Hours after President Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday night, 49 Members’ of the House of Representatives found their Congressional websites defamed by hackers. According to a joint letter by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), “this is the second time in a year websites hosted and supported by this vendor have been compromised.”
Pelosi, Boehner Demand Additional Web Safeguards After Thursday’s Cyber-Attack
IOWA – A threat to shift government legal notices from newspapers to websites appears to have been stalled at the legislative level. Today, state Senator Staci Appel, responsible for managing a state government reorganization and efficiency bill declared “the publication (provision) is out.”
Public Notice Shift Hits Legislative Snag
The bill passed out of subcommittee on Wednesday and subsequently several editorials were published highlighting the value of public notice in newspapers including:
Public Notices Are Vital To Healthy Democracy, 1/16/2010
Accountability For Tax Dollars, 1/17/2010
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s facebook account was hacked into by spammers on New Years Eve.
PENNSYLVANIA – Under the open records law, taxpayer-funded contracts are supposed to be accessible on the state Treasury website within a matter of days. However, the electronic posting of information has seen lengthy delays.
FLORIDA – Threats to permit governments to post legal notices online have been renewed for the 2010 legislative session. And it appears the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Dean is more than happy to attack newspapers in the process:
“But he conceded the legislation could hurt Florida newspapers, including his hometown Chronicle.
‘If it does, it is what it is,’ Dean said. ‘The motivation for this is to save money. But if it trims their feathers a bit, fine.’”
When it’s on the Internet, it is invisible.
This breaking news from Huffington Post in response to the White House’s breaking news on the “new” Treasury Department report that turns out to have been available since 1995 is a perfect testament to the obscurity of the Internet.
Treasury Touts Long-Available Derivatives Report As A Part Of Its ‘New’ Open Government Plan
So the report has been there all along. Who knew? Obviously the White House was counting on the strong likelihood that few Americans had been to http://www.occ.treas.gov/deriv/deriv.htm to read this report.
PENNSYLVANIA – Ordinary citizens brought a lawsuit against their Township for failure to publish public notice of a hearing concerning zoning of their land. The Municipalities Planning Code requires, among other things, notice of a public hearing once a week for two successive weeks. Because of the failure to follow the Code, they argue that the ordinance and subsequent amendments should be struck down.