NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE (Vol. 13, #3; January 27, 2007)
2. NATIONAL ARCHIVES OVERSIGHT SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRS NAMED
3. FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RULES AGAINST EASING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
4. SMITHSONIAN ANNOUNCES DEAL TO MAKE DIGITAL IMAGES AVAILABLE COMMERCIALLY
5. NEH ANNOUNCES GRANT RECIPIENTS
6. CORRECTION: NEH “LANDMARKS OF AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE” PROGRAM
7. ARTICLE OF INTEREST: “Group Attempting to Simplify Byzantine Terror-Alert System” January 24, 2007, “Washington Post"
1. PUBLIC INTEREST DECLASSIFICATION BOARD (PIDB) MEETS
On January 19, 2007, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) met to discuss declassification program issues. The meeting included presentations from representatives of the public with significant experience in declassification matters and a wide-ranging discussion of potential modifications to current declassification processes and policies. The PIDB was created by statute in 2000, to serve as an advisory board on declassification priorities and policies. However, it is only within the last year that the Bush administration made appointments to the board and it received its first appropriation.
Chairman L. Britt Snider presided and board members David E. Skaggs, Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, and Admiral William O. Studeman, USN (Ret.) were in attendance. Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein and Bill Leonard, Director of NARA’s Information Security and Oversight Office were also present. In his opening comments, Dr. Weinstein noted the declassification challenges facing NARA, especially in light of the passage of the December 31, 2006, deadline requiring federal agencies to declassify documents in their holdings more than 25 years old. Weinstein reviewed the financial challenges that the Archives was facing across the board.
In his opening comments, Chairman Snider stated that the PIDB had received a request from the Senate Intelligence Committee last fall to review the classification of prewar Iraq intelligence. Snider stated that the PIDB was prohibited from taking action without prior approval of the White House. However, despite requests to the Bush administration to move forward, the board had received no response from the White House. Snider announced that the board was going to proceed unless told not to do so by the administration.
During the public comment period, the panel heard comments and suggestions from Mark Zaid (litigator and executive director of the James Madison Project), Meredith Fuchs (General Counsel to the National Security Archive), and Scott Armstrong (executive director of the Information Trust).
In his testimony, Zaid expressed frustration with the FOIA process. He stated that the current 20 day deadline for a federal agency to respond to a FOIA request was unrealistic and suggested expanding the response time to 120 days. Zaid added that agencies, such as the CIA, are often disingenuous when dealing with their backlog of requests by processing the oldest ones first. In many cases the need for the documents is no longer relevant to the person who requested them and the CIA does not have to release the materials. Zaid said that a large part of his work involved former security agency employees who are trying to publish books or articles. He noted his frustration with the pre-publication process since the documents in question fall into a gray area between classified and declassified. Zaid also suggested that the board find a better way of educating federal judges about classification and declassification procedures. He alleged that judges, because they feel they lack expertise in the intelligence arena, tend to err on the side of keeping documents classified.
Ms. Fuchs began her testimony by calling the current declassification system, “subjective, expensive, and sometimes ridiculous," agreeing that the current system favors over-classification. She suggested one way to counter this predisposition would be to create a non-partisan, non-governmental board of private citizens to represent the interest of professional researchers, historians, and the general public in the declassification process. Such a board could serve as a conduit for public input and oversight. Fuchs cited precedents for such boards as those authorized by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 or the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
Another possibility would be to establish a statutory independent review boards at every agency with declassification authority. Such boards have had great success pushing out important information that no longer requires classification. She cited the State Department's Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation as an example.
Armstrong was candid and blunt in his assessment of the current declassification system, stating that he had given up on it. He alleged that selective declassification has become a tool for shaping and controlling public debate. He noted in recent years there has been an erosion of public confidence in the declassification process. He stated that if the system were not changed, we would likely see something akin to the Church Committee in the U.S. Senate in the mid-1970s that led to an investigation of intelligence practices and major reforms.
2. NATIONAL ARCHIVES OVERSIGHT SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRS NAMED
As the new 110th Congress continues to get organized, key subcommittee chairs of interest to the historical and archival communities have recently been named. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has named Representative William Lacy Clay (D-MO) to chair the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives. In the Senate, Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) has been named chair of Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Management, Government Information and International Security, which has oversight over the National Archives.
3. FEDERAL APPEALS COURT RULES AGAINST EASING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, has ruled against two groups who sought to ease copyright restrictions on old books and films and academic articles to make them more freely available to the public. The three-judge panel said the case (Kahle v. Gonzales) was essentially an attempt to overturn an earlier lawsuit (Eldred v. Ashcroft) that had challenged the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (PL105-298). The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 upheld the act.
Brewster Kahle and Internet Archive, and Prelinger Associates were seeking to offer free access to digitized audio, books, films, academic articles, and websites for free on the internet. The plaintiffs argued that release into the public domain of so-called “orphan works,” those for which ownership is difficult or impossible to ascertain, have been stymied by both the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 (PL 102-307) and the Sonny Bono Act. They argued that these laws transformed copyright law from an “opt-in” system, where copyright holders had to affirmatively renew copyrights, into an “opt-out” system where copyrights are automatically extended.
The plaintiffs expect to appeal the ruling to the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and perhaps to the U.S. Supreme Court if they do not prevail there.
A copy of the court’s decision can be found at: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov
4. SMITHSONIAN ANNOUNCES DEAL TO MAKE DIGITAL IMAGES AVAILABLE COMMERCIALLY
The Smithsonian Institution and Corbis, a digital media provider, have announced a deal to provide digital images from the Smithsonian’s collections for editorial and commercial use at www.corbis.com . The licensing agreement with Corbis will provide hundreds of images from Smithsonian museums, such as historical photographs, images of cultural objects, paintings, prints, sculpture, textiles, scientific instruments, natural specimens, and aircraft and space vehicles. Images will be drawn from Smithsonian museums, including the National Air and Space Museum, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Freer Gallery of Art, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
The first of the Smithsonian images have been added to Corbis’ image database with plans to increase the numbers significantly by the end of the year. Users must obtain a license to utilize these images for a fee. Accompanying the images are museum-approved photo credits, which identify the image, its relevance to the museum collection and include historical facts.
Smithsonian spokeswoman Samia Elia was quoted in the “Washington Post” as saying there is no guaranteed annual revenue under the deal. According to Elia, Corbis did not provide any money up front, and fees collected would be designated for the museum's educational programs. The Smithsonian declined to make any additional financial details public.
5. NEH ANNOUNCES GRANT RECIPIENTS
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recently announced that 288 successful applicants will receive a total of $10.7 million in grants or offers of matching funds for nine faculty initiatives in the humanities at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges and Universities; 161 fellowships and faculty research awards to individual scholars; and 118 preservation and access grants for research, education and training, or assistance to help cultural institutions protect and preserve their humanities collections. Of these NEH grants, 58 are designated as “We the People” projects that advance the study, teaching, and understanding of American history and culture. A complete list of the recipients, including a state-by-state breakdown, is available at http://www.neh.gov/news/archive/20070116.html
6. CORRECTION: NEH “LANDMARKS OF AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE” PROGRAM
In last week’s edition we reported that the National Endowment for the Humanities was accepting applications for its “Landmarks of American History and Culture" workshops to be held in the summer of 2007. Under the program, educators from across the United States travel to historic landmarks for intensive, week-long workshops to deepen their knowledge-and their students' knowledge-of the nation's history in places where it was made. Twenty-four "Landmarks of American History and Culture" workshops will be held in the summer of 2007. Among the Landmarks workshops, 19 have been developed for K-12 teachers and an additional five have been designed for community college faculty. The initiative is funded under the Endowment’s “We the People” program.
We need to make two corrections to that story.
First we reported that the application deadline for K-12 teachers is March 1, 2007, and March 15, 2007, for community college faculty. The deadline for BOTH K-12 teachers and community college faculty is March 15, 2007.
Second, the headline and lead were misleading. Applications ARE NOT being accepted directly by the NEH. Rather, those interested in applying need to do so directly to the program directors for each individual workshop. A list of the locations, application procedures, and program directors for the workshops is available at the NEH website. K-12 teachers should go to http://www.neh.gov/projects/landmarks-school.html and community college faculty should go to http://www.neh.gov
We apologize for any inconvenience.
7. ARTICLE OF INTEREST:
“Group Attempting to Simplify Byzantine Terror-Alert System” January 24, 2007, “Washington Post”-–The article details the attempt by the Bush administration to untangle a web of executive branch documents that are categorized as “sensitive but unclassified” (SBUs). According to the article there are now 108 different “markers” or ways that documents that are unclassified but not meant for public access can be handled, distributed or stored.