Stanislav_J writes “All you wealthy Slashdotters better start making alternate arrangements for stashing your millions. Switzerland’s storied role as discreet banker to the world’s tax-avoiding wealthy is under threat like never before, and this time the country ultimately might not be able to cease the rest of the world from prying into those legendary ’secret’ accounts, stated to contain between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. A large German tax-evasion scandal is putting pressure on the Swiss to cooperate, and the rest of Europe is also hardening their resolve to force change upon them. Per the article, ‘The official Swiss reaction has been self-conscious detachment, which they hope will deflate the issue,’ but even their own citizens are not too concerned about those outside their borders: 80% of Swiss support the banking confidentiality law, but that number drops into the 40s when it is applied to foreigners. Pressure is also coming from US pols — not the ‘let’s pry into everyone’s business’ Republicans, but the ‘make the rich pay their fair share’ Democrats, including Illinois Senator (and presidential candidate) Barack Obama.”

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Wow. More politicians (of all parties) need to be as open and thorough as Steve Novick is here. We selected 10 of the questions you submitted and sent them to him by email, and his responses… let’s just say that if every candidate spoke out like Steve, we’d have a much clearer view of our choices and would be able to cast our votes a lot more rationally.

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eWeekPete writes “Is the pipe half full or half empty? Not surprisingly, the speak at the second annual Tech Policy Summit was decidedly blended. ‘The US is still the most dynamic broadband economy in the world,’ stated Ambassador Richard Russell, the associate director of the White House’s Office on Science and Technology Policy. ‘As opposed to being miles ahead, though, we’re only a little ahead.’ But Yale Law School’s Susan Crawford called Russell’s position ‘magical thinking. We’re not doing well at all.’ She proceeded to call the White House’s effort ‘completely inadequate on broadband competition.’”

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michuk writes “IBM’s representative for KT182 (the committee empowered to vote on OOXML in Poland) accused the committee’s chair of intentionally manipulating the process. A letter from the president of the body overseeing KT182, sent a month ago to the committee chair for distribution to all committee members, was never distributed. The letter suggested that, if consensus weren’t achieved on the OOXML vote, then Poland should abstain. This follows up my current report on the OOXML process in Poland (also covered by Groklaw), it looks like things are going bad this time, at least as bad as in October.” The EU is already investigating the Polish process based on complaints last fall. Is anyone tracking all of the allegations and investigations surrounding OOXML?

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Ian Lamont writes “Google is in the midst of a full-court privacy effort in Washington that involves pushing consumer privacy legislation in U.S. Congress, reaching out to privacy recommends in an effort to allay concerns about its acquisition of DoubleClick, and working with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to ‘fine-tune online advertising principles’ that the agency proposed last year. Google has been under fire in Washington in current years — the FTC investigated the Google/DoubleClick deal and the EFF has issued warnings over Google services in the past. Is Google being sincere about these issues, or is this effort mostly paying lip service to its ‘do no evil’ policy and an attempt to head off future clashes with policy makers?”

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Believe It Or Not, I Care About You writes “According to a new study in the British Medical Journal which analyzed the search results for various suicide-related search terms, the most common results supported or encouraged suicide. Wikipedia was one of the most prevalent sources of information, particularly on suicide methods, even though the Wikimedia Foundation itself does not encourage suicide. Other studies have shown that media coverage has an effect on suicide particularly with respect to influencing the method chosen. Interestingly, this study notes that suicide rates actually decreased with increased Web usage in England, perhaps because support is readily available to anyone who wants it.”

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Dave Knott writes “The Canadian federal government has blocked the $1.3-billion sale of the space technology division of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates to Alliant Techsystems, a major US defense contractor. Industry Minister Jim Prentice is quoted as saying he is ‘not satisfied’ the sale will be a net benefit for Canada. MDA is Canada’s leading developer of space-based technology, including the famous CanadArm and the recently installed space station robot Dextre.”

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hhavensteincw writes “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is coming under fire for a new policy to stop the “harvesting” of a digital snapshot of all federal bureau and Congressional Web sites after every Presidential and Congressional term. NARA, which archived more than 75 million Web sites in 2004 after George Bush’s first term ended, will not harvest agency and Congressional Web sites when his current term is over because it states agencies are supposed to be archiving Web content on their own. But NARA has been criticized by some for opting out of preserving the important these historical archives on the Web.”

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QuantumG writes “In a current article on The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin reveals that Barack Obama plans to delay Project Constellation for at least five years, using the redirected funds to nationalize early-education for kids under five years old to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond, if he is elected president. It is feared that if this happens the Vision for Space Exploration will flounder and that may be the end of human spaceflight altogether.”

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QuantumG writes “In a recent article on The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin reveals that Barack Obama plans to delay Project Constellation for at least five years, using the redirected funds to nationalize early-education for children under five years old to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond, if he’s elected president. It is feared that if this happens the Vision for Space Exploration will flounder and that may be the end of human spaceflight altogether.”

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