorship for the project, so my wife Margaret and I decided to put our own money into it, to get it started. We both felt that if the effort was not made immediately there would be nobody still alive to help us with memories of Colossus. Over the next few years various private sponsors came to our aid and some current and retired Post Office and radio engineers formed the team that helped me in the rebuild. In 1995, the American National Security Agency was forced by application of the Freedom of Information Act to release about 5000 Second World War documents into the US National Archive. A list of these documents was put onto the Internet. When I read it I was amazed to see titles like ‘The Cryptographic Attack on FISH’. I obtained copies of these documents and found that they were invaluable reports written by American servicemen seconded to Bletchley Park when America entered the war. I was also fortunate enough to be given access to the then still classified General Report on Tunny (parts of which are published for the first time in this book).

Historical Records

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Access ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Public Records ◽  
The Public ◽  
Code Of Practice ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Public Record ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Information Regime

Chapter 7 examines the relationship between the freedom of information regime established by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and the pre-existing statutory regime governing the keeping of public records under the Public Records Act 1958. It describes the processes by which public records are transferred to the Public Record Office and opened to public access, and the progressive replacement of the ‘30-year rule’ with a ‘20-year rule’. It explains the separate, but related, concept of ‘historical records’ introduced by the 2000 Act, and the removal of certain exemptions by reference to the age of documents. The special procedures applicable to requests for information in transferred public records that have not been opened to the public are set out. The chapter then summarizes the guidance given to relevant authorities about the above matters by the Lord Chancellor’s Code of Practice and the National Archives.

scholarly journals What’s he building? Activating the utopian imagination with Trump

Organization ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian De Cock ◽  
Sine N. Just ◽  
Emil Husted
Keyword(s):  
Traumatic Event ◽  
Reality Tv ◽  
Special Series ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dialectical Approach ◽  
The Us ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Current Reality

Can one sell any positive value of Trump’s presidency to an academic audience? The editors of this special series invited polemical essays, but maybe asking readers to consider the merit of Trump is going a little too far? We put forward the argument here that as critical scholars we simply cannot allow ourselves to be swept up in the bien-pensant tide of Trump-trashing, which has almost become as addictive as the current reality-TV quality of the US presidency itself. As Roitman has suggested in a different context, ‘the concept of crisis is crucial to the “how” of thinking otherwise’. Thus, we believe it crucial to seize the crisis of the Trump presidency as an opportunity to activate the utopian imagination, rather than an occasion for moralizing judgements or regressive nostalgia which would effectively mean aligning ourselves with the neo-liberal consensus many of us spent our careers critiquing. We further argue that Fredric Jameson’s notion of the dialectic may refresh our critical conceptual arsenal in these disorienting times. This dialectical approach is meant to alter not only how we see reality, but also what we think we can do with it. It enables us to see the traumatic event of Trump’s election as providing a form and space through which contradictions that have been locked firmly into place in our socioeconomic set-up over the past few decades have become much more malleable, partly because of their increased visibility.

scholarly journals Individuals’ Use of Twitter to Discuss Freedom of Information in the United States: A Social Network Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Kayla Schwoerer
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Social Network Analysis ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Public Agencies ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Advocacy Organizations ◽  
The U.S

This study employs social network analysis to examine more than 10,000 Twitter interactions that include the U.S. Freedom of Information Act hashtag (#FOIA) to understand who is engaging online, and to what extent. The analysis finds evidence of a dynamic conversation online among citizens, journalists, advocates, and public agencies. Findings offer insights into how citizens are using social media to engage with government and one another in conversations around important public policies, such as government transparency, as well as how technologies such as social media can be leveraged to better understand citizens’ interest. The study also found a significant increase in tweets during national Sunshine Week, a vehicle that increases national dialogue about FOI, and highlights effective social media strategies employed by MuckRock and other advocacy organizations.

scholarly journals Three’s Company: How the US and China’s Complementary Competition is Improving African Health

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Sai Polineni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
African Health ◽  
The Us ◽  
The U.S

President Obama's and President Xi Jinping's visits to Tanzania — and the associated jubliation and fanfare accompanying them — seem to validate much of what has been written in the past few years of the supposed competition between the United States and China for influence and resources in Africa, with many authors proclaiming that the U.S. was losing this competition. Aside from propagating the idea that Africa is some sort of homogenous collection of people, ideas, and cultures, many of these authors view the role of Africa as primarily an economic battleground in which the U.S and China must battle to determine control while ignoring the fact that the differing strengths and focuses of the American and Chinese economies do not lend themselves to any sort of outright competition in Africa. 

Sharing Knowledge With the Government

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
G. Scott Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Personal Privacy ◽  
Freedom Of Information Act ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Business Information ◽  
Private Knowledge ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
Information Requests

This chapter assesses the reliability and predictability of government departments as partners of private knowledge management systems. The specific topic is knowledge availability under the US Freedom of Information Act, but the general implications apply to governments at all levels around the world that hold business data, information, or knowledge assets. By comparing processes related to US freedom of information requests across departments and across time, separated by two dramatic changes in presidential administrations and attitudes toward governmental openness, this study examines the relative reliability of agency processes. In particular, reports on the handling of confidential business information provide us with specific insights on this topic as do reports on releases of records with personal privacy concerns. In the end, there appears to be little predictability in the process, even with clear instruction from the highest levels.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document