Japan Gears Up for the Open Data Revolution

Following the death of Aaron Swartz, an open data activist,?the issues around open access and data ownership have been reignited ?around the world.?But for Japan, the seeds of open data just started being planted in the beginning of 2013.

Hacking Open Data
The Open Knowledge Foundation Japan (OKFJ)?[ja] works to support creating, publishing and using diverse data including government data. The goal is to improve society so that people and systems are more sophisticated and informed, and decisions are based on fact. The group started in July of 2012 and fully launched in November of that year. OKFJ is facilitating local organizers in Japan for the?International Open Data Day?to be held on February 23.

International Open Data Day in Japan.
The image used with permission from OKFJ

In Tokyo, Hack for Japan [ja], a community of developers that got together in response to the 2011 earthquake to support disaster relief by using information technology, are hosting the International Open Data Hackathon, Tokyo?[ja]. Other local events are expected to take place in Yokohama?[ja] and in Chiba as well.

This weekend on?January?25-26,?Yokohama Open Data Solutions Development Committee?[ja]?held a 24-hour open data hackathon. The event hopes to aggregate accessible information for local citizens as well as useful information for people visiting Yokohama for arts and culture, and to revitalize the community.

Photo from Yokohama Open Data Hackathon held in January 25-26, 2013. Photo used with permission.

Linked Open Data challenge Japan 2012?[ja], initiated by a committee at the Environment and Information Studies department in Keio University, has opened its application for the challenge. The deadline is on January 31 and the winners will be announced on March 7.

Open Data runs deep
Such efforts of open data are?occurring?not just in major cities in Kanto region, but also in smaller cities. The Mayor of Takeo city?in Saga prefecture where the?population is about?50,961?[ja] has been gaining attention for its progressive open government policies.?Takeo city plans to put together a joint-council?[ja] of open data and big data with Chiba city, Nara city and Fukuoka city.

In Ishikawa prefecture, the?Kanazawa Hackathon has set an??open government??theme for their event on February 16, to scrape from various ideas and come up with a prototype for public 2.0.

e-Gov strategy is on the way
Behind these initiatives is a government led ?e-administration Open Data Strategy? which was documented by the Strategic Headquarters for the Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society (IT Strategic Headquarters), and was published in July 4, 2012. The timetable [ja] was plotted to?implement?the plan, which includes assigning a Chief Information Officer for the government, increasing accessibility to administrative services, and the ?My Number ? Act, a bill that intends to define citizen by unique numbers for both taxation and social security (which has not been passed yet).

Closed Data
However, some think that not all information should be free.?The Fukushima Medical University signed a contract with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to cooperate in the area of human health on December 15, 2012. One document [ja],[en] in the contract talks about ensuring the confidentiality of information classified by the other party as restricted or confidential.

On January 25,?citizen media JANJAN?[ja] cited the opinion of Dr.Matsuzaki?[ja] that the result of children's blood tests in Fukushima should have been made public because the test had been conducted on roughly 70% of the children in Fukushima by December 2011. The result of adults was disclosed last year.

Censorship. Image by Flickr/IsaacMao (CC BY 2.0).

Fear of Big Brother
Others fear that increasing data attained by an unreliable government will turn Japan into the world of George Orwell's 1984. The following tweet was retweeted for more than 223 times.

@NewStream_2012:????????????????????????????????? ????????? ???????????? ?????DL??? ?????? ?ACTA??????????????????????

There will be a day when people cannot tweet freely [because of the following bills and laws] (1) Bill of Human Rights Relief Agency (2) My Number Act (3) Computer Monitoring Act (4) Penalization of Illegal Download for Personal Use (5) Security Requirement Act (6) ACTA.?I feel Japan is rapidly becoming a nation full of censorship.

Blogger RealWave?wrote about the My Number Act [ja],?saying excessive fear is useless, and that a primary ID for both taxation and social security would be?beneficial?for citizens especially in terms of?convenience when properly introduced.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

It would be foolish to create a?bizarre?and complicated system by excessive fear of a nation monitoring its citizen, or to please tax evaders by protesting against the National Identification Number. If the system would create a dark society of censorship, or a society where government monitors its citizen to better serve their people is not up to the system but rather up to the people whether they can make an effort to function as a democracy. When risk is wrongly perceived, the solution will be wrong too.

Public Data and Private Entities
The discussions on government collecting data has to do with what extent the data would be disclosed to private companies. Takeo city plans to renew their public library through a private entity, and the rewards card of the private company's loyalty?program will be used instead of library cards. Starbucks Coffee will also open a new store in the library. This plan became controversial [ja] because personal information in the public library could possibly be used for the marketing objectives of the private entity.

When Associated Press tested Freedom of Information law?[en] around the world in 2011, the Justice Minister in Japan rejected AP's request saying his office does not have the answers and cited privacy concerns.

We'll have to wait and see if 2013 will be the year Japan wholeheartedly embraces more inclusive,?participatory?open data.

Source: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/01/31/japan-gears-up-for-the-open-data-revolution/

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Lindsay Lohan's driving case returns to LA court

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2012 file photo, Lindsay Lohan attends the Mr. Pink Ginseng launch party at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. A scheduling hearing for a case alleging Lohan lied to police, drove recklessly and obstructed officers from performing their duties is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, before a judge who has previously sentenced the actress to house arrest and jail time. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2012 file photo, Lindsay Lohan attends the Mr. Pink Ginseng launch party at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. A scheduling hearing for a case alleging Lohan lied to police, drove recklessly and obstructed officers from performing their duties is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, before a judge who has previously sentenced the actress to house arrest and jail time. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 11, 2012 file photo, Lindsay Lohan attends the Mr. Pink Ginseng launch party at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. A scheduling hearing for a case alleging Lohan lied to police, drove recklessly and obstructed officers from performing their duties is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013 before a judge who has previously sentenced the actress to house arrest and jail time. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A judge who has sentenced Lindsay Lohan to jail before will conduct her first hearing Wednesday on new misdemeanor charges of lying to authorities and reckless driving against the trouble-prone actress.

Lohan has been ordered to appear before Judge Stephanie Sautner for the scheduling hearing, which is the first time the actress has been required to appear in court in nearly a year.

Prosecutors in Santa Monica, Calif., have charged Lohan with lying to police about driving a sports car that crashed into a dump truck in June, reckless driving and obstructing officers from performing their duties.

In March, Sautner released her from supervised probation but warned her to stop partying and grow up.

"You need to live your life in a more mature way, stop the nightclubbing and focus on your work," Sautner told Lohan at the time. The admonition came after the judge conducted several monthly updates with the actress and required her to perform morgue cleanup duty to complete her sentence in a 2007 drunken driving case.

Lohan has since filmed two movies but has repeatedly gotten into trouble, including a pair of arrests in New York that have not resulted in charges.

She was on probation for theft at the time of the wreck in California, and Sautner had warned the actress she could be sentenced to 245 days in jail if she didn't behave. She has pleaded not guilty and a Feb. 27 trial date has been set.

The latest hearing may also resolve who will be Lohan's lawyer for the criminal case. New York attorney Mark Heller has petitioned to join the case, but his involvement must be approved by Sautner.

Heller was traveling on Tuesday and did not return a phone message.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-01-30-People-Lindsay%20Lohan/id-ee9572c575ba4000899bf97e8e552279

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The Meaning of The

An appeals court has blocked President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB from last January.

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Would you believe me if I told you that President Obama is in constitutional trouble?with hundreds of decisions of the National Labor Relations Board from the last year now potentially invalid?over the meaning of the word the?

That?s what three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said Friday. The president has constitutional egg on his face because the judges have blocked his appointments of three NRLB members on Jan. 4, 2012. The president said that on that day, the Senate was in recess, which meant he could exercise his authority to make a recess appointment. But the Senate claimed that it was not in recess at all. Never mind that its members were off on a 20-day holiday. The Republican minority took care during that time to gavel the Senate in and out, every few days, for what Obama called ?pro forma? sessions. And that, staunch conservative Judge David B. Sentelle says for himself, and two other judges who also happen to be Republican appointees, is enough to beat the president at the game of declaring recess.

Or perhaps I should say only the recess. What we?re looking at here is this clause from Article II of the Constitution:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

As Sentelle framed it, ?the Recess? cannot ever mean anything like ?a recess.? ?This is not an insignificant distinction,? he writes. ?In the end it makes all the difference.? The Framers were not talking about ?a generic break in the proceedings,? Sentelle continues, ?Either the Senate is in session, or it is in the recess. If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in ?the Recess.? ? The upshot is that if the opposing party minority says the Senate is in session, then it does not matter where the flock has fled, or even for how long. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, essentially, gets to decide when the Senate is open or shut, with whatever fiction he wants. The president is at his mercy.

Wow, imagine how happy that must make Mitch McConnell. Maybe he will even crack the smile in my favorite picture in the Daily Caller?s slideshow of McConnell-turtle companion photos.

OK, enough irreverence. What exactly was Obama doing, declaring the power to make a recess appointment in the middle of a session, even a fake one? Well, for one thing, Senate Republicans had blocked his NLRB choices for months (via the filibuster with which Harry Reid has saddled us for another long winter). For another, Obama had some history on his side. On Volokh Conspiracy, John Elwood writes that what he calls ?intrasession recess appointments? (as in, Obama?s at the NLRB) ?have been made fairly commonly since WWII, and have been particularly common since the Reagan Administration. UN Ambassador John Bolton and Judge William H. Pryor, Jr. are two of the more high-profile intrasession recess appointments in recent years.?

Yes, Bolton and Pryor were George W. Bush appointees. Elwood also points out a 2004 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that?s on the president?s side here, and in conflict with the D.C. Circuit?s decision today. The 11th Circuit weighed in about the validity of Pryor?s appointment, which took place during a nice 10-day break for President?s Day in February 2004. In an opinion by Chief Judge Larry Edmondson, the court did not get stern about the meaning of the word ?the.? Instead, Edmondson wrote, ?We do not agree that the Framers' use of the term ?the? unambiguously points to the single recess that comes at the end of a Session. Instead, we accept that ?the Recess,? originally and through today, could just as properly refer generically to any one?intrasession or intersession ?of the Senate's acts of recessing, that is, taking a break.? Edmondson (a Reagan nominee) also pointed out that at the time, 12 presidents had ?made more than 285 intrasession recess appointments of persons to offices that ordinarily require consent of the Senate.?

That should at least assure you that President Obama did not run amok. Two other federal appeals courts decisions, by the 9th Circuit and the 2nd Circuit, also blessed judicial appointments made in the middle of a Senate session. It?s true that this practice didn?t get going until 1857, but according to Elwood, that?s because Congress took only three short midsession breaks up until that point (seven days in 1800, five days in 1817, and five days in 1828).

If you?re still bothered by the idea of the president rather than the Senate deciding on the Senate?s own rules?after all, concerns about separation of powers and a power-hungry executive come into play?consider this argument defending the Jan. 4 appointments from Akhil Amar and Timothy Noah. They point out that McConnell did not speak last January for a majority of senators. If anyone did, it was Majority Leader Harry Reid. ?Neither David Sentelle nor Mitch McConnell should decide when the Senate is or is not in session,? Akhil said when I talked to him today. ?Fifty-one Senators should decide. ?It's awkward when three Republican appointed judges substitute their decision for that of a Democratic controlled Senate.? Akhil also called one part of the D.C. Circuit?s ruling (not joined by a third judge, Thomas Griffith) ?radical.?

What happens next? Well, the NLRB is in a fix, because everything it?s done in the last year is now up for constitutional challenge. Also if the D.C. Circuit is right, it only has one member with a valid appointment, which means no quorum. And the appointment of Richard Cordray, head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is also in limbo, since he too got his job on Jan. 4, 2012. The Obama administration can appeal to the whole D.C. Circuit for what?s called en banc review?a do-over with eight of the court?s 13 judges.* Or it can go straight to the Supreme Court. The Obama lawyers must be making their own turtle faces right about now.

*Correction, Jan. 25, 2013: This article originally stated that the D.C. Circuit has 13 judges. That's true, but five of the 13 have senior status and do not hear en banc cases.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=81b05e4b54fd6956188e79d934650d88

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Google chairman heading to North Korea

FILE - In this Sept. 28, 2012 file photo, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt arrives for a seminar at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Schmidt is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea. He will be traveling to North Korea on a private trip led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2012. The sources, two people familiar with the group's plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 28, 2012 file photo, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt arrives for a seminar at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Schmidt is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea. He will be traveling to North Korea on a private trip led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2012. The sources, two people familiar with the group's plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE - In this April 10, 2007 file photo, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, third left, and Anthony Principi, former U.S. veterans affairs secretary, third right, and top White House adviser on Korea, Victor Cha, second right, pose for a photo with Kim Yong Dae, vice-president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People's Assembly, center, in Pyongyang, North Korea. Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt will be traveling to North Korea on a private trip led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2013. The sources, two people familiar with the group's plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public. (AP Photo/Foster Klug, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 20, 2012 file photo, a North Korean woman sits in a computer room near portraits of the country's late leaders, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, at the Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang, North Korea. Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt is preparing to travel to one of the last frontiers of cyberspace: North Korea. Schmidt will be traveling to North Korea on a private trip led by former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson that could take place as early as this month, sources told The Associated Press on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2012. The sources, two people familiar with the group's plans, asked not to be named because the visit had not been made public. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? When he lands in North Korea, even Google's executive chairman will likely have to relinquish his smartphone, leaving him disconnected from the global information network he helped build.

Eric Schmidt is a staunch advocate of global Internet access and the power of Internet connectivity in lifting people out of poverty and political oppression. This month, he plans to travel to the country with the world's most restrictive Internet policies, where locals need government permission to interact with foreigners ? in person, by phone or by email ? and only a tiny portion of the elite class is connected to the Internet.

The visit may be a sign of Pyongyang's growing desire to engage with the outside world. North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un, talks about using science and technology to jumpstart the country's moribund economy, even if it means turning to experts from enemy nations for help.

In recent years, "North Korea has made a lot of investment in science and technology, not just for military purpose but also for the industry and practical reasons," said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at South Korea's Kyungnam University.

But the U.S. government Thursday voiced its opposition to the trip, saying the timing was "unhelpful." Last month, North Korea launched a long-range rocket in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Google's intentions in North Korea are not clear. Two people familiar with the plans told The Associated Press that the trip was a "private, humanitarian mission." They asked not to be named, saying the delegation has not made the trip public. Schmidt will be traveling with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a seasoned envoy, and Kun "Tony" Namkung, a Korea expert with long ties to North Korea.

"Perhaps the most intriguing part of this trip is simply the idea of it," Victor Cha, an Asia expert who traveled to North Korea with Richardson in 2007, wrote in a blog post for the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

Kim Jong Un "clearly has a penchant for the modern accoutrements of life. If Google is the first small step in piercing the information bubble in Pyongyang, it could be a very interesting development."

But this trip will probably be less about opening up North Korea's Internet than about discussing information technology, Lim said. North Korea may be more interested in Google services such as email and mapping, as well as software development, than in giving its people Internet access, he said.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that she did not know what Google might be planning in North Korea, but like all U.S. companies it would be subject to restrictions under U.S. law.

Kim Jong Un, who took power a year ago, has stressed the need to build North Korea's economy.

In the early 1970s, communist North Korea had the stronger economy of the two Koreas. But North Korea's economy stagnated in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union as the regime resisted the shift toward capitalism in the world around it.

By 2011, North Korea's national income per capita languished at about $1,200 while South Korea's was $23,467, according to the Bank of Korea in Seoul.

And as the Internet began connecting the world ? a movement South Korea embraced ? North Korea reinforced its moat of security. Travelers arriving in Pyongyang are ordered to leave their cellphones at the airport and all devices are checked for satellite communications. Foreigners and locals are required to seek permission before interacting ? in person, by phone or by email.

However, leader Kim Jong Un declared Monday that North Korea is in the midst of a modern-day "industrial revolution." He is pushing science and technology as a path to economic development for the impoverished country, aiming for computers in every school and digitized machinery in every factory. More than 1.5 million people in North Korea now use cellphones with 3G technology.

But giving citizens open access to the Internet has not been part of the North's strategy. While some North Koreans can access a domestic Intranet service, only a select few have clearance to freely surf the World Wide Web.

Schmidt speaks frequently about the importance of providing people around the world with Internet access and technology.

As Google's chief executive for a decade until 2011, Schmidt oversaw Google's ascent from a small California startup focused on helping computer users search the Internet to a global technology giant. Google now has offices in more than 40 countries, including all three of North Korea's neighbors: Russia, South Korea and China, another country criticized for systematic Internet censorship.

After being accused of complying with China's strict Internet regulations, Google pulled its search business from the world's largest Internet market in 2010 by redirecting traffic from mainland China to Hong Kong.

In April, Schmidt and Jared Cohen, a former U.S. State Department policy and planning adviser who heads Google's New York-based think tank, will publish a book about the Internet's role in shaping society called "The New Digital Age."

Son Jae-kwon, a visiting scholar at Stanford, compared Schmidt to Chung Ju-yung, the late founder of the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai who strode across the DMZ dividing the two Koreas with a pack of cattle in 1998.

But this time, it's computer technology, not cows.

"Internet is the cattle of the 21st century," Son said. "It is what North Korea needs most."

The Richardson-Schmidt trip comes at a delicate time politically. In December, North Korea defiantly shot a satellite into space on the back of a three-stage rocket, a launch Pyongyang has hailed as a major step in its quest for peaceful exploration of space.

Washington and others, however, decry it as a covert test of long-range ballistic missile technology designed to send a nuclear-tipped warhead as far as California. The U.N. Security Council quickly condemned the launch, and is deliberating whether to further punish Pyongyang for violating bans on developing its nuclear and missile programs.

The visit also follows North Korea's announcement that an American citizen has been jailed in Pyongyang on suspicion of committing "hostile" acts against the state. Richardson will try to address his detainment, the sources said.

State Department spokeswoman Nuland said Schmidt and Richardson would be traveling as private citizens and carrying no messages from Washington.

"We don't think the timing of the visit is helpful and they are well aware of our views," she told a news briefing.

Washington and Pyongyang do not have diplomatic relations. North Korea and the U.S. fought on opposite sides of the three-year Korean War before signing a truce in 1953.

However, North Korea has indicated interest in repairing relations with Washington.

In 2011, a group of North Korean economists and diplomats visited Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

And North Korean-affiliated agencies already use at least one Google product to get state propaganda out to the world: YouTube.

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report. Follow AP's bureau chief for Seoul and Pyongyang at twitter.com/newsjean and AP Seoul's technology writer at twitter.com/ykleeAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-01-03-NKorea-Google/id-d0fad9e3400446cf9f01c47aa3622d7d

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