Institute for Analytic Journalism

"WASHINGTON, April 7, 2005 — Special interests and the lobbyists they employ have reported spending, since 1998, a total of almost $13 billion to influence Congress, the White House and more than 200 federal agencies. They've hired a couple thousand former government officials to influence federal policy on everything from abortion and adoption to taxation and welfare. And they've filed—most of the time—thousands of pages of disclosure forms with the Senate Office of Public Records and the House Clerk's Office...."

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No, all search engines are not the same, plus a little sunshine on state access laws

by JTJ on Thu 07 Apr 2005 12:19 PM MDT

The folks at LII ("Librarian's Index to the Internet") delivered good works again this week.

jux2
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   Test version for this "comparative research tool" designed to answer these questions: how different are the major Internet search engines, and is one any better than the others? The site is a search engine aggregator that simultaneously queries Yahoo, Google, and Ask Jeeves. Results include the rankings from the various search engines and other comparative and statistical
information.
* http://www.jux2.com
* http://www.jux2.com/stats.php

Also:

Marion Brechner Citizen Action Project (CAP)
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   This project's goal is to allow citizens "to better understand public access to local government information in all 50 states."
   Includes ratings that are based on the analysis of statutes, constitutions, and case law. Also includes summaries of "sunshine" laws, and comparisons of state laws. The "I can help you get started" section is not very useful; use the categories to the left instead. From the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
* http://www.citizenaccess.org

Copyright 2005 by Librarians' Index to the Internet, LII.

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Tom Leher, math and the Vatican

by JTJ on Thu 07 Apr 2005 11:08 AM MDT

Remember Tom Leher's "Vatican Rag?" HE, at least, got the numbers right. ("Two, four, six, eight,/Time to transubstantiate!") But we're not putting much faith in the Vatican numbers guys these days, along with all the journos who listen to them. All the reports are that "one million" people viewed the Pope's body the two days it was there for public viewing. The next sentence or so says something along the lines of "18,000 people per hour passed by the Pope's body." Hmmm. Forty-eight hours times 18,000 equals an optimized 864,000 souls. Wouldn't a mere quarter of a million pilgrims have sufficed?

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Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Report

by JTJ on Thu 07 Apr 2005 10:47 AM MDT

The Search Engine Report is yet another valuable tool that serious researchers use as a "heads up" device. It's a monthly newsletter that covers developments in the search engine industry [Industry? Who would have thought it?] and changes to the Search Engine Watch web site, http://searchenginewatch.com/. You can subscribe at http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/

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When you really need a deep, deep cleaning

by Tom Johnson on Thu 07 Apr 2005 02:02 AM MDT

Griff Palmer, of the San Jose Mercury-News, reminded us today of something called a "DOD-compliant wiper." (Yeah, yeah. Hold your jokes.) These software utilities are intended to really clean data sets from hard drives. Why do we care? Read this piece, "Hard Disk Risk," by Simson Garfinkel wherein he does the equivalent of HD dumpster diving.

But here's the related message from Griff Palmer:

"Here's a by no means comprehensive list:

http://buy.cyberscrub.com/csutility/compare.html

I used an evaluation copy of BC Wipe and found it very easy to use. After installation, you can right-click on a file and choose "erase by wiping" from the pop-up menu. It does the ostensibly DOD-compliant wipe on the
file and also on the virtual memory.

If you're serious about the subject, Peter Gutmann's seminal paper on the topic is worthwhile reading, particularly the caveats about achieving secure deletion from journaling filesystems (which NTFS is, I believe) and RAID systems:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html

If you search for "5220.22-m" and "dod 5200.28-std" you can find information on software that claims to meet the standards. The search will also turn up lots of technical info on the standards, themselves."

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