“During calendar year 2006, the Government made 2,181 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and physical search for foreign intelligence purposes,” according to the latest Justice Department report to Congress on implementation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (pdf). The court approved 2,176 applications, making substantive modifications to 73 of them, and denying one, in part.
The Open Government Act of 2007, which would strengthen several access provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, was favorably reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration by the full Senate. Much of the Committee report on the bill was devoted to a lengthy critique by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who unsuccessfully opposed it, and a letter from the Justice Department, likewise in opposition.
The responsibilities of various Pentagon components in dealing with the threat of weapons of mass destruction are delineated in a new directive. See “Department of Defense (DoD) Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Policy” (pdf), DoD Directive 2060.02, April 19, 2007.
“Sudan: The Crisis in Darfur and Status of the North-South Peace Agreement” (pdf) is the subject of a report from the Congressional Research Service, updated March 27, 2007.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.
Recognizing the power of the national transportation infrastructure expert community and its distributed expertise, ARPA-I took a different route that would instead bring the full collective brainpower to bear around appropriately ambitious ideas.
NIH needs to seriously invest in both the infrastructure and funding to undertake rigorous nutrition clinical trials, so that we can rapidly improve food and make progress on obesity.