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FOI and First Amendment-related Resources on the Internet

CPSR News Volume 13, Number 2: Summer 1995

American Communication Associationhttp://www.uark.edu/depts/comminfo/www/ACA.html

The best place to start for Internet searches of FOI and First Amendment-related topics.

FOI Topics include:

• Canada's Coalition for Public Information Gopher
• Citizen's Guide to Using the FOIA
• Citizen's Information Bill of Rights
• Clinton Administration Policy on Freedom of Information
• Flow of Information and NII (NAS)
• Freedom of Information (DFP)
• Freedom of Information Act Exemptions
• Freedom of Information Act Info (CPSR)
• Freedom of Information Act Kit
  http://oss.net:70/0/infopro/Freedom_lnformation_Act_Kit
• Freedom of Information - applies to email (U Victoria, 30 Oct. 1992)
• Right to Know Net
• Using the FOIA: A Step-by-Step Guide (ACLU)
• Information Rights Bibliography
• Open Government Project (Canada)

• Academic Freedom and Campus Speech Codes
• Copyright and Intellectual Property
• Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of Religion
• Human Rights Issues
• Law and Legal Research
• Privacy Rights and Issues
• Telecommunications: Law, Policy, and Society

American Library Association http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/~pgalapage.html gopher://gopher.uic.edu/11/library/ala

Of special interest is the section about legislation that affects libraries.

Bibliography on Electronic Library Issues http://aultnis.rutgers.edu/texts/ElectLibBib.html

Prepared by Peter Graham for the October, 1994 ALA/ALCTS Institute, The Electronic Library: Administrative Issues for Organization and Access (San Antonio). 12 KB (3 pages).

The Coalition for Networked Information http://www.cni.org/CNI.homepage.html

CNI is a joint project of the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM. The Coalition's mission is to promote the creation of and access to information resources in networked environments in order to enrich scholarship and enhance intellectual productivity.

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility http://cpsr.org/home

CPSR is a nonprofit, public interest organization concerned with the effects of computers on society. CPSR is supported by its membership and has chapters throughout the country. The Internet site cpsr.org offers many discussion lists on topics of interest, as well as numerous publications. http://www.eff.org/

Use Topical Index to go to FOIA activism archive or point to

http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Activism/FOIA/

Network resources on FOIA

gopher://csf.Colorado.EDU:70/00/ eforum/comm/Freedom-of-Info-Act (How to Use the FOIA)

http://oss.net:70/0/infopro/

Journalism_Info_Internet (The Journalism List) http://cpsr.org:80/cpsr/foia/ (CPSR Archives) http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Activism/FOIA/ (EFF Archives)

http://jnews.umd.edu/ajr/rowe.html (A JOURNALIST'S GUIDE TO THE NET BY E-MAIL)

Freedom of Information listserv: Started by the National Freedom of Information Coalition for persons working on FOIA issues. Address: listserv@suvm.syr.edu. Message: Subscribe FOI-L your name.

Newsgroups: alt.society.foia, alt.freedom.of.information.act

The Jim Warren Gopher gopher://path.net:8102/

The Jim Warren Gopher is a collection of electronic newsletters distributed by Jim Warren on the subjects of political action and government access through the use of computer communications. Political action can be proactive or reactive, deal with the political establishment directly, or indirectly through education, the distribution of information, or even the functioning of business in the area of software publication. Jim Warren is founder of such computerist's institutions as Infoworld Magazine, Dr. Dobbs Journal, and the West Coast Computer Faire. He chaired the first conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy and now sits on the board of directors of Autodesk. Jim played a key role in the passing of the California Legislature's Assembly Bill 1624, which gives the public electronic access to almost all public information about legislation in process, all current state statutes, and the voluminous California Constitution.

Harry Ham mitt's newsletter Access Reports is mainly used by agency staff involved at the administrative or legal level with FOIA issues. It costs $325 for 24 issues a year. He also offers a two volume looseleaf service known as the Reference File, which includes the text of the FOIA, Privacy Act, FACA, and Sunshine Act, the legislative history of those statutes, the Justice Department's case list and agency guidance, and various other documents in this area. Updated quarterly, it sells for $450 a year or $575 in tandem with a newsletter subscription. In addition, he also publishes Access Reports: Canada and Abroad, a monthly newsletter that concerns similar issues in Canada and other countries and costs $225 a year. Finally, he publishes the Canadian Access Reference Book, updated yearly, which contains the text of all access and privacy laws at the federal and provincial levels and includes major federal and provincial contacts.

Journal of Online Law http://www.law.cornell.edu/jol/jol.table.html

Ralph E. McCoy's Freedom of the Press, an Annotated Bibliography http://www.siu.ecu/library/cni/toc.html

Society of Professional Journalists http://town.hall.org/places/spj/spj.html

See FOI resources by clicking "FOI" or "FOI toolbox" or pointing your browser at

htip://town.hall.org/places/spj/foi-resources.html

State Government Information

Council of State Governments (Use the Internet search engine to find the address)

CSG is a nonprofit organization that provides information on state government issues to both the legislators and the public. This gopher is still in development, and the menus will be changing fairly regularly. Send your comments and questions to one of the gopher system coadministrators: Cathy Wiley (cwiley@csg.org) and Kevin Morrison (kmorris@csg.org).

The following three sites are very similar. You may find that one is better for your purposes than the others:

WWW Virtual Library! State Government Information Servers http://www.law.indiana.edu/law/states.html

Washington's Page on State and Local Government Information

Library of Congress - State and Local Government Information http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/state/stategov.html

Federal Government Information

Legi-Slate Gopher Service gopher://LEGISLATE.COM:70

The Legi-Slate Gopher Service is the first combined federal legislative and regulatory service available over the Internet using the Gopher protocol. The Legi-Slate Gopher Service takes advantage of the powerful Legi-Slate mainframe database to provide access to timely, comprehensive congressional and regulatory information. Developed in conjunction with the Distributed Computing Services Center at the University of Minnesota, the Legi-Slate Gopher Service runs on a Gopher+ server. Some of the data in the Legi-Slate Gopher Service is publicly available to all Internet users; other data is available only to paid subscribers. See "Public Access to the Legi Slate Gopher Service" for further details.

Federal Web Locator http://www.law.vill.edu/Fed-Agency/fedwebloc.html

The Federal Web Locator is a service provided by the Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy and is intended to be the one-stop-shopping point for federal government information on the World Wide Web. This list is maintained to bring the cyber citizen to the federal government's doorstep. If you learn of a federal government site that is not listed, please email it to us so we can add it to the list and spread the wealth of information about the federal government on the Web. FedWorld http://www.fedworld.gov/ FedWorld is an electronic gateway to U.S. Government information operated by the Department of Commerce's NationalTechnical Information Service (NTIS). FedWorld services include more than 100 U.S. Government information servers, and WWW and gopher clients, sorted by subject categories. The NTIS home page provides information on the more than 2 million U.S. Government information products available from NTIS. National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA) gopher://archives.state.ri.us:70/1/NAGARA Read the group's guidelines for archiving and classifying records. National Association of State Information Resource Executives http://www.state.ky.us/nasire/NASIREhome.html

Lists and Information

FOI-L Sponsored by National Freedom of Information Coalition. Subscribe by sending the following message to listserv@suvm.syr.edu:

subscribe firstname lastname

CAL-FOI, California Freedom of Info Act List

Subscribe by sending the following message to listserv@rosebud.berkeley.edu:

subscribe firstname lastname

GovAccess

GovAccess is a list that delivers irregular information and advocacy, maintained by Jim Warren, a columnist for MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, and so on. You can reach him as follows: voice/415-851-7075; jwarren@well.com (well.com = well.sf.ca.us; also at jwarren@autodesk.com). To add or drop the GovAccess list, send email to jwarren@well.com. Past postings are at ftp://cpsr.org/cpsr/states/california/govaccess and by WWW at http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/states/california/govaccess.

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press/News Media Update

News Media Update is a biweekly publication of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1910, Arlington, VA 22209. 703-807-2100. The electronic version is a digest of News Media Update. To subscribe to the full version, send $50 to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1910, Arlington, VA 22209. Specify whether you would like the email or print version. While this newsletter is available to anyone, it is written for working journalists and others who want to follow emerging developments and trends in media law.

Journalists aware of legal controversies concerning the news media at their papers or in their areas are encouraged to pass the word on to the Reporters Committee. They like to track all cases, reporting on them as needed and even intervening where appropriate. Please call Gregg Leslie at 703-807- 2100.

For information on receiving paper copies of the newsletter, or ordering their quarterly magazine or other publications, please call 703-807-2100. For a complete publications list, send email to rcfp@cais.com with only REQUEST LIST in the subject line.

Miscellaneous

National Press Club

http://town.hall.org/places/npc/home.html

Newslink

http://www.mixcom.com/newslink/

Newslink is a good connection to all known news organizations with a presence on the Internet.

Poynter Center for Media Studies Investigative Reporting Bibliography

This bibliography contains information titles on obtaining and using government records.

http://www.nando.net/prof/poynter/invesbib.html

It was compiled by Joel Campbell, master's candidate, Ohio State University, School of Journalism, April 6, 1995. (On leave of absence from Utah Foundation for Open Government). Email: campbell.307@osu.edu. Telephone: 614889-0479.

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