As the Senate moves to complete the spending bill for the Higher Education Act next month, a growing number of organizations concerned about privacy rights are fighting a Department of Education plan that would require colleges and universities to place personal information on individual students into a national database maintained by the government.
If included in the spending measure, the plan would radically change current practice by requiring schools to provide personal information on all students, not just those receiving federal aid.

The above is from Michael Janofsky's "Plan to Gather Student Data Draws Fire" in this morning's New York Times.

Wally e-mails to note Julia Preston's "Judge Says U.S. Must Release Prison Photos:"

A federal judge in New York told the Defense Department yesterday that it would have to release perhaps dozens of photographs taken by an American soldier of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said at a hearing that photographs would be the "best evidence" in the public debate about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The hearing, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, came in a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain material about military prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In other Iraq court news, note the Associated Press story entitled "Solider Charged In Iraqi Killing Is Acquitted" and John DeSantis' "Marine Accused of Murder In Iraqis' Deaths Is Cleared" (both of which appear on A17).

Kara e-mails to note Raymond Bonner's "U.S. Embassy in Indonesia Closes as Web Site Plots an Attack:"

The United States Embassy was closed here on Thursday because of what officials would describe only as an unspecified security threat. But a Western counterterrorism official and a private security analyst said the decision had been made after a diagram of the embassy and details of how best to carry out an attack were posted on a Web site.
The diagram, which was posted on www.Istimata.co.nr by a group calling itself the Brigade Istimata International, showed the location of the ambassador's office, surveillance cameras and heat detectors.
[. . .]
Despite the embassy closing on Thursday, counterterrorism officials say that the threat of a terrorist attack has diminished here.
Seeming to underscore this, the Jakarta International School, which most American students attend and which has been a potential terrorist target in the past, remained open on Thursday, as did the American Recreation Club, where embassy personnel and their families swim and play tennis.

Kara notes that if Bonner's in the Friday paper, that "just leave Scott Shane to save us from the Attack of Lifestyle Stories in Saturday's paper."

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[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]