BTW News Briefs

Presidential Hopefuls Voting on New Hampshire's RiverRun

The Portsmouth Herald recently noted that Portsmouth, New Hampshire, independent RiverRun Bookstore is "on the way to becoming a must-stop for presidential hopefuls on the New Hampshire primary campaign trail." According to the Herald, Sen. Barack Obama's visit in December spurred "a national media frenzy" and this weekend, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is slated to speak at the bookstore. Other political players who have had events at the store includes: Howard Dean's 2004 campaign manager, Joe Trippi, and Elizabeth Edwards.

The Herald noted that it's only recently that RiverRun has started to bring in top lawmakers and presidential hopefuls. The store did not host one political candidate in 2004. Holbrook stressed to the Herald that he is not a "heavy-hitting insider or deeply connected to the Democratic Party -- although he admits his political views do lean that way."

Personal Data Privacy and Security Act Introduced in the Senate

On Tuesday, February 6, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), introduced comprehensive legislation that seeks to better protect citizens' data by increasing criminal penalties for identity theft involving electronic personal data and making it a crime to intentionally or willfully conceal a security breach involving personal data, among other things. According to the Privacy Rights Clearing House, since February 2005, more than 100 million records containing personal information have been subject to some sort of security breach.

Leahy introduced a similar bill last Congress with fellow Judiciary Committee member Arlen Specter (R-PA), following serious data breaches at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis. Since then breaches at several other firms and within state and federal governments have exposed millions of Americans to identity theft by leaking or losing their personal data, which included names, addresses, and sometimes Social Security numbers. Just last week in Vermont there was a serious data breach of a computer system used by the Vermont Agency of Human Services. The breach jeopardized the financial data of at least 69,000 Vermonters whose personal financial information was stored on the server. In other recent cases, Designer Shoes Warehouse and TJ Maxx Stores both had the personal information of their customers stolen from their computers.

Lambda Literary Awards Announces Record Number of Nominees

The Lambda Literary Awards recently announced that it has received a record number of nominations for books published during 2006. Each year, the organization honors the best LGBTQ writers and books during BookExpo America, the annual booksellers convention. In all, 147 publishers nominated 381 titles for awards in 25 categories.

For the first time, the complete list of nominated books is listed on the Lambda website. The two categories to receive the greatest number of nominations (31 each) were Lesbian Romance and Gay Fiction. Under new guidelines this year, a book could be nominated only by its author or by its publisher. The top finalists in each category will be announced on March 1, and readings by the finalists will take place in San Francisco on April 12 and in New York on April 17. More readings are expected to be announced shortly. The Lammie winners will be announced on Thursday, May 31, at a gala awards ceremony in New York City. Ticket information will be available by March 1. For more information, contact [email protected].