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• Thursday, July 10, 2008 10:45 AM

  Accountability Now

  Glenn wrote: I'm increasingly convinced that the effort to battle the growing lawlessness of our political class and the sprawling surveillance state that assaults core Constitutional liberties will come not from the Democratic Party, but from citizen coalitions of this sort. Does yesterday's episode allow any doubt about that?

  No. Might future steps include tracking and publicizing the efforts like the one being made by the group who is opposing the fingerprint registry? Or make other efforts like the one below more widely known? I'm sure many, including me, would be willing to help.

  The House has voted 286-137 to expand the National Archives and Records Administration’s powers on the oversight of federal and presidential record-keeping practices. However, the bill failed to get a veto-proof majority and the White House has said President Bush likely would reject the legislation if it reached his desk.
  
  The Electronic Message Preservation Act would amend both the Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The measure would create mandatory minimum requirements for electronic records management systems to be used by federal agencies and require agencies to preserve electronic communications in an electronic format. The measure passed July 9 would also have NARA set standards for the management of presidential records, including specific standards for managing electronic messages.
  
  The bill's backers say it represents necessary reforms to records laws because of the increasing use of electronic forms of communication in government. They also cite what they say have been unsatisfactory record-keeping practices by the Bush administration which allegedly resulted in the loss of White House e-mail messages....
  
  The Senate is not considering a similar bill.
  
  http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153093-1.html

  Here's the bill that passed the House yesterday: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR5811:/

  This particular bill doesn't have a chance of going anywhere now, but very few even knew about it.

  —EJ Read EJ's other letters
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