BTW News Briefs

Newton Library Refuses Law Enforcement Demand to Examine Computer Without Warrant

On Wednesday, January 25, the Newton TAB reported that Newton (Massachusetts) Free Library officials "refused to let police and the FBI examine library computers without a warrant."

Law enforcement officers were seeking data from the library's computer terminals on Wednesday, January 18, when they found out that a terrorist threat to Brandeis University had been sent from a Newton Free Library computer. However, their request to search the computer records was denied by Kathy Glick-Weil, the library director, and Mayor David Cohen "on the grounds that they did not have a warrant," the TAB reported. It then took U.S. attorneys several hours to get the warrant, Glick-Weil told the TAB, and the computer was removed from the library later that night.

Mayor Cohen told the TAB, "We showed you can enforce the law ... without jeopardizing the privacy of innocent citizens." And Glick-Weil said, "The law requires us to protect the privacy of library users."

NRF Study Reveals Retailers Will Prioritize Growth for 2006

On January 17, the National Retail Federation (NRF) announced that retailers would focus on accelerated growth this year, according to new research by the NRF Foundation and BearingPoint, Inc. The fourth annual study, "Retail Horizons: Benchmarks for 2005, Forecasts for 2006" showed that the majority of retailers named growth as a priority. Close to three-quarters of retailer executives said that growing already existing store sales is their top priority.

Other key findings of the study include:

• Retail companies with an online presence nearly doubled to 94 percent in 2005, up from barely 50 percent in 2004;
• Customer-focused decision making continues to gain momentum, as 13 percent of respondents had more than a quarter of their field management compensation tied to customer satisfaction results
• Within the next 12 months, nearly a quarter of respondents plan to add e-training and another 20 percent plan to implement hiring technologies and self-service kiosks.

This fourth annual study surveyed more than 150 retailers from a wide assortment of department, specialty, apparel, grocery, and home center stores, with as few as a single store to more than 2,000. The study focused on eight functional areas, including information technology, supply chain, merchandising, store and field operations, advertising and marketing, customer insight, online, and human capital.

For more information, visit www.nrf.com.

FBI Subpoenas Google for Data on Search Topics

Looking to resurrect the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) -- legislation that would make it a crime for any commercial Web site to distribute to a minor material that is "harmful to minors" -- the FBI subpoenaed Google, Inc., for information regarding what users have been searching for through the "Google" search engine, as reported by the Associated Press.

According to the Mercury News, Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, which was issued last year for the records. The News noted that the subpoena includes a request for "one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period." Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google told the News that the company would fight the government's effort vigorously. The government is contending that it requires the information in order to properly defend COPA.

In June 2004, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, upheld a lower court ruling barring enforcement of COPA and remanded the case back to District Court. Although the Supreme Court declared that COPA probably violates the First Amendment, it postponed a final decision until a lower court determines whether the provisions of the law -- for example, the requirements that adults obtain passwords to access "harmful" material -- are more effective in preventing minors from seeing explicit sexual material than software filters installed by parents. Experts believe that this will be hard for the government to prove for a number of reasons, including the fact that much of the explicit material on the Internet is posted on foreign websites that are not subject to American law. (For more information on COPA, click here.)

Story Prize Winner Announced

On January 25, the Story Prize, an annual award for books of short fiction, announced the winner for this year's prize: Patrick O'Keeffe (The Hill Road, Viking) at the New School's Tishman Auditorium in New York City. The Hill Road is a collection of four novellas set in the fictional Irish village of Kilroan. Runners-up were Jim Harrison (The Summer He Didn't Die, Atlantic Monthly Press) and Maureen F. McHugh (Mothers & Other Monsters, Small Beer Press). O'Keeffe received $20,000, and the two runners-up each received $5,000. For more information, visit www.thestoryprize.org/.