We’ve been saying for a while now that negotiations on ACTA — the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — suffer from a serious transparency deficit. Today, USTR took the helpful step of releasing a summary of the structure of ACTA and the items that may be included in it.

The biggest positive here is the apparent recognition by USTR that greater transparency is needed. Hopefully USTR’s action today today won’t be a one-off thing, but rather will be the start of a new effort to provide information on an ongoing basis. As for the summary itself, it’s still quite high-level. Some of the items — improving international cooperation, fostering expertise towards more effective enforcement — appear perfectly sensible. Most of CDT’s potential concerns relate to Chapter Two, the section on the legal framework. For example, the summary says there is a discussion about what constitutes sufficient damages/remedies. And above all, from CDT’s perspective, there is a section on “Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment,” which raises such issues as “the possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers in deterring copyright and related rights piracy over the Internet.”

These are topics for which the details matter. The summary’s brief (two-sentence) paragraph on enforcement challenges in the digital and Internet environment doesn’t yet enable CDT or any other outside observer to offer much substantive commentary. But the summary also says that no draft proposal has been tabled yet in this area, so there may still be time. The main thing is for USTR to embrace the principle that this terrain is too tricky and potentially affects too many stakeholders to unveil the specifics only at the last minute, when the entire thing has been nailed down and there’s no going back. Let’s hope today’s summary is just a down payment, with more specific information to come as the negotiation process moves forward.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s nominee for HHS Secretary, expressed her commitment to health information technology Tuesday calling it a “linchpin” of health care reform, during a confirmation hearing that buffeted her with questions on the issue.

Health IT was clearly a “hot topic� during Gov. Sebelius’ hearing; that emphasis stood in marked contrast to former Senator Daschle’s confirmation hearing when he was up for the job back in January. Daschle had widely promoted health IT at that time, and the issue was squarely on the table (the economic stimulus legislation was under consideration). Yet, members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Tuesday took on a noticeably heightened interest in health IT during Gov. Sebelius’ hearing, probing her on her ideas for health IT and her understanding of the myriad issues surrounding its adoption and implementation.
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Many Government 2.0 advocates are frustrated that government agencies and employees can’t use the services that citizens use every day- so government can’t interact with citizens where they already engage. GSA announced last week that this may be changing, and agencies can now choose to take advantage of some of these services.

The GSA has been quietly negotiating with popular service providers to create new contracts, otherwise known to the GSA as “no cost agreements,” that allow government to use these services. GSA has so far secured agreements with YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and blip.tv. They’re also working on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and I imagine that these contracts will be the basis of a larger contract. In addition, GSA found that Twitter’s standard terms of service are compatible with government use. Hopefully, GSA will come up with a service-independant agreement that agencies can use to base any terms of service on for third party services, opening the new media ecosystem.
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Last week, the Missouri Information Analysis Center (the Missouri fusion center) retracted a report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement� which said that support for mainstream third party presidential candidates was indicative of involvement in violent militia groups. The Missouri fusion center’s characterization of people engaged in legitimate political activity as potentially dangerous drew public condemnation and raised questions about oversight of fusion center activities.

The report put red flags on those supporting former candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. In addition, the report’s list of indicators for militia involvement included such relatively commonplace activities as discussion of conspiracy theories, bumper stickers depicting U.S. agencies in a bad light, and opposition to controversial government policies like NAFTA and restrictive gun laws. A section of the report entitled “You are the Enemy� encouraged police officers to view individuals with such characteristics as possible violent threats.

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