The directive says DOD will “respond promptly to all requests in a spirit of cooperation” and will “take affirmative steps” to maximize what’s made available.

You can get a sense of the exact key change in this screen grab of the edited document:

Fierce Government earlier this week parsed out a few more of the changes in the directive.

President Obama in an executive order on Jan. 21, 2009 ordered “presumption in favor of disclosure” and asked agencies to “harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.”

The Defense Department fared fairly well in March in a Knight Open Government Survey on the status of agency progress in meeting the Obama administration’s request for FOIA enhancements. DOD had taken two action steps — one of only 13 in 49 agencies studied that achieved two.

In another FOIA development, the “FasterFOIA” bill that’s been up and down in Congress was passed by the Senate on a voice voice earlier this month, and sent to the House, where it had been entangled in the debt ceiling debate, MainJustice.com reported. It notes “even among transparency advocates, the bill has critics who say it amounts to nothing more that Washington’s favorite refrain: Let’s create a commission.”

Below are two documents. The first, the edits DOD made in its FOIA directive. The second, a good background and status report on FOIA released in late July by the Congressional Research Service.

[field name=”foiadoc”]

[field name=”crsstatus”]

The first news I saw on this was early in the day in my Twitter feed — but it wasn’t a tweet of  a news story or someone quoting a news story or government official.

My news came from a tweet based on raw Google data.

In my feed, @BrianBoyer of the Chicago Tribune retweeted fellow Chicagoan (and Googler) @therealfitz with news that Syria had apparently gone dark, based on Google data  — and that was two hours before Google itself officially tweeted about it.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/brianboyer/status/76675449387880448″]

Google’s tweet:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/google/status/76719765481197568″]

The source: Google’s Transparency Report, which shows near- real-time data for use of Google services by country/region  and “visualizes disruptions in the free flow of information, whether it’s a government blocking information or a cable being cut.”

As the screen shot below shows, you can clearly see Syria falling off the Google system map — then coming back about 24 hours later.

SOURCE: Google

Among the notations that Google added to its own chart was a status report from Renesys, a technology company that  monitors  global web traffic.  In a blog post, it had noted at  about 5:35 a.m. Syria time, “approximately two-thirds of all Syrian networks became unreachable from the global Internet. Over the course of roughly half an hour, the routes to 40 of 59 networks were withdrawn from the global routing table.” (Renesys blog RSS feed).

Here is the Renesys chart showing the take-down, and return:

SOURCE: Renesys

Google’s traffic report page also keeps a running log of major downtime, by country, for its services, which is a good historic archive and secondary source for network watchers.  In March, for example, you can find entries for Armenia, Georgia, Libya and Turkey.

You can check not only the overall status for countries, but also by individual Google services (e.g, You Tube, Blogger, GMail).

Google Transparency also includes country-by-country data about government  “inquiries for information about users and requests for Google to take down or censor content.” The data is a little bit stale, only updated at this point thorough June, 2010. UPDATE ON 6/27: Data is now available through the end of 2010. Here is a country-by-country listing.

Know of other tools and resources? Drop me a line.

Not surprisingly, East and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were found to house states with the most filtering. The most extensive filtering of the 47 surveyed nations was found in China, Cuba, Myanmar (Burma), Oman, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen. (See full interactive map below).

Government interference with the Internet has been a very high-profile issue in recent months, particularly with the Arab Spring uprisings and the role of the Internet in the unrest (and government attempts to stop or inhibit the Internet as an enabling tool). The report from UNESCO (United Nations EducationCultural and Scientific Organization) does not cover political filtering alone, however. The studies it cites also measured filtering for social (e.g., pornography), security and other reasons.

“This report does not seek to make such value judgements and instead seeks to expose the extent of the legal and regulatory trends affecting freedom of expression online,” it says. “As such, it should be noted that the meta-analysis . . . measures only the extent of  filtering rather than the significance of the blocked material.”

Mathew Ingram of GigaOm.com has a more thorough take on the full report that’s well worth a read. He concludes:

“More than anything, the picture that UNESCO paints is of global arms race — but instead of guns and tanks, the weapons are computers and hackers and Internet-tracking tools, and increasingly social networking sites as well.”

UNESCO found that a greater “obstacle to expression” than filtering on one continent (Africa) is lack of Internet access at all — and then moves to block sites and access once it has been established in places such as Gambia and Ethiopia.

The map below, created from data extracted from the UNESCO report, shows filtering ratings for countries from 0 to 3, and  depicted by shades of green.

[field name=map]

Larger map.

Below is the chapter from which the map data was extracted. The complete report is available to browse here.

[field name=chapter5]

“The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11” (document embedded below) details the $1.3 trillion spent through this year. This will hit $1.4 trillion if the 2012 budget requests are approved. The current “burn rate,” as they say in business: $6.7 billion a month, just in Afghanistan. The Department of Defense has spent 94% of the money, the report says.

The largest share of spending has been in Iraq (66%) followed by Afghanistan (35%) and for enhanced base security (2%). CRS couldn’t account for about $5 billion.

The report isn’t just a dry recitation of numbers; it offers insights and analysis over time by theater and type of spending; dissection of cost trends for Afghan and Iraq security forces; raises red flags about modeling and presumptions for projected costs this year and next; and raises a series of questions it says Congress might want to consider about funding issues (questions that journalists might want to explore, as well). It also has recommendations on how agencies can improve transparency in spending, estimating and reporting.

It covers spending for “military operations, base security, reconstruction, foreign aid, embassy costs, and veterans’ health care for the three operations initiated since the 9/11 attacks: Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Afghanistan and other counter terror operations; Operation Noble Eagle (ONE), providing enhanced security at military bases; and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)”

Some examples of the data: The first chart below is one I created based on the report. The second is a chart directly from the report.

Congressional Research Service

[field name=”CRSDoc”]

Download the report (PDF)

Or at least are receiving breaking news alerts from key media via Twitter or SMS and checking in on Facebook, not just checking web sites or cable channels now and again.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s chief of staff, Keith Urbahn, is believed to be among the first to break the news on Twitter, with this tweet at 10: 24 p.m. EDT.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/keithurbahn/status/64877790624886784″]

Within minutes came  this tweet from U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Florida.

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/RepDennisRoss/status/64882180811276288″]

Media tweets followed with the news.

Watching the TV news frenzy develop in the ramp-up to Obama’s speech on Sunday night, it was very clear that the key sources who were cluing in reporters were members of Congress who had been briefed by the White House before the speech. Some of them, including Ross and  used social media to go public.

A spokesman for Ross told CNET that Urbahn tweeted based on from “other news and Twitter reports” — not a briefing.

“Dennis was watching news channels and they were talking about how it was Qaddafi-related or possibly something bigger, but no one was sure,” aide Fred Piccolo said. “There were multiple tweets about it and so after seeing a half dozen or more tweets from reputable sources, Dennis tweeted ‘bin Laden is dead. God Bless America.'”

The New York Times nailed it.

“It was another example of how social media and traditional media deal with the same news in different ways and at different speeds. Just as CNN once challenged newspapers and evening newscasts with a constant stream of images from the Persian Gulf war, Twitter and Facebook have become early warning systems for breaking news — albeit not always reliable ones.

Several online surveys the day after the announcement suggested social media was a dominant — if not the dominant — way that Americans learned the news. Given that these are online surveys, it’s probably not surprising that the results skew toward social media.

• Mashable.com: 50% heard from Twitter or Facebook vs. 17% for TV.
• PCMag.com: 38% Twitter, Facebook and web  sites; 24% TV.
• A Huffington Post survey on Facebook had Facebook as the No. 1 source (9,635 votes) and TV at 8,966, followed by phone/text (3,999) and Twitter (2,174).

Not all surveys showed social media as the breaking news champ. A telephone survey of 500 people in the state of Washington had 60% saying TV was their source of the news vs. 17% for Twitter, Facebook and the Web.

A Pew survey showed a clear age gap. About 1 in 5 of those aged 18-34 cited online sources for the first news — double that of the population as a whole.

On a personal note, I was alerted to the story while watching TV (I admit it — Celebrity Apprenctice) with a crawl around 9:30 CT that Obama was going to speak — but no word about what, exactly. Curious, I bopped over to the cable channels and the web, soon began receiving breaking new tweets, and Celebrity Apprentice was eventually preempted by live news (still don’t know who was fired).

It was a record night for Twitter, which maxed out at 5,100 tweets a second at 11 p.m. EDT.

Twitter shared that data via tweets, of course, starting with this one. [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/twitterglobalpr/status/65125115272249344″]

It also shared via Flickr a graphic showing the trajectory of tweets.

The biggest social media star of the news cycle turned out to be a a tech guy in Pakistan who unwittingly live-tweeted the news as it unfolded down the street from his house in Abbottabad.

Here is how it unfolded via Sohaib Athar, “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains”  (in reverse order).

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64780730286358528″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64782523485528065″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64783440226168832″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64792407144796160″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64792874516094978″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64793269908930560″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/han3yy/status/64792521141796864″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64796769418088448″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64797406323154944″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64798882332278785″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64800071971127296″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64800262354763776″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64804984142839808″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64807284689211393″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/terminalxpk/status/64810589498777600″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/terminalxpk/status/64810768109023233″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64812616601714688″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64821273301229568″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ibi2010/status/64825777694318592″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/naqvi/status/64883228590350336″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64887574866575360″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64889534189547520″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64892915167657984″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64894823253016577″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64912440353234944″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64925589223649280″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64927163761168384″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64931568094953472″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64938561320919040″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/64964128116191233″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65002955681697792″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65015803543695360″]

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/ReallyVirtual/status/65085855315931136″]

Under a new system that may be in place within weeks, “The new terror alerts would also be published online using Facebook and Twitter  ‘when appropriate,’ the plan said, but only after federal, state and local government leaders have already been notified,” the AP said today (4/7).

The social media outreach for alerts is not a new concept; Homeland Security itself mentioned it might be included in late January when it announced the end of the color-coded system that has been in place since 2002.

The National Terrorism Advisory System alerts will be based on the nature of the threat: in some cases, alerts will be sent directly to law enforcement or affected areas of the private sector, while in others, alerts will be issued more broadly to the American people through both official and media channels—including a designated DHS webpage (www.dhs.gov/alerts), as well as social media channels including Facebook and via Twitter @NTASAlerts.

DHS said new alerts would include a “sunset” provision for when they’d expire. AP somewhat cleverly described this as similar to expiration dates on milk cartons.

Instead of five color levels (Severe, High, Elevated, Guarded, Low), AP said the new system would have only two — Elevated and Imminent.

“The new advisory system is designed to be easier to understand and more specific, but it’s impossible to know how often the public will receive these warnings. The message will always depend on the threat and the intelligence behind it,” AP reported.

The panic button app would “both wipe out the phone’s address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists,” Reuters reported. A version for Andorid phones  is under way, while a Nokia version “is being considered,” TechCrunch  reported  over the weekend.

iPhone? No plans for a grant-funded app for that right now, TechCrunch says. Which seems to makes sense when you consider the average protester or activist in Cairo or Sana’a probably is carrying something a little less high-end than an iPhone.

“We’re working with a group of technology providers, giving small grants,” Reuters quoted Michael Posner, assistant U.S. secretary of state for human rights and labor, as saying. “We’re now going full speed ahead to get the money out the door.”

The Internet Freedom Programs seek to “foster freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet and other connection technologies” and the mobile app development seems to  fall under a couple of the overall objectives:  “Building the technology capacity of digital activists and civil society in hostile internet environments” and “secure mobile communications.”

The government is “supporting a diverse portfolio of innovation rather than just funding big established technologies,” TechCrunch said. “It’s providing knowledge and connections, not just cash. And they are investing to incubate a new community focused on the intersection of technology and human rights.”

[resources]

[/resources]

Some are skeptical that the State Department can be nimble enough to drive such innovation, Wired reported.

When venture capital firms find a promising technology, they’re “able to turn lots of focus, attention, people, brainpower and resources to taking that to market, and the State Department doesn’t work that way,” Sheldon Himelfarb, a technology expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace,  says.

“It’s really interesting to hear them talk about a venture capital-style approach, but try to unpack that. Apparently, they’re going to give money to lots of organizations in the hope of bringing about breakthrough technologies, but how are they going to bring them to market?”

The dark side of the technologies being deployed? That they might potentially fall into the wrong hands. From Reuters:

Secure on-line tools useful for underground pro-democracy activists might also be useful for drug cartels or terrorist cells, raising new law enforcement and national security issues that need to be resolved, Posner said.

“The fact is al Qaeda probably has their own way of gathering some of these technologies,” Posner said. “The goal here is to protect people who are, in a peaceful manner, working for human rights and working to have a more open debate.”

Divine Harvester Photo (Creative Commons).
http://goo.gl/xfBKf

Like all things government, this effort comes with its very own acronym — SSD (for Shoe Scanning Device, naturally) — and the TSA says “The SSD system will be capable of detecting threat objects concealed in footwear without requiring passengers to remove their footwear as they pass through a security checkpoint.”

The TSA says 98 percent of passengers now put their shoes through the regular scanning device with their other belongings. “The removal of footwear takes time, reduces the efficiency of the checkpoint, creates safety concerns with footwear removal and contributes to passenger dissatisfaction. In addition, scanning footwear through the X-ray machine increases the volume of items that the Transportation Security Officers (TSO) at the X-ray machine must visually screen.”

The TSA began footwear checks 10 years ago after “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid tried to blow up a commerical airliner using explosives in this shoes.

The high-level goals of the SSD program include, obviously, fewer passengers having to take their shoes off, and at least meeting current screening capabilities. No extra TSO personnel should be needed, and the new system should lead to “increasing probability of detection, expanding detection capability to the full threat list. . .and reducing the probability of a false alarm.”

The TSA says it will post final requirements for the scanner on April 25th. It is unclear how long the development, selection and deployment process might take and we can put an end to the stinky stocking-foot shuffle.

Wired.com on Thursday noted past unsuccessful attempts by the TSA for shoe scanners (and a sniffer), including $200,000 prototypes from GE in 2007 that USA Today found required 50% of passengers to still take their shoes off.

Wired also broached the concept of ” ‘security theater’ — implementing measures because they look and feel reassuring rather than providing meaningful security.”

The shoe-removal policy and bans on liquids elicited some grumbling from the public, but nothing like the public outrage at TSA’s solution to future underwear bombers, when naked scanners, rolled out last fall.

“Of course it’s not going to make anyone safer,” [security expert Bruce] Schneier e-mails Danger Room about the shoe scanners, “but it will make the security theater go faster, and that’s a good thing.” We could all stand a little less undressing at airports these days.

But don’t let a marginally faster airport experience lull you into complacency. Shoe-scanning might get you through the security line quicker — assuming the scanner gizmo DHS wants actually works this time. But that doesn’t mean it’ll stop the next airborne terrorist.

The CIA, Department of Energy, Department of Justice and Department of State did not give a final response to a request from the Knight Open Government Survey for an update on FOIA enhancements.

The Department of Defense and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had taken “concrete action” on at least two of the steps sought by the Obama administration. The Department of Homeland Security had taken one step, as had the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and the Director of National Intelligence.
[resources]

• Knight 2011 Open Government Survey (PDF)
• Agency-by-agency table (PDF)
• National Security Archive Release
• Knight 2011 Open Government Survey (Knight Release)
• Obama Executive Order (PDF)
• Emanuel follow-up memo (PDF)
• The Freedom of Information Act (Full Text, PDF)
• Effective FOIA Requesting Guide (PDF) [/resources]

Overall, 49 of the 90 agencies surveyed in the study had made progress in the FOIA changes, compared to just 13 a year ago. 

“At this rate, the president’s first term in office may be over by the time federal agencies do what he asked them to do on his first day in office,” said Eric Newton, of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. (See TABLE below, along with the FULL REPORT).

President Obama in  an executive order on Jan. 21, 2009 ordered “presumption in favor of disclosure” and asked agencies to “harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public.”

Then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel followed up in a memo last March, reminding agencies to “update all FOIA guidance and training materials to include the principles articulated in the President’s Memorandum” and “assess whether you are devoting adequate resources to responding to FOIA requests promptly and cooperatively.”

The 2011 Knight survey extended beyond its own request for information about meeting the White House marching orders; it also analyzed, by department, the number of FOIA requests approved in full or in part, and rejected. (Full details in study document, below).

• Homeland Security released 8% fewer requests in full and 19% in part, while rejecting 46% more than the year before.

• The Department of Defense had more full released and slightly fewer partials, and rejected slightly more.

• The CIA denied 24% more requests but approved 22% more in full, while partially releasing 6% fewer.

The study lauded the the Department of State for its progress.

The Department of State stands as a major outlier in these results.   According to the data, the Department of State released more than 22 times the number of requests, in full, over the previous year.    While the Department did report withholding more in 2011 than it did in 2010, the improvement in releases indicates either that State has substantially improved its FOIA process, or that it is dealing with an anomaly in the types of requests being processed.

The best morsel of snark in the Knight release came from Nate Jones, FOIA coordinator for The National Security Archive, which did the study for Knight.

“Perhaps the Postal Service lost that memo in the mail,” Jones said, referring to the lack of  records available from the U.S. Postal Service, which said it had not even received the most recent memo from the White House.

[field name=”chart”]

[field name=”study”]

The pressure didn’t make a difference. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today (3/4/2011) decided to add another 21 months (PDF of the rule that was filed). State budget woes and the fact that “most states simply cannot fulfill the REAL ID requirements at present” were cited by a DHS spokesman today.

Without extension of the Real ID Act compliance date, residents of 24 states challenging the law and not in compliance with the standards for issuing and verifying drivers’ licenses and ID cards would not be able to board planes after May 11 without other types of ID or visit federal facilities and nuclear plants. Another state — Iowa — on Thursday took a legislative step to join those 24.

[field name=”resources”]Since it passed in 2005, Real ID has become something like Real IDead, as nearly half of the states have have opted out, voted against it or passed resolutions against it because of compliance costs and constitutional and civil rights issues.

Three U.S. House leaders last week sent a letter to Napolitano, urging her not to grant another extension for state compliance. The act’s original deadline was extended a second time three years ago to May 11 of this year. While the Bush administration was supportive of Real ID, the Obama administration has not been.

The letter cited Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari’s arrest (PDF of the affidavit) as an example of what proponents of Real ID were trying to prevent.

“The criminal complaint against Aldawsari revealed several disturbing but similar methods used by the terrorists who perpetrated the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001. The Aldawsari case again demonstrates how important it is for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to fully implement the REAL ID Act regulation,” the letter to Napolitano said. House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.) and James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.), the act’s author, signed the letter.

“Until REAL ID is fully implemented, terrorists will continue to exploit this vulnerability to accomplish heinous purposes,” the letter said.

Many states and immigration, privacy and civil rights advocates aren’t so sure.

A tally by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows 16 states have passed “statutatory opposition” to Real ID compliance, including Arizona, Georgia and Missouri; another eight have approved resolutions against it, including Illinois, Colorado and Nevada. In two others, at least one legislative chamber has passed resolutions against. (See table below).

An Iowa state House committee on Thursday approved a measure to reject Real ID, even though the state has already allocated $2.1 million for compliance, including a new license scanning system, according to DesMoinesRegister.com.

“This is part of a much larger campaign for states standing up for state rights versus the federal government smothering us with federal laws and regulation that they have no right through our constitution to push down onto us,” Rep. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, said on DesMoinesRegister.com.

State action against Real ID since it passed. (Source: NCSL)

CNET’s “Privacy, Inc.” site on Thursday reported those numbers are a low estimate. “The question is: How many states DHS has deemed to be in compliance? At this point the answer is none,” CNET quoted NCSL’s Molly Ramsdell as saying.

CNET in its story noted “there’s no evidence Aldawsari actually began the process of obtaining fraudulent documents or would have succeeded.” It continued:

“The practical difficulties of implementing Real ID in only 10 weeks makes the House Republicans’ letter political posturing, says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“Real ID was an unserious law, passed without a hearing in the House or Senate,” Harper said. “This is an unserious letter, sent without regard for the consequences if the DHS did what they ask.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Adam Fetcher said in a statement today that “DHS remains committed to improving the security of state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards” but several factors contributed to the need for a deadline extension.

Citing “diminished budgets caused by the economic downturn and uncertainty throughout much of the last Congress about the prospects for PASS ID legislation,” Fetcher said “most states simply cannot fulfill the REAL ID requirements at present. DHS will continue to work closely with governors, state legislators, state homeland security advisors, and department of motor vehicle (DMV) leadership to address longstanding concerns with the implementation of REAL ID, including through close engagement with all key stakeholders and the National Governors Association.”

Authors of last week’s letter to Napolitano were not pleased with today’s announcement. “Delaying REAL ID unnecessarily places Americans’ lives at risk and threatens national security,” Rep. Smith of the Judiciary Committee said in a statement.