I just wanted to congratulate the officers of the UCLA AMIA student chapter for the hard work and dedication given to putting on this year's "Out of the Past" film series. Clare and Melissa, awesome work with getting speakers and monies together. I look forward to attending many of the screenings.
Out of the Past: Restoration Today
4/12/06-5/24/06
7:30pm UCLA James Bridges Theater
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/amia/index.html
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/
Lindy Leong
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Monday, December 12, 2005
t r u t h o u t - FBI Agents Lament: "Radical Militant Librarians"
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At FBI, Frustration Over Limits on an Antiterror Law
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times
Sunday 11 December 2005
"While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from Office of Intelligence Policy and Review's failure to let us use the tools given to us"
Washington - Some agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been frustrated by what they see as the Justice Department's reluctance to let them demand records and to use other far-ranging investigative measures in terrorism cases, newly disclosed e-mail messages and internal documents show.
Publicly, the debate over the law known as the USA Patriot Act has focused on concerns from civil rights advocates that the F.B.I. has gained too much power to use expanded investigative tools to go on what could amount to fishing expeditions.
But the newly disclosed e-mail messages offer a competing view, showing that, privately, some F.B.I. agents have felt hamstrung by their inability to get approval for using new powers under the Patriot Act, which was passed weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
One internal F.B.I. message, sent in October 2003, criticized the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Justice Department, which reviews and approves terrorist warrants, as regularly blocking requests from the F.B.I. to use a section of the antiterrorism law that gave the bureau broader authority to demand records from institutions like banks, Internet providers and libraries.
"While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us," read the e-mail message, which was sent by an unidentified F.B.I. official. "This should be an OIPR priority!!!"
The bureau turned the e-mail messages over to the Electronic Privacy Information Center as part of a lawsuit brought by the group under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking material on the F.B.I.'s use of anti-terrorism powers. The group provided the material to The New York Times.
Congress is expected to vote early next week on a final plan for reauthorizing virtually all main parts of the law, including the F.B.I.'s broader power to demand records. President Bush, who has made renewal of the measure one of his top priorities, pushed again Saturday for Congress to act quickly.
"Since its passage after the attacks of September the 11, 2001, the Patriot Act has proved essential to fighting the war on terror and preventing our enemies from striking America again," Mr. Bush said in his radio address on Saturday.
While some Republicans and Democrats have attacked a brokered agreement reached Thursday because they said it does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties, the president hailed the agreement.
"Now Congress needs to finish the job," he said. "Both the Senate and the House need to hold a prompt vote, and send me a bill renewing the Patriot Act so I can sign it into law."
As part of the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a federal court has ordered the F.B.I. to turn over 1,500 pages of material to the privacy information group every two weeks.
An earlier collection of F.B.I. documents, released by the group in October, showed numerous violations of internal procedure and sometimes federal law by the bureau in its handling of surveillance and investigative matters. In some cases, for instance, agents had extended surveillance operations and investigations for months without getting required approval from supervisors.
In the most recent batch of material, an F.B.I. memorandum sent in March 2004 said the process for getting the Justice Department to improve demands for business records would be "greatly improved" because of a change in procedure allowing the bureau to "bypass" the department's intelligence office, which normally reviews all such requests.
But officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. said they were unaware of any such change in procedure and that all bureau requests for business record were still reviewed and approved by the Justice Department.
A separate e-mail message, sent in May 2004 with the subject header "Miracles," mockingly celebrated the fact that the Justice Department had approved an F.B.I. request for records under the so-called library provision.
"We got our first business record order signed today!" the message said. "It only took two and a half years."
In its latest public accounting of its use of the library provision, which falls under Section 215 of the antiterrorism law, the Justice Department said in April that it had used the law 35 times since late 2003 to gain access to information on apartment leasing, driver's licenses, financial records and other data in intelligence investigations.
But the department has said that it had never used the provision to demand records from libraries or bookstores or to get information related to medical or gun records, areas that have prompted privacy concerns and protests from civil rights advocates, conservative libertarians and other critics of the law.
Michael Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said the frustrations expressed in the internal e-mail messages "are considered personal opinions in what employees believed to be private e-mails not intended for large, public dissemination."
Mr. Kortan added that "the frustration evident in these messages demonstrates that no matter how difficult or time-consuming the process, F.B.I. special agents are held to a very high standard in complying with the necessary procedures currently in place to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights when using the legal tools appropriate for national security investigations."
A senior official at the Justice Department, who was granted anonymity because many aspects of the antiterrorism law's use are classified, echoed that theme. "For all the hand-wringing over potential abuses of the Patriot Act, what these e-mails show is that it's still fairly difficult to use these tools."
But Marcia Hofmann, who leads the electronic privacy center's government section, said the e-mail messages "raise a lot of unanswered questions" about the F.B.I.'s use of Patriot Act powers and its relations with the Justice Department. Without fuller answers, Ms. Hofmann said, a reauthorization of the law by Congress "would seem premature."
By Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times
Sunday 11 December 2005
"While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from Office of Intelligence Policy and Review's failure to let us use the tools given to us"
Washington - Some agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been frustrated by what they see as the Justice Department's reluctance to let them demand records and to use other far-ranging investigative measures in terrorism cases, newly disclosed e-mail messages and internal documents show.
Publicly, the debate over the law known as the USA Patriot Act has focused on concerns from civil rights advocates that the F.B.I. has gained too much power to use expanded investigative tools to go on what could amount to fishing expeditions.
But the newly disclosed e-mail messages offer a competing view, showing that, privately, some F.B.I. agents have felt hamstrung by their inability to get approval for using new powers under the Patriot Act, which was passed weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
One internal F.B.I. message, sent in October 2003, criticized the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Justice Department, which reviews and approves terrorist warrants, as regularly blocking requests from the F.B.I. to use a section of the antiterrorism law that gave the bureau broader authority to demand records from institutions like banks, Internet providers and libraries.
"While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from OIPR's failure to let us use the tools given to us," read the e-mail message, which was sent by an unidentified F.B.I. official. "This should be an OIPR priority!!!"
The bureau turned the e-mail messages over to the Electronic Privacy Information Center as part of a lawsuit brought by the group under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking material on the F.B.I.'s use of anti-terrorism powers. The group provided the material to The New York Times.
Congress is expected to vote early next week on a final plan for reauthorizing virtually all main parts of the law, including the F.B.I.'s broader power to demand records. President Bush, who has made renewal of the measure one of his top priorities, pushed again Saturday for Congress to act quickly.
"Since its passage after the attacks of September the 11, 2001, the Patriot Act has proved essential to fighting the war on terror and preventing our enemies from striking America again," Mr. Bush said in his radio address on Saturday.
While some Republicans and Democrats have attacked a brokered agreement reached Thursday because they said it does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties, the president hailed the agreement.
"Now Congress needs to finish the job," he said. "Both the Senate and the House need to hold a prompt vote, and send me a bill renewing the Patriot Act so I can sign it into law."
As part of the lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a federal court has ordered the F.B.I. to turn over 1,500 pages of material to the privacy information group every two weeks.
An earlier collection of F.B.I. documents, released by the group in October, showed numerous violations of internal procedure and sometimes federal law by the bureau in its handling of surveillance and investigative matters. In some cases, for instance, agents had extended surveillance operations and investigations for months without getting required approval from supervisors.
In the most recent batch of material, an F.B.I. memorandum sent in March 2004 said the process for getting the Justice Department to improve demands for business records would be "greatly improved" because of a change in procedure allowing the bureau to "bypass" the department's intelligence office, which normally reviews all such requests.
But officials at the Justice Department and the F.B.I. said they were unaware of any such change in procedure and that all bureau requests for business record were still reviewed and approved by the Justice Department.
A separate e-mail message, sent in May 2004 with the subject header "Miracles," mockingly celebrated the fact that the Justice Department had approved an F.B.I. request for records under the so-called library provision.
"We got our first business record order signed today!" the message said. "It only took two and a half years."
In its latest public accounting of its use of the library provision, which falls under Section 215 of the antiterrorism law, the Justice Department said in April that it had used the law 35 times since late 2003 to gain access to information on apartment leasing, driver's licenses, financial records and other data in intelligence investigations.
But the department has said that it had never used the provision to demand records from libraries or bookstores or to get information related to medical or gun records, areas that have prompted privacy concerns and protests from civil rights advocates, conservative libertarians and other critics of the law.
Michael Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said the frustrations expressed in the internal e-mail messages "are considered personal opinions in what employees believed to be private e-mails not intended for large, public dissemination."
Mr. Kortan added that "the frustration evident in these messages demonstrates that no matter how difficult or time-consuming the process, F.B.I. special agents are held to a very high standard in complying with the necessary procedures currently in place to protect civil liberties and constitutional rights when using the legal tools appropriate for national security investigations."
A senior official at the Justice Department, who was granted anonymity because many aspects of the antiterrorism law's use are classified, echoed that theme. "For all the hand-wringing over potential abuses of the Patriot Act, what these e-mails show is that it's still fairly difficult to use these tools."
But Marcia Hofmann, who leads the electronic privacy center's government section, said the e-mail messages "raise a lot of unanswered questions" about the F.B.I.'s use of Patriot Act powers and its relations with the Justice Department. Without fuller answers, Ms. Hofmann said, a reauthorization of the law by Congress "would seem premature."
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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Okay...so here my is brief attempt to blog regarding Anna's request that we all speak up about our internships/practica/jobs/what have you.
As a first year I wasn't in the practicum loop really but economics still applied and I had to find a student job. After a quarter of rejection (I can only assume that my resume was too random or something...dunno) and Amy's constant encouragement (thanks Amy!), I finally landed a job with the UCLA Libraries Oral History Project. I don't deal with moving images at all and actually don't even deal with the audio tapes of interviews. It has been a great experience though and, at least tangentally related to moving images. I correct/index/format and create tables of contents for oral history transcripts as an editorial assistant. There are numerous histories dealing with the motion picture industry. So far I've only worked on a few moving image related histories--among them the transcripts for video artists Chick Strand and Susan Mogul, as well as for a journalist who wrote articles on the making of "Salt of the Earth" and the Hollywood Blacklist.
I also just finished up a brief stint at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. I helped to scan the half-million or so notecards that serve as the catalogue to the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel Collection which was donated to the UCLA Archive in the 1980s (I think). Basically I would just sit in this little window-less, ventalition-less room with another scanner and the Archive's server, prep the cards (examine for tears, folds, staples, etc.), load piles of them into scanners, and then review the completed scans to make sure they looked good. The room would average about 81 degrees which would make the urgency of preservation all the more real (how can anything, inanimate or not, survive for long in such conditions?). My last day I scanned 15,050 cards and left the job with an odd feeling of accomplishment. I have always excelled at the menial and mundane.
So that's about it...this summer I'll eventually spend over a month working in Special Collections at the University of Washington (my birth place and college/first grad school) Libraries. I just visited them yesterday and am very excited. They have all sorts of great regional history/scientific/educational films--many of which have yet to be inventoried. In addition I'll be helping out with the Seattle edition of Home Movie Day at MOHAI. It is, I must say, a bit odd to be at UW once again (if I show up there next year as well I bet ya they'll start pursuing some sort of restraining order) but I've come to accept that I'm bound to end up haunting the place for life and figure I might as well start sooner rather than later.
I'm also working with some local historical societies in the south Puget Sound area, where I grew up, to evaluate their film--and will hopefully be able to put together a digital access copy as part of my portfolio.
So that's it..for now ;)
As a first year I wasn't in the practicum loop really but economics still applied and I had to find a student job. After a quarter of rejection (I can only assume that my resume was too random or something...dunno) and Amy's constant encouragement (thanks Amy!), I finally landed a job with the UCLA Libraries Oral History Project. I don't deal with moving images at all and actually don't even deal with the audio tapes of interviews. It has been a great experience though and, at least tangentally related to moving images. I correct/index/format and create tables of contents for oral history transcripts as an editorial assistant. There are numerous histories dealing with the motion picture industry. So far I've only worked on a few moving image related histories--among them the transcripts for video artists Chick Strand and Susan Mogul, as well as for a journalist who wrote articles on the making of "Salt of the Earth" and the Hollywood Blacklist.
I also just finished up a brief stint at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. I helped to scan the half-million or so notecards that serve as the catalogue to the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel Collection which was donated to the UCLA Archive in the 1980s (I think). Basically I would just sit in this little window-less, ventalition-less room with another scanner and the Archive's server, prep the cards (examine for tears, folds, staples, etc.), load piles of them into scanners, and then review the completed scans to make sure they looked good. The room would average about 81 degrees which would make the urgency of preservation all the more real (how can anything, inanimate or not, survive for long in such conditions?). My last day I scanned 15,050 cards and left the job with an odd feeling of accomplishment. I have always excelled at the menial and mundane.
So that's about it...this summer I'll eventually spend over a month working in Special Collections at the University of Washington (my birth place and college/first grad school) Libraries. I just visited them yesterday and am very excited. They have all sorts of great regional history/scientific/educational films--many of which have yet to be inventoried. In addition I'll be helping out with the Seattle edition of Home Movie Day at MOHAI. It is, I must say, a bit odd to be at UW once again (if I show up there next year as well I bet ya they'll start pursuing some sort of restraining order) but I've come to accept that I'm bound to end up haunting the place for life and figure I might as well start sooner rather than later.
I'm also working with some local historical societies in the south Puget Sound area, where I grew up, to evaluate their film--and will hopefully be able to put together a digital access copy as part of my portfolio.
So that's it..for now ;)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
The most challenging day at cataloging internship
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Hi. This is Anna. It's been awhile but I thought I'd write about my last day at the UCLA Film Archive Cataloging Department. Why do the most challenging items to catalog appear on the last day of my internship? So, far I've had to rethink my approach to cataloging a sports show and the added entries have proved some what difficult to determine. Many of the rules established for bibliographic items just do not work with moving images as most of you are aware of. Also, determining the title of a news program, which appears simple, actually is not. A lot of things need to be considered before simply applying a title and also, as I have learned today, those titles may change.
Another challenge, figuring out how to cataloging a compilation of breaking news items. These are not excerpts. They are the items themselves. But how do you make a record reflect this? Are the notes enough? how many notes would a researcher be willing to wade through?
Overall, this has been a very wonderful internship. I have learned a lot from Martha Yee, Andrea Leigh and Robert Graves. I highly recommend this as a possibility if you want to intern. You not only catalog, but you also get to inventory and view the items. I worked mainly with Martha Yee and Dan Einstein, the Television Archivist, but you also get to interact and talk to everyone else here. It's a great environment and this has been the most professional internship I've experienced so far.
Also, they give out news awards for EVERYTHING. I can't even believe it. But I suppose, it's nice to be recognized.
Another challenge, figuring out how to cataloging a compilation of breaking news items. These are not excerpts. They are the items themselves. But how do you make a record reflect this? Are the notes enough? how many notes would a researcher be willing to wade through?
Overall, this has been a very wonderful internship. I have learned a lot from Martha Yee, Andrea Leigh and Robert Graves. I highly recommend this as a possibility if you want to intern. You not only catalog, but you also get to inventory and view the items. I worked mainly with Martha Yee and Dan Einstein, the Television Archivist, but you also get to interact and talk to everyone else here. It's a great environment and this has been the most professional internship I've experienced so far.
Also, they give out news awards for EVERYTHING. I can't even believe it. But I suppose, it's nice to be recognized.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
dont_need_you_lge
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On Wednesday, April 20th, AFI had a screening of "Don't Need You" a documentary on the Riot Grrl movement (United States) by Kerri Koch. It was great to be able to view a moment that changed many grrls lives. Whether you were deeply involved with the movement or were a fan of the music and supported these women by going to shows and buying their albums, if you were aware of what the Riot Grrls stood for...it changed your life. This film reminded me of how wonderful and idealist we girls were and still are. Being able to see and listen to those involved and supporting the Riot Grrls, like Kathleen Hanna, Mark Anderson, Ian MacKaye, Corin Tucker, and Sharon Cheslow, explain the movement and how it changed and affect their views and roles on women in society was important to me.
It was amazing and hopefully everyone will have the opportunity to view this film. It was also interesting to see how many people have archived photographs, concert footage and posters from the time. There was footage from the first Heavens to Betsy concert, which was also viewed as Corin Tucker's first live performance. She also used footage from Bikini Kill's first D.C. performance which changed how people viewed women and music.
Kerri Koch and Sharon Cheslow were also in attendance and took part in a short Q&A. Also, the Arclight hosted a reception where Mika Miko performed. And from what I hear, the food was pretty great too.
Also, some of you might be interested in Kerri Koch's new project, a documentary on Latino/a Morrissey fans.
http://www.urbancowgirlproductions.com/moz/index.html
It was amazing and hopefully everyone will have the opportunity to view this film. It was also interesting to see how many people have archived photographs, concert footage and posters from the time. There was footage from the first Heavens to Betsy concert, which was also viewed as Corin Tucker's first live performance. She also used footage from Bikini Kill's first D.C. performance which changed how people viewed women and music.
Kerri Koch and Sharon Cheslow were also in attendance and took part in a short Q&A. Also, the Arclight hosted a reception where Mika Miko performed. And from what I hear, the food was pretty great too.
Also, some of you might be interested in Kerri Koch's new project, a documentary on Latino/a Morrissey fans.
http://www.urbancowgirlproductions.com/moz/index.html
Monday, April 11, 2005
Submissions: Green Cine 2005 Online Film festival
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I thought some of you might be interested in this:
http://www.greencine.com/static/filmfestival/onlinefilmfest.jsp
The deadline is April 30th. Green Cine is an online movie rental company, similar to Netflix. The focus on more obscure titles and have a pretty great Anime collection. You should check out their website. I love their blog and also they have some interesting movie resources.
Good luck if you do submit anything.
http://www.greencine.com/static/filmfestival/onlinefilmfest.jsp
The deadline is April 30th. Green Cine is an online movie rental company, similar to Netflix. The focus on more obscure titles and have a pretty great Anime collection. You should check out their website. I love their blog and also they have some interesting movie resources.
Good luck if you do submit anything.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Watch out for the Buddhist Palm!
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I just got back from the premire of "Kung Fu Hustle" (www.kungfuhustle.com)
I have to say this is my favorite movie of the year. It was amazing. But since I'm not
a great reviewer I think you should read my friend, Jason's comments which probably
will be posted on www.laist.com.
Everything about this movie was incredible...the story, the fighting scenes, the characters...
I have to say this is my favorite movie of the year. It was amazing. But since I'm not
a great reviewer I think you should read my friend, Jason's comments which probably
will be posted on www.laist.com.
Everything about this movie was incredible...the story, the fighting scenes, the characters...
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