Me recomiendan la siguiente bibliografia sobre Secreto y Acceso a la Informacion (FOIA NET)

Tom Susman

Sissela Bok, Secrets: on the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: the American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

Mary Graham, Democracy by Disclosure: the Rise of Technopopulism (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2002).

Ann Florini, ed., The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

Fabrizio Scrollini

Peter Hennessy, The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Allen Lane, 2002).

Colin Darch

Heather Brooke, The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy (London: Heinemann, 2010)

Ben Worthy

Donald C. Rowat, ed., Administrative Secrecy in Developed Countries, (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1979)

David Vincent, The Culture of Secrecy: Britain, 1832-1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Ken G. Robertson, Public Secrets: a Study in the Development of Government Secrecy (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).

David Leigh, The Frontiers of Secrecy: Closed Government in Britain (London: Aletheia Books, 1982).Baxter, John D. 1990. State Secrecy, Privacy and Information. Harvester: London.

Bunyan, Tony. 1999. Secrecy and Openness in the European Union. Kogan Page: London. Also avaialble at the link below http://www.statewatch.org/secret/freeinfo/index.html

Charles Davis

Charles N. Davis and Sigman L. Splichal, Access Denied: Freedom of Information in the Information Age (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 2000).

Nabiha Syed

Alasdair S Roberts, Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Tom McClean

Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

Dennis F. Thompson, “Democratic Secrecy,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 2 (July 1999): 181-193

Michel Crozier and Erhard Friedberg, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2009).

Itzhak Galnoor, “Government Secrecy: Exchanges, Intermediaries, and Middlemen,” Public Administration Review 35, no. 1 (January 1, 1975): 32-42.

Georg Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies,” American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 4 (January 1906): 441-498. Weber, Max (1978 [1922]).

Max Weber, Economy and Society: an Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).

Kindle y las bibliotecas

De ALT1040 (Gracias)

En esta ocasión han firmado un acuerdo con 11.000 bibliotecas de Estados Unidos para poner en marcha un servicio de préstamos de libros electrónicos a través del Kindle, es decir, emular el acto natural de retirar un libro de una biblioteca pública durante quince días pero trasladado al mundo del e-book.

La idea es que el usuario se conecte a la web de su biblioteca pública y si ésta utiliza los servicios de OverDrive (una plataforma, precisamente, de E-Books), conectarse a Amazon para descargarse el libro en el Kindle durante el tiempo de préstamo (que puede ser renovable y que, si el usuario lo desea, puede desembocar en la compra del libro manteniendo todas las anotaciones realizadas). Es decir que, gracias a este nuevo servicio, los usuarios podrán retirar libros sin tener que pisar la biblioteca y leerlos en su Kindle. Creo que este acuerdo de Amazon es un importante paso para el libro electrónico porque pone de manifiesto el hecho de que el libro es algo más que el papel, puesto que lo que importa realmente son los contenidos.

Amazon, precisamente, no es una novata en estos asuntos y lleva ya tiempo sorprendiéndonos con movimientos similares que reafirman este hecho. La pasada Navidad, Amazon comenzó a permitir (en Estados Unidos) que los usuarios pudiesen prestarse libros electrónicos, algo de lo más natural cuando el libro está impreso pero que, cuando hablamos de un libro electrónico, parece rozar (para algunos puristas) el sacrilegio y la piratería. Comprar un libro es, al fin y al cabo, adquirir derechos de acceso a unos contenidos, el formato más que un impedimento debería ser una ventaja a explotar y eso es lo que Amazon está haciendo.



De hecho, creo que lo ha demostrado muy bien con los libros de texto. Salvo libros de referencia, algunos libros de texto acaban en un desván o en una estantería de la que apenas se mueven pero, en su tiempo, tuvimos que adquirirlos para cursar nuestros estudios. Creo que todos hemos tenido libros que, tras aprobar la asignatura, no hemos vuelto a tocar y, sin embargo, tuvimos que pagarlos para tenerlos “de por vida”. El libro electrónico, realmente, no se degrada ni se estropea (únicamente puede quedarse desfasado) y aquí Amazon vio otra línea de negocio al alquilar los libros de texto en formato electrónico, de modo que se adquieren derechos de acceso durante la vigencia del préstamo y, luego, o bien renovamos o dejamos de tener acceso al libro pero, mientras dure, podemos usarlo a un precio mucho más bajo que comprarlo.

Teatro Recomendado (reconozco mi falta de neutralidad en este caso)

MAS INFORMACION ACA

Pena de Muerte y Discriminación 4. Penado por error o racismo?

The New York Times


September 20, 2011
Georgia Pardons Board Denies Clemency for Death Row Inmate
By KIM SEVERSON
ATLANTA — Barring an unimaginable legal reversal, Troy Davis will be executed by lethal injection at a Georgia prison on Wednesday.

In the days that follow, Amnesty International and other groups that fight the death penalty will move on to other cases.

The family of Mark MacPhail, the Savannah police officer who was trying to break up a fight in a fast-food parking lot when Mr. Davis shot him in the face and the heart, will look for closure after 22 years of courtrooms, news coverage and three heart-ripping stays of execution.

Legal experts will debate whether a case built on a tiny amount of physical evidence and shifting witness testimony was enough to warrant execution, and whether death penalty politics in the United States have reached a tipping point.

But here, in this capital city of the Deep South, the case will continue to resonate as a barometer of racism in this country, many said.

Throughout Tuesday and into the evening, when a few hundred people gathered at the Capitol downtown, people spoke again and again of how Mr. Davis was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted and now, in their minds, about to be wrongly executed by a legal system stacked against minorities.

“What am I supposed to tell my son? That we still live in a Jim Crow society?” said Mary Ross, 37, who attended a somber news conference inside Ebenezer Baptist Church in the neighborhood where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached.

There, members of the N.A.A.C.P. and Amnesty International and the church pastor outlined what are clearly Hail Mary efforts to stop the execution.

They pleaded publicly to the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Parole, which earlier in the day denied Mr. Davis’s clemency after a daylong hearing Monday.

In a brief statement, the five-member board, which is appointed by the governor, said that its members “have not taken their responsibility lightly and certainly understand the emotions attached to a death penalty case.”

Mr. Davis’s supporters were reaching out to the prosecutor in the original case, asking that he persuade the original judge to rescind the death order. Benjamin Jealous, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who planned to visit Mr. Davis on Wednesday, was trying to ask President Obama for a reprieve.

The Innocence Project, which has had a hand in the exoneration of 17 death-row inmates through the use of DNA testing, sent a letter to the Chatham County district attorney, Larry Chisolm, urging him to withdraw the execution warrant against Mr. Davis, although there is no DNA evidence at issue in the case.

Regardless of whether those hope-against-hope efforts work, the N.A.A.C.P. and others said they would call for the Department of Justice to investigate the case as a civil rights violation, asking that the original police investigation and the legal process that led to Mr. Davis’s conviction be examined.

“It harkens back to some ugly days in the history of this state,” said the Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church, who visited Mr. Davis on Monday.

But for the family of the slain officer, and countless others who believe that two decades worth of legal appeals and Supreme Court intervention is more than enough to ensure justice, it is not an issue of race but of law.

Calling Mr. Davis a victim is ludicrous, said Mr. MacPhail’s widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris.

“We have lived this for 22 years,” she said Monday. “We are victims."

She added, “We have laws in this land so that there is not chaos. We are not killing Troy because we want to.”

Her daughter, Madison, 24, along with her brother, Mark, 22, will be at the execution Wednesday. The officer’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, will not. But she welcomes it, saying: “I’m not for blood — I’m for justice. We have been through hell, my family.”

Mr. Davis’s family, who had gathered in an Atlanta hotel to await the decision, learned that he would be put to death from members of his legal team and Amnesty International. They immediately went to the state prison in Jackson, about an hour’s drive south of Atlanta, to be with him.

Mr. Davis, who has refused a last meal, was in good spirits and prayerful, said Wende Gozan Brown, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, who visited Mr. Davis on Tuesday.

He told her that his death was for all the Troy Davises who came before and after him.

“I will not stop fighting until I’ve taken my last breath,” he said in a conversation relayed by Ms. Brown. “Georgia is prepared to snuff out the life of an innocent man.”

The case has been a slow and convoluted exercise in legal maneuvering and death penalty politics.

This is the fourth time Mr. Davis has faced the death penalty. The state parole board granted him a stay in 2007 as he was preparing for his final hours, saying the execution should not proceed unless its members “are convinced that there is no doubt as to the guilt of the accused.” The board has since added three new members.

In 2008, his execution was about 90 minutes away when the Supreme Court stepped in. Although the court kept Mr. Davis from execution, it later declined to hear the case.

In the week before his third execution date, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued a stay to consider his lawyer’s arguments that new testimony that could prove his innocence had not been considered.

The appeals court denied the claim but allowed time for Mr. Davis to take his argument directly to the Supreme Court, which ordered a federal court to once again examine new testimony.

But in June, a federal district judge in Savannah said Mr. Davis’s legal team had failed to demonstrate his innocence, setting the stage for the new date.

This time around, the case catapulted into the national consciousness with record numbers of petitions — more than 630,000 — delivered to the board to stay the execution, and a list of people asking for clemency included former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 51 members of Congress, entertainment figures like Cee Lo Green and even some death penalty supporters, including William S. Sessions, a former F.B.I. director.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting.

Pena de Muerte y Discriminación 3. Condenado por error?

The New York Times


September 20, 2011
A Grievous Wrong
Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for the 1989 killing of a police officer in Savannah, Ga. The Georgia pardon and parole board’s refusal to grant him clemency is appalling in light of developments after his conviction: reports about police misconduct, the recantation of testimony by a string of eyewitnesses and reports from other witnesses that another person had confessed to the crime.

This case has attracted worldwide attention, but it is, in essence, no different from other capital cases. Across the country, the legal process for the death penalty has shown itself to be discriminatory, unjust and incapable of being fixed. Just last week, the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Duane Buck, an African-American, hours before he was to die in Texas because a psychologist testified during his sentencing that Mr. Buck’s race increased the chances of future dangerousness. Case after case adds to the many reasons why the death penalty must be abolished.

The grievous errors in the Davis case were numerous, and many arose out of eyewitness identification. The Savannah police contaminated the memories of four witnesses by re-enacting the crime with them present so that their individual perceptions were turned into a group one. The police showed some of the witnesses Mr. Davis’s photograph even before the lineup. His lineup picture was set apart by a different background. The lineup was also administered by a police officer involved in the investigation, increasing the potential for influencing the witnesses.

In the decades since the Davis trial, science-based research has shown how unreliable and easily manipulated witness identification can be. Studies of the hundreds of felony cases overturned because of DNA evidence have found that misidentifications accounted for between 75 percent and 85 percent of the wrongful convictions. The Davis case offers egregious examples of this kind of error.

Under proper practices, no one should know who the suspect is, including the officer administering a lineup. Each witness should view the lineup separately, and the witnesses should not confer about the crime. A new study has found that even presenting photos sequentially (one by one) to witnesses reduced misidentifications — from 18 percent to 12 percent of the time — compared with lineups where photos were presented all at once, as in this case.

Seven of nine witnesses against Mr. Davis recanted after trial. Six said the police threatened them if they did not identify Mr. Davis. The man who first told the police that Mr. Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime. There are other reasons to doubt Mr. Davis’s guilt: There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime introduced at trial, and new ballistics evidence broke the link between him and a previous shooting that provided the motive for his conviction.

More than 630,000 letters pleading for a stay of execution were delivered to the Georgia board last week. Those asking for clemency included President Jimmy Carter, 51 members of Congress and death penalty supporters, such as William Sessions, a former F.B.I. director. The board’s failure to commute Mr. Davis’s death sentence to life without parole was a tragic miscarriage of justice.

Pena de Muerte y Discriminacion 2

Reporta la ACLU:

Supreme Court Stays Duane Buck Execution

Great news! Last night, the Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay to Duane Buck, who was hours away from his scheduled execution in Texas. We now await a decision from the court as to whether it will review his case, and the claims that race played an improper role in his death sentence.

We think it's pretty clear that it did. The ACLU's Brian Stull blogged earlier this month about this case:

In Texas, imposing the death penalty in capital cases comes down to one question: is the defendant going to be a "future danger" if he or she is not executed? Mr. Buck was sentenced to die based on testimony by Dr. Walter Quijano, who told jurors that Mr. Buck was more likely to pose a future danger to society because he is black. Dr. Quijano's testimony came in 1997, more than 20 years after Texas promised the Supreme Court that "no correlation exists between the race/ethnic background of a defendant and the probability that he will be either convicted of capital murder or given the death penalty."
Buck's attorney, Kate Black of the Texas Defender Service, said in a statement last night:
"We are relieved that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the obvious injustice of allowing a defendant's race to factor into sentencing decisions and granted a stay of execution to Duane Buck. No one should be put to death based on the color of his or her skin. We are confident that the Court will agree that our client is entitled to a fair sentencing hearing that is untainted by considerations of his race."
Thank you to everyone who took action and sent a message to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry. We hope the Supreme Court will grant Duane Buck a new sentencing hearing. As Linda Geffin, who helped prosecute Buck in his 1997 trial wrote to Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the Board of Pardons and Paroles last Friday: "No individual should be executed without being afforded a fair trial, untainted by considerations of race."

Pena de Muerte y Discriminación Racial Hoy en en New York Times

The New York Times

16 de Septiembre de 2011

Editorial

Estado de Ejecución

Después de declarar el “estado de ejecución de Duane Buck a sólo horas de ser ejecutado en Texas el Jueves, la Corte Suprema debe ahora revisar el caso o, por lo menos, ordenar que un tribunal federal inferior considere el pedido del Sr. Buck de una nueva audiencia antes de decidir su sentencia. El Tribunal no puede permitir que tenga lugar una terrible injusticia.

El Sr. Buck, un Afro-Americano, fue condenado a muerte en 1997. En la etapa de sentencia de su juicio, un psicólogo que participaba como perito experto dijo que “sí” cuando se le pregunto si “el factor raza, negra”, icrementaba las chances de que el Sr. Buck pudiera llevar a cabo de nuevo una conducta peligrosa.

En Texas, esta es una pregunta clave: si si el estado no prueba “la peligrosidad futura” más alla de la duda razonable, no puede sentenciar al imputado a muerte. La fiscalía obtuvo la respuesta que quería y urgió al jurado a basar la decisión en ese testimonio. El jurado sentenció al Sr. Buck a muerte.

En el año 2000, el Senador John Cornyn, que era entonces el Jefe de los Abogados del estado de Texas, solicitó nuevas audiencias de sentencia en seis casos en los que se había condenado a muerte –incluuido el Sr. Buck- porque la raza de los imputados se había utilizado inapropiadamente como un factor relevante para obtener esa sentencia.

El Sr. Buck es el único de ese grupo al que no se le concedió una nueva audiencia. El Abogado de Distrito a cargo del caso del Sr. Buck reusó admitir que el uso de la raza fue un error constitucional que requería una nueva audiciencia. Cuando el caso llegó al juzgado federal, había un nuevo Jefe de Abogados del Estado de Texas, y éste se reusó a obedecer el juicio del Sr. Cornyn.

El claro racismo que tuvo lugar en el caso del Sr. Buck es una nueva prueba de que la pena de muerte es cruel e inusual porque es arbitraria y discriminatoria, además de bárbara, y debe ser abolida.

La traducción es mía. El original en inglés sigue abajo.

The New York Times

September 16, 2011
Stay of Execution
After granting a stay of execution to Duane Buck just hours before he was to be put to death in Texas on Thursday, the Supreme Court must now review the case or, at the very least, order a lower federal court to consider Mr. Buck’s plea for a new sentencing hearing. It cannot allow a terrible injustice to stand.

Mr. Buck, an African-American, was convicted of murder in 1997. At the sentencing phase of his trial, a psychologist who was an expert witness said “yes” when asked if “the race factor, black,” increased the chances that Mr. Buck would do something dangerous again.

In Texas, this is a pivotal question: if the state does not prove “future dangerousness” beyond a reasonable doubt, it cannot sentence a convict to death. The prosecution got the answer it wanted and urged the jury to rely on this testimony. The jury sentenced Mr. Buck to death.

In 2000, Senator John Cornyn, who was then the Texas attorney general, called for new sentencing hearings for six men given the death penalty — including Mr. Buck — because race was improperly used as a factor in their sentencing.

Mr. Buck is the only one who has not been granted a new sentencing hearing. The state district attorney in charge in Mr. Buck’s case refused to admit that the use of race was a constitutional error that required a new hearing. By the time the case got to federal court, there was a new Texas attorney general who refused to abide by Mr. Cornyn’s judgment.

The gross racism in Mr. Buck’s case is proof again that the death penalty is cruel and unusual because it is arbitrary and discriminatory, as well as barbaric, and must be abolished.

Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos: Caso Fontevecchia c. Argentina

Perfil publicó la transcripción completa de la audiencia acá