Sovereignty and Liberty in the Internet Era

Keller, Perry. "Sovereignty and Liberty in the Internet Era." In Rick Rawlings, Peter Leyland and Alison Young, Eds. Sovereignty in Focus: Domestic, European and Global Perspectives, forthcoming 2013. 

From the report: "The global revolution in communications technologies and services is fracturing the historic relationship between the media and the state. That relationship, born in the early print era, was first framed by the territorial authority of sovereigns and later found new legitimacy in the rise of popular sovereignty, thus becoming a definitive feature of the modern liberal democratic state. For centuries, states have sought to impose their territorial boundaries on the flow of information and ideas. This however has required ever increasing inventiveness and cost as new communications technologies have both empowered and threatened the security, authority and legitimacy of the state. In the internet era, the state’s capacity to control its public information sphere is now being tested to exhaustion." Read more

CHIME Presses ONC on Patient Safety

Monegain, Bernie. "CHIME Presses ONC on Patient Safety." Healthcare IT News, February 6, 2013. 

From the article: "The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is urging the federal government to ensure that patients are matched correctly to their health information.

CHIME said it agreed with ONC that, “the accurate and efficient matching of patients to their health information is critical to ensuring patient safety,” and it urged a more focused effort to address patient data matching, saying that, “despite years of development, no clear strategy has emerged to accurately and consistently match patient data.” Read more

What the Intelligence Community Is Doing With Big Data

Warner, Bernhard. "What the Intelligence Community Is Doing With Big Data." Bloomberg Business Week, February 5, 2013. 

From the article: "It’s trying. Armed with billions of tweets, Google (GOOG) searches, Facebook (FB) posts, and other publicly available social-media and online data, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring research projects involving 14 universities in the United States, Europe, and Israel with the goal of using advanced analytics to predict significant societal events." Read more

Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected

Greenhouse, Steven. "Even if It Enrages Your Boss, Social Net Speech Is Protected." The Nee York Times, January 21, 2013.

From the article: "As Facebook and Twitter become as central to workplace conversation as the company cafeteria, federal regulators are ordering employers to scale back policies that limit what workers can say online.

Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense.

But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal. The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook." Read more

Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line

Sternstein, Aliya. "Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line." Nextgov, January 16, 2013. 

From the article: "The Transportation Security Administration is considering screening passengers based on behavioral profiles generated by commercial data brokers, according to new contracting notices.
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.  

For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more

Can Twitter Predict the Future? Pentagon Says Maybe

Lim, Dawn. "Can Twitter Predict the Future? Pentagon Says Maybe." Mashable, January 14, 2013. 

From the article: "The Defense Department wants new computer tools to analyze mounds of unstructured text, blogs and tweets as part of a coordinated push to help military analysts predict the future and make decisions faster.

The search is part of the Office of Naval Research's "Data to Decisions" program, a series of three-to-10-year initiatives that will address the volume of information that threatens to overwhelm planners in the digital age, contract databases indicate. The goal is to build an open source system that can unite various tools that collect, manage and draw relationships between data sets." Read more

Emotional Arousal Key to Information Sharing, Study Says

Morgan, Mandy. " Emotional Arousal Key to Information Sharing, Study Says." Deseret News, January 9, 2013. 

From the article: "Fueled by the ever-growing power of the Internet and countless websites being started up every day, today's world revolves around information sharing and receiving. And a study conducted by Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania, shows that both high physical and emotional arousal lead to the sharing of more information, giving more insight as to why people share what they do.

A two-part study, "Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information" was conducted with more than 100 participants by The Wharton School at the university, to look at the role emotional and physical arousal plays in information sharing, specifically news, both personal and public." Read more

See also

Berger, Jonah. "Arousal Increases Social Transmission of Information." Psychological Science 22 (2011): 891-893.

Facebook and Google May be Forced to Ask Permission to Use Personal Data

"Facebook and Google May be Forced to Ask Permission to Use Personal Data." The Guardian, January 9, 2013. 

From the article: "Internet companies such as Facebook and Google may have to get further permission to use information if European Union lawmakers give users more control over their personal data.

EU lawmakers want to limit companies' ability to use and sell data – such as internet browsing habits – to advertising companies, especially when people are unaware their data is being used in such a way." Read more

EU Open Data Portal Now In Public Beta

"EU Open Data Portal Now In Public Beta." European Public Sector Information Platform, December 21, 2012.

The European Commission has launched its open data portal, announced last year December, in public beta. While the site is already on-line, the EC has requested to not widely circulate the URL yet. In January 2013 the beta launch will be more widely announced.

The EC data portal, at launch provides access to 5800+ data sets, mostly coming from Eurostat. With this portal the EC intends to lead by example in opening up public sector information pro-actively for free re-use in Europe, as part of the European open data strategy.

The EC portal is for now aimed at publishing the EC's own data, but is at the same time a first step towards a pan-European data portal that will provide access to all underlying national (and regional, local) data portals across the 27 Member States." Read more 

The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework

Elsea, Jennifer K. "The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework." Congressional Research Service, December 17, 2012.

From the report: "This report provides an overview of the relationship between executive and legislative authority over national security information, and summarizes the current laws that form the legal framework protecting classified information, including current executive orders and some agency regulations pertaining to the handling of unauthorized disclosures of classified information by government officers and employees. The report also summarizes criminal laws that pertain specifically to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, as well as civil and administrative penalties. Finally, the report describes some recent developments in executive branch security policies and legislation currently before Congress (S. 3454)." Read more

White House Releases New National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding

Paul, Kshemendra. "White House Releases New National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding." Information Sharing Environment, December 19, 2012. 

From the article: "In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, our government not only needed to improve its counterterrorism intelligence, but also share information better, faster, and smarter. We found that our national security relies on our ability to share the right information, with the right people, at the right time – and we must “enlist all of our intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security capabilities,” as the National Security Strategy states.

On December 19, the President signed the National Strategy for Information Sharingand Safeguarding (NSISS). This new National Strategy is part of a policy continuum that includes Section 1016 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the 2007 National Strategy for Information Sharing, Executive Orders 13587 and 13388, the ISE Presidential Guidelines, and the National Security Strategy." Read more

U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens

Angwin, Julia. "U.S. Terrorism Agency to Tap a Vast Database of Citizens." The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2012. 

From the article: "The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be." Read more

Trust And Information Sharing Key In Tight Fiscal Times

Kenyon, Henry. "Trust And Information Sharing Key In Tight Fiscal Times." AOL Government, November 29, 2012. 

From the article: "Secure information sharing is another important and complex issue for federal agencies, he said. There is often a tension between local islands of network use and the enterprise, Wennergren said. He describes these issues as a "polarity" about information sharing between the different professional communities in an organization. Instead of viewing the situation as one about information security, he prefers to call it a "secure relationship."

The challenge is that many government agencies polarize themselves because they see many technology issues as a single problem, rather than a conflict between different mission needs within the organization, he said." Read more

Patients Want Granular Privacy Control Over Health Information in Electronic Medical Records

Caine, Kelly and Rima Hanania. "Patients Want Granular Privacy Control Over Health Information in Electronic Medical Records." Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, November 26, 2012. 

From the report: "Patients expressed sharing preferences consistent with a desire for granular privacy control over which health information should be shared with whom and expressed differences in sharing preferences for sensitive versus less-sensitive EMR data. The pattern of results may be used by designers to generate privacy-preserving EMR systems including interfaces for patients to express privacy and sharing preferences." Read more 

Who Are the Doctors Most Trusted by Doctors? Big Data Can Tell You.

Heussner, Ki Mae. "Who Are the Doctors Most Trusted by Doctors? Big Data Can Tell You." The Washington Post, November 19, 2012.

From the article: "By accessing information in government databases through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, healthcare innovators are now able to share connections between doctors that are based on millions of physician referrals — a valuable indicator of who doctors hold in esteem." Read more

How ‘Social Intelligence’ Can Guide Decisions

Harrysson, Martin, Metayer, Estelle and Hugo Sarrazin. "How ‘Social Intelligence’ Can Guide Decisions." McKinsey Quarterly, November 2012. 

From the article: "Social media should help companies overcome some limits of old-school intelligence gathering, which typically involves collecting information from a range of public and propriety sources, distilling insights using time-tested analytic methods, and creating reports for internal company “clients” often “siloed” by function or business unit.

Today, many people who have expert knowledge and shape perceptions about markets are freely exchanging data and viewpoints through social platforms. By identifying and engaging these players, employing potent Web-focused analytics to draw strategic meaning from social-media data, and channeling this information to people within the organization who need and want it, companies can develop a “social intelligence” that is forward looking, global in scope, and capable of playing out in real time." Read more

Chicago Designing Predictive Software Platform to Identify Crime Patterns

Schectman, Joel. "Chicago Designing Predictive Software Platform to Identify Crime Patterns." The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2012. 

From the article: "Chicago is designing an analytic software system to improve city services and fight crime.

The system will allow policymakers to analyze disparate pieces of information from across agencies, including crime statistics, building and business permits, and transcripts from resident complaints, Chicago’s chief data officer, Brett Goldstein, told CIO Journal. Goldstein hopes the system, which will be available to all agencies, will help officials parse out patterns for violent crime and allow public workers to provide better services by understanding how different factors affect city life." Read more

Mobile Health Starting to Come of Age

Heussner, Ki Mae. "Mobile Health Starting to Come of Age." Washington Post, November 9, 2012.

From the article: "Mobile health is starting to come of age.  In 2010, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that just 17 percent of cell phone owners used their devices to look up health information. 

But in a study released Thursday, the organization said that figure has climbed to 31 percent.

Mobile health is unsurprisingly even more popular among smartphone users, with 52 percent saying they have consulted their gadgets with medical questions." Read more

See alsoFox, Susannah, and Maeve Duggan. Mobile Health 2012. Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, November 8, 2012.

Despite Obama Win, Health IT Efforts Still Face Heavy Scrutiny

Bowman, Dan. "Despite Obama Win, Health IT Efforts Still Face Heavy Scrutiny." FierceHealthIT, November 7, 2012. 

From the article: "The re-election of President Obama to the White House--and Republicans retaining control of the House and Democrats retaining control of the Senate--almost assuredly means the continuation of healthcare IT efforts currently underway such as the Meaningful Use incentive program.

But those efforts will likely face increased oversight and scrutiny…" Read more

Social Media and Voting

Rainie, Lee. "Social Media and Voting." Pew Resarch Center’s Internet & American Life Project, November 6, 2012.

From the report: "On Election Day 2012, the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds social media to be a significant part of the process by which voters are talking about their ballot selections, especially younger voters:

• 22% of registered voters have let others know how they voted on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter.

Social media platforms have also become a notable venue for people to try to convince their friends to vote.

• 30% of registered voters have been encouraged to vote for Democrat Barack Obama or Republican Mitt Romney by family and friends via posts on social media such as Facebook or Twitter.
• 20% of registered voters have encouraged others to vote by posting on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter." Read more